rdschneider

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.

§ 5 Responses to The 5 most common technical marketing collateral mistakes

• Technical marketing mistake #3: Cramming too much information into a single piece « rdschneider says:

  December 10, 2011 at 16:14

  […] we enjoy helping our customers overcome all sorts of technical marketing challenges. In the first post of this series, I summarized some of the most common oversights that we encounter. In today’s […]

• Technical marketing mistake #4: Not following a formalized collateral creation methodology « rdschneider says:

  January 6, 2012 at 07:03

  […] this episode of the continuing series of common technical marketing mistakes, I point out why it’s so important to create marketing content using a well-designed […]

• Technical marketing mistake #5: Over-reliance on internal staff « rdschneider says:

  February 1, 2012 at 17:37

  […] now come to the last of the five most common technical marketing mistakes that I’ve observed – expecting internal team members […]

• A good example of an effective ROI calculator « rdschneider says:

  April 16, 2012 at 15:56

  […] while back, I described a series of the most common technical marketing mistakes that I’ve encountered over the years. The price of these errors and shortcomings is measured in […]

• 7 Essential questions to ask when creating technical marketing collateral « rdschneider says:

  November 3, 2012 at 02:31

  […] while back, I put together a list of five of the most typical technical marketing mistakes we see at Think88. Over the years, we’ve also observed that the most successful technical […]