Tomicide Solutions, August 2018

Does Your IT Firm Create Content Shock For Its Target Market?

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

We humans are funny creatures; always attracted to something new. Sort of obsessed with bright shining objects. Just like magpies. And unlike apple pies.

Hey! When does a magpie stop being obsessed with bright shiny objects? Well, when it becomes a magpie pie.

So, after this short cooking lesson, let's look at what can happen to bright shiny objects.

In many cases, they go from a fad, then a trend and then a rage.

This is how even the Internet started. Or as Bill Gates said, regarding the Internet as a short-lived fad...

In 1993: "The Internet? We are not interested in it."

And in 1994: "I see little commercial potential for the Internet for at least 10 years."

So, for a moment let's go back to '60s where London-based fashion designer, Mary Quant invented the miniskirt and named it after her Mini.

The mini skirt started out as a fad, then became a trend and a rage. And of course, the rage eventually burnt out and miniskirts vanished.

But the car Mini is a different ballgame. It has gone through the fad => trend => rage cycle, and then it settled to a steadily selling car. Today Minis cost more than real cars, but they sell like hot cakes.

We can say the same about online content.

I remember sitting at home in 1994 in London and downloading some technical documentation on the phone line from some mysterious communication contraption called the Internet.

It took several hours to download all the files, but it finally happened and I was contently staring at some content. Well, some engineering datasheets.

Fast-forward to 2017. And we can say we've come a long way since that time. Not just geographically that now I live on the other side of Pond in Canada, but the then fad Internet has evolved a lot and has become a bit of a rage.

This incredible evolution has made life easier in many ways, but now it's causing headaches for many IT marketing professionals because we've reached...

The Age Of Content Shock

Over the years, marketers have learnt that if they want to be successful at acquiring new clients on a consistent and fairly predictable basis, instead of raiding their premises with silly sales pitches (plus coffee and doughnuts), they have to use informational content and let their markets consume it for free... well, for an email address.

This has been going on for a good number of years, but we've reached a limit.

We've reached the state of content shock, when all we need is a few sips of water, but we're forced to drink from the fire hose that is set on full blast.

The economics of content by Mark Schaefer

Source: Mark Schaefer

As per Mark Schaefer, content shock is...

"The emerging marketing epoch defined when exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it."

And this capacity consists of two factors...

Time and patience to wade through an inordinate amount of content to separate from the wheat from the chaff

Time to digest and take action on useful content.

If we say that some 80% of content out there is nothing more than an imbecilic junk pile of over-hackneyed rhetoric and vending-machine clichés based on an almost random dump of haphazardly patched together words and phrases sitting on websites as cyber vomit and literary excrement that no one reads and gives two shits about, we've been rather gentle with our critique.

As the drawing shows, content supply surpassed content demand a long time ago. As time goes by and the supply-demand gap widens, we have to invest more time and effort (a.k.a. money) to find useful content.

Over the years, thanks to technology and the more popular photo-and speedreading courses, our ability to consume content has grown a bit, while marketers content creation and distribution ability has increased exponentially. And it seems, marketers are not running out of content-creating steam in the near future.

But it seems we've already run out of content consuming steam.

It also means marketers will need to apply some tricks to effectively engage with their markets, including...

More money to achieve the same level of market penetration as before. All forms of content, especially video, has become increasingly more sophisticated than they were only five years ago. Extra sophistication requires extra money.

Higher barriers of entry are dictated by the big money players. They know any competition can undermine their success, so they control the competition, at least the ones with less money than them, by making market entry cost-prohibitive for smaller players.

Small players are forced to stop playing because they run out of money shortly after leaving the start point.

What that also means is that if IT service SMBs want to successfully play the content marketing game...

They Have To Do A Different Kind Of Content Marketing

No, more content is not the answer, although this is exactly what most companies do.

In Is Content Marketing a Sustainable Marketing Strategy?, author Michael Brenner reports that...

On the average website, 0.5% of the content receives over 50% of the traffic.

Some 70% of marketing content gets completely ignored.

Michael summarises that the real problem is volume and poor quality, that is, a preponderance of junk content.

Why so much junk content?

Because, due to their morbidly low prices, content mills in India and in other third world countries have become so popular and, as long as the very high quantity is there, their clients don't seem to care about quality.

People who write that content have dubious English and with no understanding of the social settings and the business culture of the country where their clients publish their content.

But that seems to be irrelevant.

The other option to high volume junk content is less but higher quality content and, what's often missing today is, better integration of content marketing and business development.

But most IT firm leaders think that's too expensive.

So, instead of 2-3 $1,000+ apiece well-researched and well-written quality blog posts which are well integrated into their marketing strategy and their target markets actually want to read, they produce 25-30 haphazard $50 content mill posts per month that no one wants to read.

Management is happy because the firm is producing content like clockwork. Like the clockwork of a $10 Chinese fake Rolex.

From a distance, it looks like a clock, but unlike the real Rolex that sweeps, the Chinese Rolex ticks.

Raymond Chandler's line comes to mind from The High Window...

"From 30 feet away, she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away, she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away."

Content to client

The key to good content marketing is to keep pace with every step of the process (see image above) and have the money to do so, which leads to more effective client acquisition.

Yes, content creation and content distribution feed content marketing, but that content has to generate sales leads with a fairly high probability of turning them into ideal clients within a reasonable space of time, so the money made on those new clients can pay for further content marketing.

There is no point in chasing more newsletter subscribers or more Facebook likes for the sake of being able to brag about the size of your email list or the number of Facebook likes.

One's got to know when size matters and when it doesn't.

Facebook likes, Twitter follows and LinkedIn connects are non-bankable assets.

And they can be made bankable through good business development.

As a result, you can cherry-pick your clients and your profits should be going up. Now you can allocate more money for content marketing and get better quality content.

The bad news is that, as the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs reported in their join publication, 2015 B2B Content Marketing Trends, 86% of B2B companies are using content marketing.

The good news is that most of them are making the same mistakes.

They fail to create content that...

...is unique both in style and substance and can't be found through a casual Google search

...is relevant both for humans and search engines

...answers searchers' specific questions

...is uniquely valuable in its unique information

...is convenient and enjoyable to read, watch and listen to at any location and on any device

...advances readers inside your sales funnel towards the buy/not buy decision-making point

So, no you know what to focus on as developing your content. These six criteria are always relevant for good content.

In most IT service firms, content marketing is run by the marketing department. The problem is that in most firms, marketing is concerned with long-term profitability, but salespeople are focused on short-term sales.

And this creates the proverbial Grand Canyon between sales- and marketing people.

What makes the situation even worse is that salespeople often offer unreasonable discounts in order to close sales right away, so they can move on to their next prospects.

But most of those sales, having been sold just above cost, are not profitable.

But what can content marketers do to...

Continue With Content Marketing But Get More Out Of It?

What they typically do?

They join forces with big brands.

This can be both good and bad, but most often bad.

Imagine Rampaging Rabbits IT Consultancy that is a partner with Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Cisco, HP and a few other IT manufacturers.

Clients, that have ever dealt with IT firms before, know that this "partnership stuff" is really bias. RRITC is not really a consultancy but camouflaged retailers selling their partners' products at inflated prices. Well, after all, they want to make a mint too.

So, everything clients could buy from those companies at normal price, now they buy from their consultants at higher prices.

And this potential income creates a very strong bias. If there is a toss-up between a Dell PowerEdge T430 Tower Server and Asus TS700-E8-PS4 V2 server, then the so-called "unbiased" consultants automatically go for the Dell server because it's on the partner list and selling that makes more money for the "consulting" firm.

What the client really needs becomes irrelevant.

It's like public schooling. As long as teachers have safe, secure, well-paid cushy jobs and parents can be kept in the dark about what's happening to their kids, no one really cares about the students. They serve one single purpose: To provide a pretext to employ an army of overpaid union labourers.

Yes, the teachers, most of whom are not good enough to succeed in accountability-based private education.

There is one area where I see opportunities for partnering. Having the same target market but offering complementary services.

Let's say, RRITC specialises in law firms, and partners with an audio-visual company that can take care of the audio-visual needs of RRITC's clients.

For instance, when clients ask me if I do websites, I tell them I don't. Then I offer them 2-3 reliable designers I fully trust, and give them the designers' contact information. Then I step out of the picture. Whoever my clients hire, I'm fine with it. But I step out of the buy-sell process. It's between my clients and the designers of their choices.

But what can be done to improve the impact of content marketing?

Narrow Your Target Market

Now this can be a good idea. Marketing to a narrow target market is a lot more cost-effective than marketing to a broad market.

Think about Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola and why Coca Cola is more successful, although PepsiCo has twice the headcount of Coca Cola. Also, consider that in taste tests, for many years, Pepsi has been coming out at the top. Pepsi is a bigger company with a "better" product, but Coca Cola is more profitable.

Coca-Cola does one thing: It guards the Coca Cola brand. It's 2016 profit per employee was $52,978.

PepsiCo does a bit of everything. Pepsi, food, snacks, etc. It's 2016 profit per employee was $23,973. Half of Coke's.

Maybe there is a lesson here.

Marketing only one item and given a certain amount of money, Coca Cola can reach its target market more effectively and profitably.

It has one very focused marketing message.

Pepsi has multiple marketing messages to several separate or overlapping target markets.

Yes, some say, it's a good idea to have multiple streams, that is, trickles of revenue. We'll, one solid river of revenue is better than multiple trickles.

Promote Your Uniqueness

Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, started climbing mountains using soft cast-iron pitons that had to be thrown away after each use.

Chouinard, who was as also a blacksmith, designed a new piton using aircraft-quality chrome-molybdenum steel. The tougher pitons were reusable too.

He recalls...

"Every time I returned from the mountains, my head was spinning with ideas for improving the carabiners, crampons, ice axes, and other tools of climbing."

Granted, there are many blacksmiths and mountain climbers in this world, but Chouinard is probably the only one who's both, thus understands both mountains and metals, and how metals behave on the mountains under extreme conditions. And that is his unique value.

This is undisputable objective uniqueness.

Better customer service, higher quality and other platitudes are subjective and anyone can argue them.

But if you say that in your company you have people with...

Seven Ph.Ds., 11 Master's degrees and 33 undergrad degrees (all IT-related)

Nine national and three international patents

649 years of combined hands-on experience in the buyer's industry

1,725 years of combined IT experience

11 commercially- and 67 self-published books

34 peer-reviewed scientific papers

293 IT conference presentations

...this is very specific. In fact, no one can argue with this level of specificity.

The key is to find the kind of objective uniqueness that can't be disputed.

Going back to Chouinard, no one can say to him, "No you're neither a mountain climber not a blacksmith."

The Advantages Of The First Or Early Movers

In their book, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk, authors Al Ries and Jack Trout write about the advantages of the first mover.

No doubt, whoever does something first, will be remembered.

But the other factor is who can promote that event more successfully.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Edison didn't invent the lightbulb.

Not at all! He used his political and legal prowess to steal the English Joseph Swann's and the American William Sawyer's invention and promoted it as his own. At the time, when Edison became the official inventor of the lightbulb, he didn't even have a working prototype.

Then a few years later, this is exactly how Edison destroyed Tesla as well. Tesla was building all sorts of bits and bobs, which Edison claimed to be his own inventions.

And as other geniuses, like Mozart or Van Gogh, Tesla too died in raging poverty.

So, although Edison was the "latecomer", due to his better use of marketing and PR – in an unethical way though, he became the inventor of the incandescent light.

Yes, this is infuriating, but it shows that coming first is not an automatic win. It's good to know marketing too.

By the time Apple launched the iPod, there were lots of MP3 players on the market and the iPod was the highest priced and almost the lowest quality.

Nevertheless, all of those MP3 player companies are dead and gone and Apple has just passed the $1 trillion valuation.

But unlike Edison, Apple has played a fair game: Marketing without politics. (I like to believe it)

So, even if you're not the first in your industry, you can use good marketing to gain some advantages. But keep it ethical.

And if you have narrowly defined market, as we defined in a previous point, you have an even easier task to pull this off.

Summary

So, it seems this whole content shock is really shock caused by too much junk content.

Look, I believe, no matter how many jewellery stores open in North America, Tiffany & Co. has nothing to worry about, and it wasn't the first.

Allen Brothers doesn't have to worry about the number of supermarkets or high street butcher shops, although their prices are multiples of the competition's prices.

Yes, content shock does exist. People are shocked by much crap they have to plough through to find some good content.

And by good content, I don't mean merely factually correct content, but content that is also enjoyable to read on all sorts of devices.

And I sincerely hope that the day comes when IT firms recognise and pay the creators of good content in proportion to what they expect to achieve as a result of distributing that content.

It's just so ridiculous that companies invest a small fortune in the whole content marketing initiative, including $150 per hour or higher in web designers, graphics artists, programmers and other support people, and then go over to some third-world country content mill and order some cheap crap for content $5 apiece.

The people who create the heart and soul of the initiative get paid the least by a long shot.

All in all, my verdict is that if you're ready and willing to create high-quality content and you're in for the long haul, then it is likely to work for you.

But, since there is always a but...

Content marketing can take nine months or longer gain traction, so before you do it, make sure you have a lead generation programme in place, so you can generate the money to finance your content marketing initiative.

It would be a disaster to invest $50,000 or more in content marketing and then to be forced to scrap the whole programme because there is not enough client work to finance it any longer.

So, what to do now?

Inspect your sales funnel metrics going back, let's say, six months. If your funnel works and you have a steady stream of leads that give you sufficient amount of revenue, then start planning your content marketing. Otherwise, beef up your lead generation and fiddle with content marketing later.

In the meantime, don't sell harder. Market smarter and your business will be better off for it.

Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.