Writing

Dare to Be Differentiated

Content marketing means you must be different from everyone else

Recently, I was preparing for an interview when I noticed something strange. I had lined up the websites of the company I would be visiting and its chief competitor. Looking at the two together, I could see that the competitor was using almost exactly the same language to describe its services and their value.

When I met the CMO, I asked her about this. Why was her hottest competitor using the same voice, same explanations, even the same pitch with just a few words changed? (To protect the innocent, no names are being used in this story.)

“Well, every time we come out with something, these other guys immediately copy it,” the CMO told me. “It’s frustrating but kind of flattering, actually. And, I should add, we’ve never lost a head-to-head bid with them.”

After our meeting, I crossed the competitor off my list of companies to speak to.

Dare to be yourself

This episode reminded me of the importance of setting yourself apart from your competitors in tone, in language, in value proposition – really in every way that you can. Trying to sound like anyone or everyone else is a sure path to mediocrity.

The unnamed competitor in this story was probably trying to piggyback on the first company’s success, and perhaps it can for a time. But the competitor’s inability to define its unique reason for existing ultimately sets that company up for failure. How will they convince their customers to buy if they didn’t originate the reasons for buying in the first place? Judging by the head-to-head results, they can’t.

You can write in a way that differentiates yourself while complying with any particular phrases or expectations that are special to your industry. Use the available white space to be creative.

Learning to fly

  • Create differentiated taglines, phrases, and spots. What you do in 60 characters should be completely unique.
  • Have a voice, style, or tone that sets you apart. Lyft is facing one of the most aggressive competitors since the Roman Empire conquered the known world (I exaggerate! Just slightly.) To set itself apart, Lyft cars are equipped with a pink mustache, a message that says the service is friendly and lighthearted. The company wants your experience to be “welcoming, affordable, and memorable”. However you feel about Lyft’s giant opponent, Lyft has used its differentiation to create a positive vibe about the alternative it offers.
  • Acknowledge and separate from the pack. Suppose you provide a hosted service in an industry where a four-9s uptime guarantee is standard. Simply stating “4-9s uptime guaranteed” is not going to attract notice. But you can’t fail to mention it either, so instead write something more interesting. “We take pride in offering the best uptime guarantee possible” is better. “Our uptime is crazy!” might get even more attention. If you have to say the same thing as someone else, at least be more exciting.
  • Do something unexpected with formatting or presentation. If your competition does Q&A videos, do your video as a quiz show featuring happy customers. If they have static white papers online, make yours interactive. Everyone else uses a stock photo of a woman to represent its live chat operator, and nobody really thinks that’s the person typing on the other end of the Internet. So how about representing your agent with a more creative image – a boy wizard, say, or a hobbit? Pop open a bottle and brainstorm. Even if you have a buttoned-down corporate image, you can still use technology and your imagination to go a step beyond the competition.

Vive la differénce

Often times, we think of being different as taking a risk. It’s easier to stick with the pack, to follow the crowd. Fight this temptation!

There is no simple way to measure how unique your messaging is – it is a subjective matter. If your customers can recognize your company from the particular features of your messaging, then you are being unique (unless your competitors slavishly copy you).

If you are winning awards for innovation in advertising or marketing, you are certainly being unique. But most companies don’t aim for this, and you can’t count on it even if you are.

What I do is to set down any presentation I’ve produced for 24 hours, then pick it up again and gut check myself: Do I think this is different enough to stand out? If I’ve convinced myself, I’ll ask a knowledgeable colleague to judge my work on the same standard.

Dare to be different – and you are sure to get ahead no matter how crowded the field (link: Bay to Breakers winning centipede team).

What was the most outstanding differentiated marketing you’ve encountered? Tell us about it in the comments.

 

Lights! Camera! Excitement! Adding Spice to Your Content

excitement is important in product marketing

Do you recall the scene in Mission: Impossible when Tom Cruise is dangling from a line to infiltrate the CIA? Picture it in your head. Try to recall the context of the scene, the motivation of the characters. Recall (or imagine) some tense music playing.

Now think about when you first saw this great movie. Is this the scene you thought about when you told your friends to go see it too? And after they did, is this the scene you talked about?

Assuming you’ve seen Mission: Impossible, you probably did – because the excitement of this iconic moment imprinted on your consciousness, and you couldn’t help but share your experience.

Get worked up

Chances are, you’re not going to be scripting a Hollywood blockbuster. You probably also don’t have a blockbuster budget to work with (if you do – call me!). Yet the lesson of palm-tingling movie moments is still instructive.

Excitement is important because it keeps you engaged, and helps you retain what you’ve experienced. That much is probably obvious. If you’re a studio executive at Paramount, you know that the exciting moments in Mission: Impossible were what your audience would remember when they came back for the sequel.

But excitement is more than an outgrowth of being memorable. Experiences that are simply memorable stay with you, but you won’t feel compelled to share them with others. Excitement is the quality that makes you pick up the phone, open up Facebook, or walk over to the water cooler. When you’ve had an exciting experience, you want to share it.

So even though we’re not making a Hollywood movie, we can still try to make our content so inspiring that our customers just have to share it.

Something to share

Many marketing materials lack excitement. They are designed to relay information and to persuade, but they don’t tug at the emotions. Yet it’s possible to produce content that has the pull of a great popcorn flick. Here are a few ways to do it.

  • A summer movie audience wants action, so filmmakers give it to them in the biggest, most frequent, and most creative doses they can. In the same way, you need to decide what factors are most attention-grabbing to your customers. Is it fast response time? Great customer service? Ease of use? Whatever it is, give it to them big, fast, and frequently in your materials. Make sure that this message comes across in the first few seconds, so your reader will continue to pay attention.
  • Plumb the limits of what your product means for your customers. Just as filmmakers push the boundaries in action scenes, you should drive your text as far as possible in your white paper, email copy, website, etc. Of course you need to stay professional and accurate – your limits are not the same as Tom Cruise’s.
  • As appropriate, use superlatives, exclamation points, dramatic rhetorical questions, and aspirational phrases to build up the excitement. Just be sure not to overuse them, or you’ll sound cheesy. An example I like is the Twitter account of General Electric, which uses motivational language (“Build. Power. Move. Cure.”) and just the right amount of exclamation points to keep its feed exciting. The liberal use of fascinating Vines and video elevates the effect.
  • Give your prospects and customers an implicit reason to share. While it’s possible to bribe your prospects into retweeting, liking, and pinning your content, it’s far better to make them want to. Have you written something that will make your readers look great to their friends if they share it? Will your readers who share seem smart, fashionable, ahead of the curve?

Tallying the results

How can you tell if your content is exciting?

We naturally want to tell others about the exciting experiences we’ve had, whether great movies, roller coaster rides, or interesting reads. The best way to measure the impact of this excitement is through sharing.

Is your content being shared on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest? Are people blogging about it and linking to it? Are they talking about it at trade shows? Are they mentioning what you wrote to your competitors? Success in any of these areas is good evidence of excitement.

Of course, you want the right kind of attention. You don’t want your business to be known for the wrong reasons.

Once you add a dash of excitement to your content, your prospective customers will start talking about it – and the results you want are sure to follow.

Have you ever read a piece of really exciting content? Tell us how it affected you in the comments below.

Keep This In Mind: Make Your Material Memorable

8_23_15 geometry

“Can I ask a question?” said my classmate Gabriel, raising his hand. My geometry teacher stopped drawing and spun around. It was a typical morning in sophomore year and, as usual, I was struggling to keep my eyes open for an hour of math at 7:30 a.m.

“You can ask your question,” said Mr. Johnson, thrusting the chalk at Gabriel, as he always did when making a point to a student. “But before you do, remember: There are no stupid questions, only stupid people.”

Half of the class tittered, and the other half sucked in their teeth. I put down my pencil in surprise, uncertain what would happen and now completely awake.

Gabriel sat silently for ten seconds, slowly turning red, and said nothing. So Mr. Johnson turned back to the board and resumed his lesson. I exchanged glances with my neighbors; no one else raised his hand that day.

Why am I telling this story about a sarcastic (and sadistic) high school math teacher? Because what he said that day was unforgettable. It wasn’t one of life’s special moments. It was just a class like any other, only one made unique by an unexpected event.

I can’t recall a single thing I learned in geometry, but I do remember this small episode like it was yesterday. And though you don’t want to insult your customers and prospects, you do want to find a way to make your content memorable – to make it a standout part of an otherwise normal day.

Remember me

Making your content memorable is absolutely critical. Your target audience reads dozens of blog posts, news articles, Facebook statuses, and emails every day – how many of them will she recall in detail 24 hours later? Think about all the of the information you encountered yesterday. How much do you remember? How much did you ignore?

So how often is your white paper, or email marketing campaign, or other message being recalled?

Tricks of memory

At the most basic level, your content will probably be memorable it meets the rest of the MEDICAL standard, and cannot be memorable if it does not follow the other six rules for writing great content. There are also specific ways you can boost your memorability.

  • Use a hook to bring in your audience, like the above story about Mr. Johnson’s class. The reader is more likely to remember it, and everything else that follows.
  • Reveal information that will absolutely astound and impress your prospects. This could be a huge ROI from using your service, the percentage of companies in your target industry that suffer a common problem, or another important fact. The use of interesting data is probably the most common way marketers make their advertising and long-form writing memorable.
  • If appropriate, make your language bold, brash – even lurid. Many do not like the racy Super Bowl spots GoDaddy uses to draw attention, yet the company’s ads are certain memorable. Be cautious if you choose to go this route.
  • Paint a picture: Illustrate what your prospect’s life will be like if she uses your product or service. This can be the most successful way to be remembered, but might also be the hardest. Writing a truly compelling day-in-the-life is tough to do, especially within the confines of professional communication.
  • Or you can paint a picture literally (and if a picture is worth 1,000 words, how much is a video worth?) Good visuals will do more than draw the eye – they can also make the written material more engaging.
  • Above all, make sure your content talks about the benefits to your prospect, and does not simply list features. Very few people will read or recall a list of features, so you must explain how their jobs and lives will improve with your product. This is a cardinal rule of writing memorable content! There is, however, a partial exception for technical products aimed at a technical audience; in this case, your prospect will interpret the description of a feature in terms of its benefit.

This is only a partial list of the ways you can write memorable content.

Total recall

So how do you know if you’ve met the memorability standard?

If your work is memorable, your audience will be able to tell you what they read and what it meant, even well after reading it. Test it out on your business partners, family members, friends – anyone who will do you a small favor and be honest with you. Send them your draft copy and ask them to read it right away. Then, 2-3 days later, follow up and ask what they remember. Did they recall the main points you wanted your audience to know? If they did not, your content may be forgettable. Of course this rough method may not be feasible, and isn’t a substitute for data.

It’s best if you can conduct A/B testing comparing some old content against your new message. As you follow up with your prospects, ask a question that refers back to a key point you wanted them to remember (e.g., “I am calling because you downloaded our white paper about enterprise security and asked us to follow up with you. Do you recall from our paper what percentage of companies had a computer breach in the last 12 months?” If your latest material is memorable, more readers will remember your key takeaways. This tactic has the drawback of potentially distracting you during precious moments with your customer, and only works if you have old material to update.

Ultimately you will have to gut check yourself. Think back to the best two or three pieces of content in your industry that you didn’t produce. Why do you remember them? What did those authors do that you could do in your writing – without copying exactly what they said?

Whatever you do, make sure your writing is more memorable than the geometry you were taught in high school.

What are some ways that you have made your content more memorable? Tell us in the comments below.