Content Mapping the Buyer Experience

I recently presented on 'Content Mapping the Buyer Experience' at the 2011 Canadian Marketing Association's (cma.org) B2B Summit in Toronto. Gotta say, it was an impressive (oversold) event. The combination of a good agenda, great people and interesting content made for time well spent.

I'm an advocate of supporting the 'Buyer Experience' which goes beyond the traditional buying cycle. How so?
1. The Buyer Experience includes various stakeholders, such as influencers, partners, end users, procurement, executive sponsors, etc - all those involved in a purchase decision - and looks at their motivations and involvement along the buying stages.
2. I include the loyalty cycle after the deal closes as part of the Buyer Experience. This is a discipline that is often managed separately under a 'customer experience' or 'customer satisfaction' label. While this is all well and good, I prefer to include it with the Buyer Experience because customers are potential repeat buyers. Having a holistic view of your buyers - even after they become a customer - provides a better view into patterns, people and purchase characteristics.
3.The Buyer Experience also includes all the pre-buying cycle activities that are done before the vendor is ever contacted or even knows there's an opportunity in play. With the evolution of social media, word of mouth, and user generated content, the Buyer is exposed to a wealth of information - an incredibly powerful and influential force,  that impact the buyer's perspective, perception and purchase decision criteria. If vendors aren't including this in their content marketing strategy, it's a missed opportunity.

While I could have spent all day on the topic, here's what I covered in the thirty minute session. Enjoy.

Content Map the Buyer Experience-CMA B2B Event

View more presentations from Corinne Schmid

Interview: Gamification & Content Strategy

Interview conducted at the EU Content Strategy Forum 2011 on Gamification and Content Strategy. 

Do I really sound like that??!

Enterprise Gamification: Legit or Leap of Faith?

I'll be honest, this one was a beast.

Aside from verifying all the sources and data - developing a narrative from a frog's POV (which I must thank designer Julien Tremeur) was an interesting experience. 

I'm fascinated on how the topic of Gamification is controversial. I've seen how it ignites strong reactions and opinions - positive and negative, with few between. The only times I've received Tweet-beats (the affectionate term I used for being flamed via Twitter), has been related to my editorial or posts on gamification.

Regardless of where you stand, I'm interested in your feedback... even if that means you're compelled to tweet-beat me. :-) 

Enjoy.

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Here's the follow up to my EU Content Strategy Forum 2011 presentation - I refer to it as the 'long deck'. The CSForum deck is what I presented live. This iteration provides the details, background and data which I referenced in the "Gamification and Content Strategy" presentation.

Enterprise Gamification by itzCorinne

View more presentations from Corinne Schmid; namely EU Content Strategy Forum 2011 - Sept.6th. Conference presentation.

INFOGRAPHIC: where did Content Strategists come from?

Very cool info graphic on Content Strategists from Richard Ingram. EMBED

Woe is me: 0% "Interestingness" according to my Twitter Infographic.

Here's a first: I'm 0% Interesting according to my Twitter infographic by Visual.ly.
That explains my "Strongest Connections": my long term super boring BFF Britney Spears and buddy Barack Obama.
Yep, totally boring. I'll need to work on that.

Gobbledygook: I say potatoe, your content says Best-of-Breed Complex Carb

Is Your Content the Victim of Gobbledygook?

I’ll never forget when my CMO told me to use my “weekend voice” as we reviewed messaging for an upcoming product launch. My response that I had considered my Small town Redneck mouth wasn’t nearly as funny to him as it was to me, so I quickly added that I would incorporate my ‘weekend voice’.

 In Search of the Messaging Silver Bullet

Messaging and positioning isn't easy to do well. It's expected to be compelling, differentiated and unique. Well, in truth - these elements don't magically combine in our minds and then effortlessly roll off our tongue. Like watching the gold medal Olympic gymnast land a back flip and split jump on the balance beam  –  landing gold medal messaging is the result of hard work that requires practice, hard work and balance of several elements: 

• Market trends
• Competitive Forces
• Industry and Economic factors, including macro and micro economic elements and even government legislation
• Business Goals
• Buyer Motivations and Points of Pain
• Product / Service capabilities       

Especially for technology marketers, messaging is often a translation function that takes the product input points, like tech specs, and translates them into something everyone else can understand and want. The example I frequently use, if a developer were to promote a Sushi restaurant, the positioning statement may read, “We Sell Cold Dead Fish” 

 Sure, this is factually correct; it’s just not appetizing. On the flip side, the Onion demonstrates “step too far”

So how do you develop messaging that can create compelling content?

1. Do your homework.

Yep, that's right. Homework. Most people instantly jump to SWOT analysis. Here it comes - I do not like SWOT analysis because I've rarely seen it done well. Too frequently the analysis element is missing and it’s a laundry list of facts, claims and statements that do not provide meaningful information. I also find it too ambiguous that doesn’t provide structure for the analysis. However, if it is the outcome of a PEST or PESTEL evaluation, it can provide meaningful analysis. I always start with PEST/PESTEL.

It's probably obvious, I’m a big fan of Porter’s Value Chain and methodologies. Why? Because it works. 

For generating compelling messaging, I find that using Porter’s 5-Forces and PEST analysis is a good way to start to identify the factors noted above that establish the basis for messaging based on industry, market, buyer and economic factors.

 You can read the description for PESTLE here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEST_analysis  Succinctly PESTLE provides structure around influential factors related to

• Political
• Economic
• Social
• Technological
• Environmental
• Legal

2. Know Your Buyer

From here, an understanding of the buyers and motivations can identify the points of pain, business issues and related factors that will guide the overall message development. Knowing where your solution impacts the buyer's business process to provide value is essential.

 3. Write It Up

There is absolutely an element of trial-and-error in writing messaging. A good way to test the message is to review with existing customers and ask my two favorite questions:

           So What?   Who Cares? 

If the message does not clearly answer these two questions, then I'd recommend taking a closer lok at step 1 and 2. 

4. Test the Message

The old adage holds true, “would your grandmother understand?” That's great if she does but I strongly recommend putting those analyst dollars to use. Reach out to the key analyst groups you work with and have them review and comment. In this process, understand when and why they would short list your offering and when they wouldn't. In my experience, they’ve provided actionable feedback and helped steer positioning towards areas of strengths and real differentiation. Speaking of differentiation, always check competitive websites to ensure you’re not ‘me-too’.

5. Evaluate the Voice and Language

So now you have some candidates. While the message may be on point, the choice of language, voice and words are also significant. This is where David Scott Meerman can help with his Gobbledygook Grader.

According to Wikipedia , Gobbledygook is

"The term gobbledygook was coined by former US Representative Maury Maverick, then working for the Smaller War Plants Corporation, in a March 30, 1944 memo banning "gobbledygook language". It was a reaction to his frustration with the "convoluted language of bureaucrats.” He made up the word as an onomatopoeic imitation of a turkey's gobble."

So what does that have to do with messaging and marketing? Meerman’s Gobbledygook Manifesto on  slideshare provides an overview.

The gobbledygook manifesto

View more presentations from Heuvel Marketing

4. Try the Goobledygook Grader

Meerman helps the technology and messaging marketer with a Goobledygook Grader, an online tool developed jointly with HubSpot that looks for buzz corporatese words. Meerman’s slideshare on the topic provides background and the Grader online tool provides an honest evaluation of your copy based on buzz and overused hype term.

Check out the Goobledygook Grader here:

Other sources for language and terms is non other than Seth Godin. His Business Cliché overview is time well spent.

Summary

Like the Gymnast – Messaging isn’t a simple practice. It takes considerable work and practice to get right. The approach I recommend:

1. Porters 5-Forces
2. PESTEL Analysis
3. Competitive Review
4. Customer / analyst review
5. Goobledygook Grader.

What tools or methodologies do you use? Are there tools out there that you rely upon? Send me a message or post a comment below.

Check Out Cool Content About.... Content!

I've seen a lot of really cool content lately that was about.... content!

Digital media becoming mainstream opened up a world of possibilities to communicate and express ideas in radically new and interesting ways. Formats and delivery mechanisms continue to mash-up; evolving content into the intersection of both art and science. Check out my new favs:

Content about Content #1: Content Marketing versus Advertising Infographic
This infographic from Marketo looks at the face-off between advertising and content marketing. Marketo is a marketing automation company, positioning themselves as a revenue performance management company. I started following Marketo back when they had under 100 customers and within a few years their website claims to now have over 700. They have a lot of useful and informative research, reports and best practices - it's worth checking out their site at www.marketo.com.

From the website: The data for this rockin’ infographic came from Marketo’s Content Marketing Cheat Sheet and the 2010 B2B Content Marketing white paper on benchmarks, budgets, and trends from the amazing content marketers at MarketingProfs and Junta42!

Cool Content about Content #2: Push Pop Media's Digital e-Book: Our Choice by Al Gore
From an unlikely source - Al Gore. Yep, his follow up book to An Inconvenient Truth called Our Choice, that Push Pop Media took to a whole other level with a next generation digital e-Book. You know it has to be good when it's featured on Ted.com. As you'll read on the website, software developer Mike Matas demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad -- with clever, swipeable video and graphics and some very cool data visualizations to play with. The book is "Our Choice," Al Gore's sequel to "An Inconvenient Truth." 



Cool Content about Content #3: Content in the Cloud - Cloud App (author Tom Jenkins)
This is a triple threat: content on content that provides an immersive content experience for iPad. Tom Jenkins' follow-up to the ECM Trilogy book series went mobile and interactive:  Content in the Cloud - Cloud App. Everything you ever wanted to know about Enterprise Content Management,16 chapters featuring innovator stories, case studies, videos, podcasts, and a bunch of other cool stuff. It's free and is available in English; and sadly NOT French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish as it suggest on iTunes. Here's a preview:


Full disclosure: yep, I work at OpenText and I 100% stand by listing the Content in the Cloud as one of my fav's - especially when it was the first iPad immersive book app (and one of the first iPad apps overall thanks to its super talented developer/designer/you won't believe what this guy can eat in a day Jonathon P).
 
If you've seen Cool Content about Content, I'd love to check it out - either list it in the comments below or message me.

Enjoy the Content about Content!