rdschneider

Recently, I cited five of the most devastating content mistakes that I’ve seen marketing teams make. Why is building and maintaining a content roadmap such a headache for so many organizations?

First, there are always other high-priority fires to put out, like supporting new product releases, preparing for trade shows, and reacting to competitive announcements, to name just a few. Secondly, faced with constant pressure from sales, marketing teams tend to be reactive rather than proactive: they dutifully churn out White papers and case studies based on which salespeople scream the loudest, rather than what adds the most strategic value.

Unfortunately, these haphazard tactics rarely leads to positive outcomes. Instead, it’s much wiser to invest the time and energy necessary to create a holistic outline of all your technical marketing needs. Make sure that 1) you invite representatives from sales to participate, and 2) your roadmap includes the full range of collateral such as tutorials and proof-of-concept guides. Naturally, this blueprint is a living document and is subject to change. But at least you’ll have some sense of an overall vision.

Once you’ve completed this important task, next up is prioritizing which pieces come first. How you make that determination is what I cover in the next post in this series.

Ever since the first quota was assigned, salespeople have been accosting marketing executives with breathless grievances such as:

• I have nothing to give to my prospects!
• We need a case study!
• If I only had a White paper, I could make my number!

These pleas are often shouted out during ‘ambush the marketing executive’ sessions at kickoffs and other sales meetings. Naturally, marketing wants to help – after all, the sales team is marketing’s customer. But this often leads to misguided exertions, which wastes money and time and leads to a perception that marketing “just doesn’t get it”. This leads to even more frantic efforts, and so the cycle continues.

At Think88, I see many technology companies struggling with the same set of technical marketing challenges. Based on many years of experience, I’ve distilled these problems into a list of the five most common mistakes, which I’ll describe in a series of separate blog posts. Here’s the overall list and a brief thought about each one. Click on each point to see the more detailed posts.

1. Not having an overall marketing content roadmap. While everyone recognizes that it’s important, it’s often put on the back burner.

2. Not subjecting each marketing content investment to an honest ROI calculation. Let’s face it – effective collateral is can only be produced after analyzing weak points in the sales cycle and directly addressing them.

3. Cramming too much content into a single piece. Believe it or not, a 10-page paper isn’t necessarily twice as effective as 5-pager.

4. Not following a formalized content creation methodology. When budgets and time are tight, ‘just wing it’ becomes the motto.

5. Over reliance on internal staff. In these days of short staffing and pinched pennies, content creation is one of the first things to get put on the back burner. And failing to deliver content sets the stage for the next ‘ambush the marketing executive’ session.