Why Marketing Content Needs a Point of View

B2B marketing content is most useful when it serves as proof that you understand your target markets and actually know how to do what your company promises via it's products and services. Essentially, marketing content — and the experiences it creates — serves as a test drive of what it could be like to be your customer.

Point of view is the perspective through which readers will experience your content (or story). For B2B content, the best way to explain this is that if your content is company focused, the perspective they experience will be you talking about yourself. And that's boring.

If your content is focused on their roles and the issues they deal with, they'll experience it much more personally. But they'll also experience your brand's orientation in regards to the issue the content addresses.

Marketers must always consider how the content they publish reflects upon the brand. Great marketing content will consistently provide a perspective prospects want to spend their attention on and be truly representative of the brand behind it.

The following checklist can help marketers determine whether or not the point of view of their content is hitting the mark every time.

Is your content generous?

Evaluate your content and identify what takeaway(s) it's giving to the reader. Giving should be more heavily weighted than getting.

Is your content helpful?

Is the content providing clarity about something that will be useful to your reader in how they address the issue they're dealing with?

Is your expertise showing?

Do you share information that's representative of the knowledge, methodologies and experience your company has in dealing with the issue? You need to do this. And, no, it will not keep people from buying your services. If it did, I'd be on the corner with a cup and a sign.

Does your content demonstrate flexibility?

There's one thing to be said about sharing expertise. It's another thing if your content comes off as so authoritative that there's no room for compromise. Every customer is different — or likes to think they are. You can be firm, but not dictatorial. It is never your way or the highway. Face it — business evolves too fast to take a hard and fast position you may have to swallow later.

Does your content provide attention to detail?

Make sure your content delivers on its promise. There's nothing worse than seeing a title and first few sentences that focus on just what you want to know only to read it and wonder why you bothered because there was no substance. If you read content that has no follow-through in the delivery, how confident will you bet that the vendor will treat you any better as a customer?

Is your content responsive?

Based on what is being said on the web (social media, forums, industry portals), is your content in tune? Or is it based on some internal agenda that has no evident and timely resonance with your target markets? This is why you always want to leave room for shifts in topics during the rollout of your content strategy. Interests can shift quickly. Priorities can change in response to regulations or in response to quarterly results, for example.

Is your content definitive?

Contagious marketing content defines its topic in context with prospect needs. It's never wishy washy or repetitive of what other content says. It showcases your brand's unique perspective as aligned with your audience. If this is true, your content will never reflect anyone else's content — unless, of course, they used yours as a template.

Does your content minimize effort?

There's a tendency to want demonstrative payback for sharing content, most often represented by putting it behind a form. But, in addition to thinking hard about how much effort you want to require from prospects for access to your content, think about how hard it will be for them to ingest and understand. Simplicity trumps convoluted complexity every time. Getting your content found by your prospects is only the first step. Getting them to stay and engage with it can be much more difficult.

If you evaluate your marketing content for point of view in relation to these points, you'll find that response to it will begin to increase and engagement will become more consistent resulting in an increase in momentum toward purchase.

Finally, remember that everything included in your content should have a purpose. This point gains importance when you consider the limited attention spans of today's buyer. Get rid of the fluff. Get rid of the jargon and buzzwords. Eliminate the extraneous stuff that serves as filler. Do not pussyfoot around in getting to the point.

Choosing the right point of view for your content can transform the results gained from content marketing programs. The reason is that it helps prospects feel like they "know" you well enough to want to get to know you better — which means they'll take the next step to engage in conversation.

What techniques are you using to develop the point of view for your marketing content?

Comments

[Robert Rose]

Wow... as usual this is just incredibly good stuff Ardath.

I love the checklist as an approach to make sure you're coming at every piece of content with a p.o.v. From a storytelling aspect I wrote about something similar here ( http://bit.ly/rHU4p0 ) and our friend Jay Baer recently resurrected one of his older pieces on "action" as one of the most important pieces here (http://bit.ly/w6Vu6R)

But you've really added a wonderful, tangible piece to this for the B2B Marketer...

[Ardath Albee]

Hi Robert - thanks so much for stopping by!! I've got to make it a better point to read your stuff - can't believe I missed that post - it's really good. Storytelling is one of my biggest passions and it plays such a pivotal role in content marketing. Jay Baer always has terrific insights. Thanks for sharing both links.

[Nick Stamoulis]

When writing marketing content you always need to keep the target audience in mind. What kind of content will they find beneficial? Simply writing about your products and services and how great you are won't get too far. You need to actually be helpful in order to gain trust.