Content: How much is too much?
The current obsession by the media around our monarchy and its various loose ends brings into sharp focus the debate around content and the what/when/how etc. SPOILER: THIS BLOG CONTAINS NO OPINIONS ON ANYTHING RELATED TO THE ROYALS (so you can read on in safety).
Much of the Monarchy vs Harry / Meghan conversation seems to be centred around oversharing, providing the reader with – in many peoples’ opinions – far too much information. There is of course the exact opposite view, as when it comes to celebrity gossip we have graduated (?) to a seemingly bottomless well of the need for more.
What does all of this tittle-tattle have to do with B2B? Interestingly more than one would think. For many years now marketers have been fed various mantras around content:
- It’s king
- KISS (keep it short and simple)
- Avoid repetition
- Make it customer centric
- Don’t be ambiguous
- Ensure the ROI is measurable
…ad infinitum.
The fact is all of the above are still valid, and any content marketing based on those principles shouldn’t go far wrong – at least as far as keeping their jobs are concerned. However there is an increasing danger of the proverbial baby being left on the bathroom floor in a large puddle, which has been hugely amplified since the pandemic hit in 2020; suddenly marketers got into a mindset of ‘right, the buggers are all stuck at home, let’s flood them with words’.
I’m seeing this trend continue unabated since the world returned to a form of normality, and it’s the poorer for it. Many vendors have stuck to a ‘more is more’ strategy and inevitably the law of diminishing returns has well and truly kicked in.
In the technology & finance sectors this has been particularly prevalent, and I’ve had clients ask me why much of their ‘great’ content isn’t resonating. There isn’t a quick or single answer, but a couple of things stand out:
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- Some vendors have reverted to writing too much content which is product or solution centric, and not focused on the target audience
- They are focused so much on writing Google-friendly content that the end goal has been lost, namely smart engagement (vs volume for clicks)
In the world of demand generation we have been telling clients for some time that they need lots of content in order to engage with the many different stakeholders across many departments and across the different stages of the purchase cycle. This is still largely true, but the reality of how we interact with content has massively changed, and while there are still patterns of our behaviour that remain constant (e.g. more interactive / visual the content = higher likelihood of engagement), many conventions have shifted.
I have more than one client who has been running the same ‘Guide’ whitepaper asset for over 12 months and are still seeing high engagement returns; conversely there are others who produce a veritable tsunami of assets and have mixed results.
So as we are now inhabiting planet Unpredictable (including an impending global recession), what can brands do on a content level to remain relevant, interesting and avoid the front pages of certain newspapers?*
- Content should be approached from at least three different perspectives: what problem are you solving (the customer’s need); why should the customer care (the influencer) and making the business case (the decision maker)
- Where possible make the content interactive – use visualisation to tell and reinforce your story, particularly useful for use cases, customer case studies etc
- Repurpose and update content that has worked well previously; don’t discard content simply because it ‘feels’ old
- Deploy with intelligence; the need for Google-ising content isn’t going away just yet but ensure each asset can also stand-alone without the need to follow certain rules. Good content can be used cleverly across multiple platforms and will increase the quality of responses in alignment with Google activity
- *Don’t be Prince Harry or Meghan
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