tactical content

Warm dead chicken

…and make no mistake, no matter what you do, yours is a technology company.

Unfortunately, technology companies are often run by smart people – people who dig for the facts, who base decisions on solid intelligence, who were good students passionate about learning.

If the buying public were comprised primarily of people in that mindset, simply reciting the documentable facts about the features of your technology service, or invention, or streamlined business process would be sufficient to pique the market’s curiosity and generate trial of your offering.

But it is not.  For every potential customer leisurely browsing for some unexpected breakthrough to his challenges, there are hundreds, probably thousands doing a quick search for a specific solution, or workaround, or best-practice that doesn’t involve enormous risks or disruption.

The facts as you know them is only one set of information that potential customers may use in trying to find something useful.  Their problems as they experience them is another; the ultimate goal they are trying to achieve is another; the business process they would have to integrate your solution into is another; and industry buzzwords about a champion competitor is another.  And so on.

Among your early strategies for “being where the prospect is” is their mindspace as you have learned that to be.

Do you know how your current customers think of the solutions they currently get from you? Have a list of add-on features they want you to develop? Identified a distinct new market segment that you could serve if you could gauge interest?

These are the things that the words your firm distributes must embody.  Yes, the writing. That stuff that’s on your website, in your founder’s blog, in your customer service intranet, your customer service call scripts.

How do you populate the innumerable things that your firm must commit to writing to distribute to customers, prospects, investors, opinion-shapers, regulators, browsers?

Upgrade your words. Don’t rely on the occasional inspiration of the best writer inside your organization, or relegate this important activity to your free time after your meat-grinder days.

Get a partner who’s been there — in the decision-making seat, knowing what he wants to say, but unable to invest the time to get the messages balanced, impactful, and actionable.

Technology may develop one set of features at a time, but people understand what it can do for them one story at a time – starting with the story they’re trying to complete with their workdays.  Hook your value into that story.

Choose a resource specializing in conceptual development, bold, memorable writing, and execution with an eye to maximum re-use. Link your current disparate artifacts into one coherent story that reinforces the most critical of your truths with the blanks in a customer’s current business.

Choose a resource with a process for doing this, not some frustrated novelist trying to keep a roof over his head until the novel sells.

Choose a resource who’s both passionate about business and passionate about crafting the words you need to infect others with your vision.

It matters.  How many sandwich shops would you eat your lunch in if they just recited the facts?

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