Outsourcing can be a false economy.  A friend told me recently that her company was outsourcing all of their documentation work to India to save money, but that the effort will increase the workload on their developers, who must now write exactly what they want to go into the documentation.

As a freelance technology writer myself, I have strong opinions about penny-pinching on writing services, particularly in technology marketing.  I’ve also seen the results of these efforts – and have sometimes been hired to ‘fix’ projects that were first outsourced.

Before hiring the writer with the lowest price, consider the ‘true cost’ of the project. In my experience this includes:

The time you spend getting the writer started.  Is it enough to send some documents and have a phone call? A meeting? Several meetings? The more experience a writer has in your industry, the less time it should take to get them started.

The time spent managing the writer.  Once launched, a good writer should be able to operate very independently, with little oversight from you beyond answering additional questions.

The cost of review cycles and revisions.  How many revisions do you need to get the first draft to a final draft?  If you need many substantive rewrites and you’re paying by the hour, then there’s an immediate cost. If you’re paying on a project basis, you still have to take time to set the writer on the right path.

The opportunity cost of delays. The longer it takes to get a project to completion, the greater the opportunity cost of not having the project completed. Experienced writers may be able to turn around projects much more quickly than inexperienced ones.

The cost of clean-up. When a project is unsuccessful, you may need to hire someone else to fix the project. I’ve done this for a client, and I’m sure that whatever money they saved by outsourcing the white paper was offset by having to hire someone to fix the paper.

Cost of poor quality. Unclear or grammatically incorrect content reflects poorly on your business. If you believe in the power of content marketing, which I do, then you know the importance of quality content.

Price must be considered in the context of value. If you pay very little for an article, for example, but it is ineffective in its purpose, then you have still paid too much. If a white paper generates leads or moves prospects through the pipeline, then paying a higher price may be a great deal, relative to its impact on revenue.

  by  Fractal Artist 

I don’t know about you, but for me in B2B technology marketing, 2011 was the year that “cloud computing” pushed way past mainstream into the realm of overuse.

In the past year, I’ve written about cloud computing, public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds, cloud storage and cloud identity. I’ve written multiple pieces describing the myriad benefits of cloud computing.

(Does anyone in enterprise IT not know what cloud computing is? Raise your hand … I thought so.)

I’ve seen the ‘cloud’ label applied to all kinds of products, some of which are only marginally cloud plays, or are basic infrastructure for all types of computing.

I even had one client hire me to help them “de-cloudify” their website.  I’m not kidding.  Things have gotten bad when people have to make up words like “de-cloudify.” Definition: undo over-aggressive messaging around the cloud.

So, this year let’s all try to use a little restraint. Yes, “cloud” is a very useful shorthand for a specific delivery model or infrastructure model. I don’t want to get rid of it. I just want to put it in its place – so the terminology doesn’t cloud our judgment.

Real value is what’s actually in the product. In technology markets, it’s what engineering designs into the product. Perceived value is what the customer thinks the value is – and what they buy. Hence it’s very important to pricing.

Perceived value may reside in things outside of engineering’s control, or in something considered unimportant by developers. I’ve known cases where customers raved about a minor feature that engineering put in as a debugging aid.

Marketing’s role is to:

1. Translate real value into perceived value – particularly at the start of the product lifecycle.
2. Discover perceived value in the market once the product is out – and adjust content marketing efforts to champion that value where possible (playing to your strengths) or course-correct if it’s a problem.
3. Feed back perceived value to the engineering team for further development.

If you stop at step 1 (which many engineering-driving organizations do), then you will miss the opportunity to align your messaging and your solution with customer perceptions, and acknowledge what they value most.  If you keep insisting on the superiority of your features and no one cares, then you’re wasting marketing efforts.

How do you measure or track perceived value? Customer interviews, trade show conversations,  online buzz and user groups, surveys, market research – there are many methods for listening to your market.

We can influence what the customers think the value of our product is, but ultimately that’s out of our control. Smart companies will not only try to shape perception, but also listen to what customers are really choosing and tune their messaging accordingly.

Have you ever been to a technology website and not been able to figure out exactly what the product or service does (or indeed, if the company is offering a product or a service)?

Despite the fact that I’ve worked in the tech industry for a long time, this still happens fairly regularly. Even when I can figure out what the company does, I often cannot determine who they are selling to.  Are they selling to the enterprise? The small or midsized business? The consumer?  Some combination of the above?

It’s usually because the website is so filled with jargon and industry-talk that only people already in the industry are likely to understand it. Sometimes, it’s exacerbated by poor writing. And it’s typically written entirely from the perspective of the solution provider, not the potential customer. When a visitor cannot figure out if they should be there, they feel excluded or unwelcome – and leave.

This problem is too common with B2B technology sites.  It might result from a result of a decision to focus primarily on narrowly-defined prospects  people already steeped in your industry and product space.)

Even if that’s the case, a ‘technology-elitist’ website excludes many visitors who might be beneficial to your business, including:

• Prospects who are early in the decision cycle and have not yet learned all of the jargon
• Possible influencers of your target prospects
• Executive level staff (above your target prospects) that focus on the big picture, not the details
• Technology journalists and analysts not yet familiar with your specific industry or solution set.

Even if you’re pitching a complex, highly technical B2B technology solution, you can avoid being obtuse about what you’re selling.

First, make sure you explain clearly why people would be interested in your solution. Describe the benefit, not just the technology.  And don’t get so vague (“Making business faster”) that it doesn’t really say anything!

And if you want to reach multiple constituents, offer people a clear path to the content they need from your home page – let them self-identify on your website by clicking a link for small businesses, or for consumers, or for specific problems that they may have.  Then take them to a page that addresses those specific needs, so they won’t have to hunt around the website.  You might create content paths based on industries, roles, business size, or specific problems you address. Not only does this welcome the user to your site (rather than excluding them), but it accelerates their discovery of useful information.

When you’re writing about technology from an IT perspective, you need some way to talk about, you know, those little people who use the technology that you’re buying. Hence the term ‘user’.  Even apart from the negative connotations, it just seems so impersonal. Worse, it implies a perspective where the important thing is the technology and that the people using it are only secondary.

Lately, it’s been bugging me and I’ve set off on a mission to eradicate it from the writing that comes my way, whether I’m writing myself or editing something already existing.

The catch is, it’s trickier than you might think to eliminate. Sometimes I can easily replace it with words like purchaser, employee, customer, visitor, etc.  Sometimes it’s harder — I’ll put in something really vague like people. And if all else fails, we can always go to the slightly more specific “end user” – at least we’ve eliminated the potential drug-related connotations!

Do you have any favorite words you’d like me to set out to eliminate?

On a related theme, Ann Handley of Marketingprofs has a fun video about “Frankenspeak” in marketing: you can watch it on Youtube.  I find it very impactful, in a synergistic way.

But passion alone is not sufficient for approaching this piece.  From a choral perspective, you first have to do the hard work of preparing the fugues, the phrases, the diction, tuning, the vocal placement. Then when you add emotion, the results are spectacular.

If you sing with accuracy but without emotion or passion, it will be passable. If you have passion without accuracy, pitch, etc., it might be interesting or it might be a train wreck.

The same situation holds in marketing as well.  The most interesting companies are those that are, at some level, passionate about their products or services.  And the best marketing organizations manage to convey that passion – yes, even in the B2B technology space. When people can sense the passion in your business, they are more likely to become fans themselves.

Yet again, the presence of passion does not exempt you from good marketing practices. It does not excuse bad writing, or confusing websites.  Nor does it give you a reason to ignoring your customer’s needs. You might be passionate about your feature set, but unless you can tie it to your customers’ needs, you will never gain advocates (or customers).

To fuel your marketing efforts, find those people who are passionate about what they’re doing in the organization. Give them a voice in your blog, and find ways to tap into that excitement in your well-planned, well-executed content marketing efforts.

The idea of mistakes came to mind this morning when I read about Netflix announcing that it’s backing off its plan to split physical DVD rentals into a separate service (Qwikster).

Now, we’ll all have a good chuckle or roll our eyes over Netflix for a day. But that’s about the extent of the damage – they listened to customer feedback (in this instance) and reversed a decision that would have been a mistake to continue further. Damage contained. Mistake admitted. Done.

Time and again, politicians seem to forget this lesson. When they make a mistake (particularly an embarrassing one involving illicit relationships), rather than ‘fessing up, they cover up. And that’s unforgivable.

The same is true for technology companies. When you have a product problem, you’re better off addressing it immediately and honestly, and doing whatever you can to make it right. So, bravo Netflix.

In the spirit of this post, then, I need to confess my own mistake. Despite my “post-a-week” commitment this year, I didn’t post a blog last week. I took some time off to refresh by the ocean, which was lovely. But I could have done a blog in advance, or over the weekend. Mea culpa.

The moral? It’s easier to preach than practice when it comes to regular blog postings!

Last week I wrote about budget spending on social media in B2B marketing. But that discussion left out the question of time.

We all only have 24 hours in a day. Time is truly our most precious commodity. And we all feel pressed to keep up with the social media world – particularly in the technology industry, where being ‘on top’ of new technologies is essential.

So the question this week is: how do budget your time on social media? How much time should you spend on blogging? Twitter? Facebook and LinkedIn? – whether on a personal or organizational basis? Because if you’re not hiring some firm to take care of it for you (which can backfire), then you’re making hard choices about your limited time.

There isn’t one right answer
I know that for myself, social media has consumed a growing amount of my time over the past year: Twitter, blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn. And when time is tight, I have to figure out where I’m willing to put it. I’m re-assessing all of this now, which leads to this blog post.

For example, I’ve found a wonderful client on Twitter, so I am very grateful. But I’m not sure I can commit the time necessary to develop meaningful conversations on Twitter. I’m about to sacrifice my dwindling Klout score and forget about daily Twitter check-ins and updates.

The answer changes over time
The new changes on Facebook. The evolution of Google +. All of these things mean that you need to constantly reassess your time balance. And some times you have to spend time on the new sites to find out if it’s worth reallocating your time.

Look at where your customers/prospects are.
“Duh, Anne,” you say to me. Yes, it’s obvious advice. But the fact is that B2B marketers are not aligning their social media efforts with the buyer behavior.

Forrester Research studied this, and CorporateInk summarized the research in their blog: Tech Buyers Are Social, But Not Where You Think They Are.

Even if your buyers are on Facebook for their personal lives, do they go there when evaluating a technical purchase? They probably go to specific forums and blogs, instead.

What are you doing with your social media time?
I’d love to hear from others – are you still trying to cover all of your social bases (or at least the big ones)? Or did you ever even try? Do you feel like you’re missing something, or think I’m missing something important?

These are, for me, the highlights looking at this through a B2B marketing filter:

• Today, social media spending accounts for only about 4% of marketing budgets in B2B product marketing – the number is slightly higher for B2B services.

• Social media spending is expected to grow to 13.4% of B2B product marketing budgets in the next five years.

• That’s smaller than the social media spend in the other categories (B2B services, B2C products and B2C services).

Does this mean that social media is unimportant to B2B marketing? I don’t think so. And certainly these percentages vary between companies – some of my clients are very active on social media channels, while others are making initial forays. It would be interesting to know the standard deviations behind these numbers.

I think the reason the number is lower in B2B marketing is that there are more demands on the marketing budget. For example, creating useful and relevant content for the entire sales cycle (i.e., content marketing) is essential in B2B, where you are supporting a technical sale and addressing multiple stakeholders. While this marketing content may be served via social media channels, it’s not social media spending per se.

The most important thing for B2B marketing is to figure out how to use social media to magnify the effect of your existing, budgeted marketing projects – not to replace activities you’re already doing. See my blog post “Old Marketing Channels Never Die.” In that sense, the relatively low percentage number makes sense.

The right answer is probably what my English teachers used to tell me in college: as long as it needs to be. (Yeah, thanks a lot for that one.) It annoyed me as a student, so clearly I’m not going to tell a client that!

So, how much can/should you put one page that has to communicate about a technology or solution space?

• Too much, and you risk intimidating the reader who will just browse away – who wants to do all that work to read online?
• Too little, and you may leave questions unanswered – and sacrifice organic search as well.

My personal preference is to be brief – at most 300-350 words for really content-rich pages. But this means that, when I’m editing existing sites, I have to cut a lot of what somebody already took great pains to put there.

Some of the cuts I can achieve by shortening wordy descriptions, of course. But sometimes it’s good to cut content – things that aren’t directly important to the purpose of the page, or that won’t advance the reader to take further action.

When I cut content, I make sure it’s easy for visitors to find the information if they need it, with links to data sheets, stories, papers, and videos if they’re available.

Those are my working guidelines, but I’d be interested in hearing other opinions. Do you have examples of B2B websites that use longer or shorter text on their web page with great success? What guidelines (if any) do you use in your website copy – count the number of screen scrolls? Or do you adhere to the “as long as necessary” school?