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.

§ 3 Responses to Technical marketing collateral mistake #1: Not having a content roadmap

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

  December 10, 2011 at 16:14

  […] marketing roadmap. I discussed this common problem in an earlier post. In short, not having an overall plan inevitably leads to reactive, poorly conceived content. And […]

• The 5 most common technical marketing collateral mistakes « rdschneider says:

  December 13, 2011 at 15:53

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

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

  January 6, 2012 at 07:03

  […] with your marketing content roadmap. You do have a roadmap, don’t […]