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Marketing Expert Interview

Creative Brief Checklist
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Benjamin Franklin The 4 Part Creative Brief It’s impossible to write effective copy if you’re not clear who’s reading it or what they want. A Creative Brief solves this problem by providing the instructions for effective copy development. Here are 4 types of information a copywriter needs: 1. Content Strategy Content marketing strategies have many moving parts that must all fit together into a coherent whole. Knowing how a single piece of copy fits into the overall strategy can result in new ideas for improvement or alignment. How does the copy fit into your sales process? What job must it do within the overall framework of your marketing strategy. How does this project support the sales effort? (e.g. What is the Call to action?) How will success be measured and understood? What is the single most important idea to get across? What should prospects remember most? What mandatory elements must be included 2. Audience The more the copy is directed to a specific audience for a specific reason, the more leverage the writer has for getting results. Copy directed at everyone for any reason is like trying to boil the ocean. Who is the targeted audience? Who’ll be reading the copy? What will motivate them to read the piece? What excites them? What keeps them awake at night? What do they already know about your topic? What argument or explanation will engage them? What do prospects know about the product? (what are their existing perceptions?) 3. Context The context where the copy appears can completely change how a reader engages with the copy. If not taken into consideration, the copy may not be read at all and could completely fail. What’s being created? (article, eBook, web page, etc.) What length can the copy be without losing reader’s attention? (How many words?) What frame of mind will the reader be in? How much of their attention can you hope to get? 4. Expected Results The Creative brief should articulate the expected results of the copy as much as possible. Without this information, the copywriter is left guessing. What is the expected result of the copy? What is the mission of the copy? What key takeaways should the reader get? What messages or content should be delivered? What do you want the prospect to think after reading the copy? What do you want the prospect to do after reading the copy?
Copywriting Development Process
“Today’s marketplace is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, and too much marketing noise.” Jack Trout and Al Reis, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1980). The 7 Quality Checkpoints of High-performance Copy Does your content sound like corporate spin? Do your emails go straight to the spam box? Are your blogs nothing more than self-indulgent ramblings? Prospects are reading someone’s content – just not yours! Attracting their attention in today’s overcrowded marketplace is like shaving off a few seconds of lap time in a Formula One race. You must create higher quality content to stand out. There’s no other way. Here are seven quality checkpoints for creating high-performance copy. 1. Project Information Did you know the most important part of Formula One race strategy is the tires? An F1 car may cost 15 million and can go from zero to 60 mph in 2 seconds, but the tires are the only part touching the ground. Different tires are used based on weather conditions. They affect the number of pit-stops and the amount of grip a car has through corners. Overall lap time is what determines the winner. Your copy is often the only part of your marketing touching the customer. The guidelines used for crafting the copy determine its success or failure. Your copywriter must have a Creative Brief to guide them. Otherwise, they’re left guessing. This brief should describe who’ll be reading the copy and where it will be seen. The more it’s focused on a specific audience for a specific reason, the more leverage the writer has for getting results. Copy directed at everyone for any reason is like trying to boil the ocean. 2. Research plan The greater part of winning a Formula One race happens in the engineering department. A crowd may cheer for the driver, but a 1st place finish is fundamentally an exercise in R&D. A writer is making a big mistake if their first step is to start writing. Instead, they must collect research. It’s wise to create a plan, too. The primary focus is usually the target audience. What do they want? What will motivate them to read the piece? As much as companies love their products, customers care only about solving their problems. What excites them? What keeps them awake at night? What do they already know about your topic? What argument or explanation will engage them? 3. Research gathering The job of F1 engineers is to build a winning car with the best available materials. That’s why engines come from engine experts, like BMW. Tires come from tire experts like Michelin. Copywriters are experts on writing copy. It’s wrong to assume they must be product experts, too. The copy should be focused on the audience not the product. Too much product knowledge could limit the writer’s ability to be customer-centric. In a hyper-connected digital environment, content is the new commodity. Research reports are continuously regurgitated. Proprietary research will give your marketing pieces a head start. For that you need to conduct interviews. Interviewing lets a writer instantly plug into the expert knowledge of anyone who’s relevant to the content.Asking the right questions to during an interview is the master skill of the copywriter. And it’s the key to creating high-value content that attracts smart customers. A product manager, salesperson or a customer can all be useful sources of information for creating effective content that’s resistant to commoditization. 4. Content Outline A modern Formula One car is designed to generate enough down force to overcome the force of gravity. So much so, it could easily race upside down on the ceiling of a tunnel. Like the body of a car, every type of copy has an underlying structure. Email campaigns and video scripts are structured for persuasion. Informational content like eBooks or White Papers are designed to be rational and objective. Content that tells a story such as a case study or article is structured for that purpose, too. The copywriter must determine the copy structure based on the Creative Brief. Once a basic outline has been determined, the writing can begin. However, this is just a starting point. The copy structure may change slightly depending how the project comes together. 5. Writing An F1 team has hundreds of engineers and technicians assembling the engine, exhaust system, electronics and a multitude of other parts into the monocoque chassis. Copywriting is more of an assembly job, too. In fact, it’s nothing like what most people think of as writing. The research is assembled rather than written into the outline. The purpose of the initial rough draft is to make an intangible idea more concrete. So, the rough draft is for the writer’s eyes only. At this point the copy is little more than halfway finished. This initial draft is only a sketch of ideas. It’s at the next stage where the real magic happens. 6. Revising Once a F1 car is assembled, it’s still not race-ready. It must be performance tested on a race simulator. Here, it will experience the same bumping and jarring as it would during a race. Then it’s adjusted for optimum performance. Your copy must be road tested, too. Only the race simulator is inside the copywriter’s imagination. To run it, they imagine themselves walking in the shoes of the target audience as they read the copy. How will the reader will react? Will the copy persuade or educate them as directed by the Creative Brief? The goal here is to shape the copy until it aligns perfectly with the Creative Brief in the fewest possible words. But the creative process takes time. An incubation period is needed for the best ideas to evolve and reach their full potential. This stage can take longer than all the previous steps combined. Try to speed up the process and the copy will suffer. Well-organized Marketing Directors use a marketing calendar to plan in advance rather than rush the copywriter. 7. Proofreading F1 teams produce a single vehicle prototype that’s fine tuned to perfection. Any component adding unnecessary weight or that’s not cutting edge is instantly removed. Proofreading the content is the final step. The proofreader doesn’t need to worry about the meaning of …
How to Honor Your Product with Storytelling
Germany is home to the Nürburgring, one of the longest and most challenging racetracks in the world. So much so that it has 3 to 12 fatalities each year. Surrounded by dense forest, the 22.8 km circuit has over 150 corners. These elevate over 300 meters through a mountain range. Formula One racing champion Jackie Stewart once called it “the green hell.” It’s also where the showdown between two of F1’s greatest drivers took place. And one almost lost their life. The movie ‘Rush’ directed by Ron Howard does a fantastic job of telling this story. So great, that instead of re-telling the story I’d rather describe something else. The formula Howard used to structure his film. It’s the basis for a type of B2B content that has helped countless B2B companies succeed – the Case Study (aka. The Success Story) Your Products and Services at Their Best There are many types of business stories. Each serves a different purpose. Like your origin story. Its job is to inspire stakeholders with a common purpose. But that’s not what a Case Study does. Its role is to help close the sale by proving you can deliver on what you promise. If your services are complex, expensive, or innovative, then you need Case Studies. They’re critical to your sales process. B2B firms read them because they can’t risk making a buying mistake. In the same sense, writing your own Case Studies can be a big mistake. Here’s why … Steps to a Great Case Study You may have read business success stories that impressed you. But what you may not have realized is that these marketing assets don’t write themselves. A Case Study specialist has conducted expert interviews. They’ve dug up the facts and shaped them into a compelling marketing piece. The first interview in the process is usually with you. What are your business goals? What are you hoping your customer will say? They may have a different version of events. And it may be better than yours. Next, the Case Study Specialist interviews your customer. They’ll ask them about the challenge they faced. What journey did they take to find a solution? How did they use your product to overcome their obstacles? What were the results? They’ll also dig for real-world details that make all the difference in making a story stand out. What’s Your Story? Formula One racing is inspiring. In fact, the movie Rush inspired me to write my book on B2B copywriting best practices. Stories are told about athletes because of the challenges they overcame. Your product could gain some mythical significance too, if you told stories about the challenges they helped your customers overcome. The truth is, great athletes started with no special status. It’s stories that make them significant. Put yourself in the shoes of someone on their buyer’s journey. One good story could raise your product from the ordinary to the extraordinary. So, what’s your story?

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