Ever have the nightmare about standing in front of an audience to speak, and having no idea what to say?

Evidently that's how salespeople feel every day. To stop the nightmares, they are writing their own content, regardless of what marketing provides them. So says a survey covered on MarketingProfs this week, stating that confidence in corporate and sales message is weak. The article states:

Dissatisfaction with sales messaging is so high that many sales teams have taken matters into their own hands: Nearly three-quarters of salespeople (74%) say they rewrite messages and tools created by marketing departments at least sometimes, including 41% who rewrite collateral frequently and 10% who always do it.

The reasons are many, beginning with the age-old misalignment between Marketing and Sales. But a growing danger to marketing is commoditized content: the temptation to churn cheap content to drive a quantity (or automated marketing processes), not quality.

The sales force, in their one-on-one conversations with prospects, has specific questions to answer and objections to counter. Their answers can't be commoditized. Imagine this conversation in a sales meeting:

Prospect: Your company is the smallest and least known of the vendors on our short list. How will you convince our CEO that you'll give us the level of service we need?

Sales Rep: We are a global technology company leading how the world connects, interacts and transacts with business. Our assisted- and self-service solutions and comprehensive support services address the needs of retail, financial, travel, healthcare, hospitality, gaming, and public sector organizations in more than 100 countries." [See our Corporate Jargon Quiz for more fun.]

While marketing budgets are tight, it's tempting to churn out copy that doesn't say anything. But the result may be jargony, fluffed-up copy--or very basic stuff that a salesperson would never use.

Successful marketers will avoid the temptation. They will create content, driven by a content strategy, that answers prospects' questions--and stays in the sales representative's slide deck.

Labels: commoditized content, confusing corporate writing, content strategy, sales support

Maybe it's New Year's resolutionism that is inspiring content marketers in the blogosphere to confront their norms. Several posts this week throw down the gauntlet.

• Copyblogger reports: "Dragon Slaying 101: How to Use Heroic Language to Battle Boring Copy". It's an engaging post on using the metaphors of the heroic quest to invigorate blogs and articles.
• Steve Woodruff, in "Disperse the Jargon Cloud," Steve Woodruff reminds us why we get lulled into using jargon, and what to do about it.
• MarketingProfs reposted a thoughtful article by Dana Vanden Heuven,"Thought Leaders Should Violate Expectations." He describes the characteristics that separates true thought leaders from the jargon slingers.
  

Here's an excerpt from Dana Vanden Heuven's "Thought Leaders" post:

Violating may sound like a harsh word. In fact, its original meaning, that is "to break or disregard" is so often overshadowed by the more malicious definitions that we often see it associated with. (see, expectations at work right there. Think of the first thing that came to mind when you way the word "violate" in the title―I bet it wasn't pretty.) However, when thought leaders violate expectations, they simply break the mold and deliver an unexpected insight, action idea, nugget of information or the all important "Aha! moment" that resets your thinking to their frequency and puts you on a different plane.

Here's a New Year's toast: may we violate expectations, battle mediocrity, and slay dragons in 2010.

Labels: confusing corporate writing, content marketing, web copy writing

When I was a business reporter, a mind-boggling frustration of mine--and every journalist for that matter--was that I had to spend countless hours deciphering the most obtuse corporate speak imaginable. Here these companies were pitching why they should be written about and I couldn't even understand what they did in the most basic sense.

Just take a look on PR Newswire and you'll be inundated with bad messaging. We're "the leading on-demand revenue performance management solutions company..." Actually, they make software that helps companies make financial forecasts. Or try this one, taken from an "About Us" section: ____ "enables unprecedented performance and design benefits with efficient, flexible, easy-to-use digital power IC solutions based on the patented Digital-DC..." I'm not even going to venture a guess; I left my acronym dictionary at home.

Which is why we've developed The Super-Fantastic Corporation Confusion Game. It challenges you to figure out what companies really do based on their own messaging. The companies in the quiz span the spectrum from technology to professional services. Some of them you'll know quite well. Just a word of caution, though: You may want to have an aspirin handy.

Just say what you do already. There's no reason for jargon, ambiguity or corporate speak. And there's certainly no reason for bad writing.

We hope you enjoy the game!

Labels: bad marketing, confusing corporate writing