Christine Taylor's Core Copywriting

6 Strategies for the Marketing Exec

I ran across "Six Survival Strategies for the High-Tech Marketing Executive" from Basil Harris, Jr. that I liked. I am not now nor have I ever been a marketing exec, but I want them to do well: 1) because I have friends who bear that exalted title, and 2) because these are the people who are in a position to hire my copywriting skills. We're all in this together.

As the heat gets turned up in companies to produce more with less, marketing is often the first group to get its toes scorched.

This is sadly true. Basil suggests that this is because marketing's contribution is not self-evident to everyone. So he suggests 6 things to do:

"1. Don't take 'no strategy' for an answer." You have to have a strategic plan, otherwise you risk confused messaging, poor positioning, and failing programs. As a high-tech marketing exec, champion the process yourself.

"2. All roads lead from the customer." You need feedback from your customers. Basil goes on to suggest several strategies for accomplishing this, and suggests that you keep Sales involved. Good suggestion.

"3. Goals without plans are vapor." You need marketing goals linked to concrete, measurable activities. Thoughtful and detailed analysis will see your goals through... and justify them to the other execs looking over your shoulder. Better yet, tie your goals to corporate strategy and prove how you achieved them.

"4. Make sales your best friend." Not always the case! Sales blames Marketing for not giving them the hot leads and hot tools they need to close sales, while Marketing complains that their leads and tools go into a black Sales hole. Basil suggests that you can fix this by treating Sales as your most valued customer. He suggests some ways, including jointly planning customer engagements and customizing marketing materials to specific stage requirements.

"5. Metrics, metrics, metrics." This says it all... you need to measure anything that moves, and also tie your marketing dollars to a valuable outcome.

"6. Do more with less." Hone your team to a fine edge with cross-training.

Visit the article to learn more details.

What NOT to Do with a White Paper

There are 3 BIG No-No's when writing a white paper. Sadly, I see these all too often... hopefully not from you.

The white paper breathlessly touts the vendor's technology without setting up the challenge/solution. This is so common, especially at start-ups where the senior management team are themselves engineers. They're so thrilled about their own technology that they turn out "white papers" that are more product brief than white paper. Be sure to spend significant space carving out a picture of your readers' problems, and only then present your technology as the solution. And don't forget to build the business case along with the technical details! White papers aren't just for IT anymore, they're also for the CEO.

Too technical. A white paper isn't a glorified brochure, but neither is it a spec sheet. Refer to the above: senior management teams who are engineers can be uncomfortable with making a business case in the white paper. But these days, no technology exists in and of itself. They do impact the business, and a white paper has to make that case as well as explain the technology itself.

Poor writing. "It is to be avoided..." "The configuration of the controller to which the diagram refers..." "Market leader in [some miniscule area that no one has ever heard of]..." Ack! Don't do this. A white paper must present technology clearly and well; so use active voice and readable sentence structure so your readers will stay with you instead of nodding off.

This is the tip of the proverbial iceberg where white papers are concerned. For more about writing successful white papers, check out Michael Stelzner's "Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged." In the interest of full disclosure this is an affiliate link, but I know Michael personally, admire him greatly, and maintain that he is a white paper god. Check it out today.

Is the Article Market Shrinking?

This is definitely not a scientific study, but I suspect that the media outlets that accept contributed articles are shrinking. The print ones, anyway. I consult to a well known computer magazine whose print issues have fallen from 12 a year to 6, and may go lower. We've gone online, but still. Other competitors have either fallen by the wayside or are doing their impression of the Incredible Shrinking Magazine.

It's advertisers of course, or the lack thereof. You can't just increase editorial when your ads are shrinking because you still have to afford to send the darned thing out. And that means a smaller magazine.

I'd be very interested in getting comments from media relations, PR and marketing folks. In high tech B2B, is it harder to place contributed content? Easier? About the same?

Don't Forget the Small Stuff

I was checking out a sales letter generator software, not for my clients but for a couple of my own niche sites. I input my email address which brought up the developer's sales letter... which showed a misspelled word right smack dab in the middle of his big red headline.

How fast do you think I abandoned that site and that software? You got it. Pretty fast.

You wouldn't think that corporations are guilty of the same glaring mistakes, but in my work as a journalist I ran across many misspellings and grammatical errors in press releases, email pitches, and web pages. And these were corporate materials, not one-man-shops! It only takes one  misspelled word to turn off a busy journalist. Just be careful.

(And you can bet that I spell-checked and proofread this post a few times over.)

Using White Papers to Sell to the Government

I ran across a good article on breaking into the lucrative federal government IT market. Among other good things, author Mark Amtower writes:

Juniper Networks faces stiff opposition in the form of their large competitor, Cisco Systems. Cisco is much larger and can out-spend Juniper by a factor of ten. Part of Juniper's differentiation strategy is a series of white papers on topics of interest to the network managers who use the products each company offers. The white papers are offered under four generic headings: "Application Acceleration" (a good heading because it implies Juniper is faster), "Infrastructure," "Security" and "Government." Notice that government is separate. The white papers offered under this heading address the topic using government-friendly vernacular. This is intentional because all people in government think their needs are unique and different.

When you click on "Government," there are currently seven white papers addressing the same basic topic you can find in the other categories, but with a definite government-twist. Juniper uses the acronyms from the respective government programs in the titles of the white papers so the target audience sees that Juniper "gets" the concept that government needs are different.

The use of white papers is a key part of Juniper's strategy for differentiating itself from its competitors. Juniper's growth over the past few years is proof that this strategy works.

The article ran in Michael Stelzner's excellent White Paper Source newsletter.

Selling to Non-Tech Execs

Clay Cocalis, VP TowerGroup, makes a good point about selling technology to executives instead of the IT department. Those executives don't care as much about the details of the technology as they do the bottom line goals of their company.

"Most sales people in the tech area do a good job of talking tech with the IT department, but they also have to understand the surrounding business issues that are keeping the line of business executives up at night."

I believe you need buy-in from both groups: non-tech executives and IT. Are your marketing communications and collateral fashioned to reach both groups? If not, they should be.

Your Marketing Collateral Needs a Checklist

1. Is your product or service clear in the collateral? It's easy to assume that readers know what you're talking about; when unbeknownst to you they don't have a clue.

2. What are the features that will interest your audience the most? There is a huge dependence on "benefits" in marketing writing. This is a mostly a good thing, but in technical marketing collateral you have to get your features across too.

3. How are you different from your competitors? Unless you're doing a competitive positioning piece you might not mention your competitors by name, but you had better not be doing a second-hand echo of their positioning, especially if they're a lot better-heeled than you are. (Avis may have developed their tagline in response to Hertz, but that tagline has made them billions.)

4. What are your customer's pain points? Mentioning them is critical in a white paper, but even in other formats you should know why your audience is going to care about your offering in the first place.

5. Do you know who your prospects are? Small, medium or large enterprise; large mid-range; small mid-range; SOHO; data center managers; CIOs; etc. Know who you're trying to reach with what collateral.

6. Is your collateral easy on the eyes? IT staff and engineers want technical collateral, but that doesn't mean they'll wade through writing that is dull and dense. And executives won't stand for it. Design your collateral for logical and headache-free reading, and write using strong words, a clear structure, and an active voice.

7. Involve your sales team. You just know they're going to change things around anyway.

Night of the Living Tape

I know, I know -- "tape is dead" stuff is silly, really. It's just that with the tidal trend towards disk-based backup, tape tends to get lost in the media shuffle. But that doesn't mean that some major vendors aren't working on new tape R&D. In fact, IBM's tape storage revenue actually rose 9% in 2005. The reason? Those petabytes of backup have to go somewhere, and they're not going on disk anytime soon. Data Storage Today reports on the phenomenon:

Researchers at International Business Machines Corp. say a new method for cramming data onto magnetic tape will increase storage capacity at least 15 times, enough to squeeze the text from 8 million books onto a cartridge half the size of a VHS tape.

Hitachi Maxell is getting into the act too with an upcoming release of DLTtape S4 media, which a native capacity of 800GB (yes, that's native -- 1.6 TB compressed) and a native transfer rate of 60MB/s. You've still got tape's disadvantages; it's easier to recover from disk. But for large-scale storage for DR purposes, nothing else beats big-ass tape.

Merry-Almost-Christmas

I woke up today and it’s nearly Christmas. Unbelievable.

All right, so I have my trees up as I decorated the day after Thanksgiving. But the fact is that December 25th sneaks up on me every year!

I’m traveling to Yakima, Washington to spend the holiday with my Dad and sisters. My Mom, who always loved a party, will be joining us from heaven. Safe journeys for all of you who are traveling this season.

Leveraging High-Tech Bylined Articles

One of the beauties of writing bylined articles is that you can leverage them. Here are some possibilities:

1. Reprints
2. White papers
3. Booklets
4. Speech outline and handouts

Reprints
Reprints are good things: they significantly increase your exposure to the market. Make sure you use the reprints anywhere you can including press kits, presentation handouts and conference take-aways. Post them on your site too. (Be sure to work out reprint rights with the publishing magazine beforehand.)

White Papers
Don't use the as-is published article as a white paper, articles are structured differently from white papers and you'll run into copyright issues. Instead use the article text to form the technology section of a white paper. Edit it to highlight customer benefits since you don't have to be vendor-neutral for your own white paper, and add white paper sections around it including executive summaries, problem statements, in-depth product/technology information, etc. (Click here for more information about writing white papers.)

Booklets
One of the best press kits I ever saw included a sharp and informative booklet on the vendor's technology. The booklet explained the general technology's development and background, presented the vendor's product, and listed clear customer advantages. It impressed both journalists and customers in a way a press release or even a white paper wouldn't have done. Booklets are labor-intensive, so use your trade journal article as the basis for writing your own.

Speech Outline and Handouts
Use existing articles as the basis for client speeches, presentations and handouts. Since trade journal articles are usually vendor-neutral, they'll work for conference talks too. When the presentation is about a product you can still use the article outline for the background technology and analysis then add product details, customer case studies, and Q&As.

Read more about the beauty of writing bylined articles for fun and profit. Well O.K., maybe just profit.