On Leadership and Creating the Perfect Messaging

Open Minded

Effective leadership means that your vision, mission, and shared goals are clear for everyone involved. There is no room for inaccuracies, vagueness or ambiguity because these missteps only end up yielding lost time and poor results. This all boils down to being an effective communicator.

And one key way for effective leaders to make sure they are communicating most effectively is to be directly involved in the organizations marketing messaging.

On Marketing Your Message

Experts Only: Why Content Marketing Only Works When It’s Coming from the Top

Have you ever heard the phrase “Fake it till you make it?” Sure, it might work sometimes — in fact, maybe more often than most people would like to admit — but you can’t fake true knowledge. And that’s exactly what good content marketing offers: unique insights that are only gained through real-life experience.

Content marketing can mean a lot of things: news, video, whitepapers, infographics, case studies, and more. It’s branded, it’s informational, and it’s designed to open communication with your customers by giving them valuable information. That’s why the focus of your content marketing efforts should cater to your clients’ experience, not your product features.

Real Insights, Real Authority

Giving your customers a more detailed view of the landscape that surrounds your brand — and why it’s relevant to their lives — is the key to good content marketing. Why? Good content serves as an insight, not an advertisement. And the best content reveals how your product addresses the problems, challenges, and possibilities within your industry.

It’s important to create a connection by offering meaningful information in your articles — not marketing pitches.

The best way to accomplish this is by transferring your senior leaders’ knowledge to your customers.

Shine a spotlight on your customers, and give a voice to their concerns and problems. Provide them with information or resources that will help them find success. This isn’t an easy task, which is why it’s important to get the most qualified, experienced people at your company to do it.

Marketing with Knowledge

It seems like the responsibility of creating marketing content should fall to your marketing department, right? Wrong! This is a common mistake. When marketing professionals create content, it can come across as superficial, rather than insight-rich. It’s natural for marketing professionals to turn content into a sales pitch, but that’s an excellent way to quickly disengage your customers.

If your content isn’t thoughtful, your customers will see through it immediately and dismiss it as a marketing message disguised as an article. To stay relevant in your customers’ lives, you have to engage in the conversations they’re having on their own.

And if you don’t have anything meaningful to say, you won’t hold anyone’s attention.

In order to create content that your customers feel is worth reading, you need an expert’s voice. Where’s the best place to find an expert? Look to your executives.

Tapping Your Experts’ Knowledge

You need your business leaders to write your company’s content marketing. Why? Readers can tell when content marketing materials don’t offer expert-level insight. And only business leaders are immersed enough to choose, discuss, and offer advice on their industries’ issues and trends. But often, they’re reluctant to take part in it — for a multitude of reasons:

  • They are busy.

Executives are, by definition, hard-pressed for time. They might be reluctant to contribute because of the time commitment. Here are a few ways to help: Make outlines. Give examples. Help them edit and connect their thoughts. That way, they can focus on the insights, and you can focus on polishing the finished product.

  • They are trying to be modest.

Executives might not want to call attention to themselves; they’d prefer to promote the company. But that’s a mistake. You have to make it clear just how important their experiences and expertise are to your marketing content efforts — and how it can positively impact your business’s bottom line.

  • They don’t know how content marketing works.

Show your executives the value of content marketing. How does it work? Why does it work? And what can it do for your company? Then, incorporate this information into a comprehensive strategy and show your executives where they fit in. After all, executives are used to looking at things from a higher, strategic level, rather than from a task-by-task perspective.

Your in-house experts in your executive branch are your company’s greatest source of knowledge, guidance, and ultimately, good content. Channel your leaders’ voices into your marketing content, and you’ll make connections with your readers that resonate.

So how are you doing at making sure what is in your head is being heard by your customers and the people who you lead? How much are you involved in the content marketing of you business? What can you do to improve your organizations communication strategy by being more involved in the messaging? I would love to hear your thoughts!

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Don Broekelmann
Don Broekelmann is the Executive Vice President at Influence & Co.
Don works with Brand Partners to develop Content Marketing Plans
Email | LinkedIn |  Web

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L2L Contributing Author

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