Hi there! It’s Matt with MessageUp.
As a society, we’re obsessed with doing things faster, getting them cheaper, and investing less effort.
Scroll down your social media feed—even your supposedly business-focused LinkedIn account—and you’ll see multiple ads offering to speed up, multiple the results of, or reduce the cost of, your activities.
Content marketing is no exception. Ads promising a torrent of immediate results are everywhere—and all claiming to require minimal effort.
Sadly, the ads work but the schemes they want to sell you don’t. It’s effective click bait fronting impossible-to-sustain nonsense.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.” ―Albert Einstein
You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to see past the facade, but too many leaders still fall for the overarching message that marketing should be cheap, quick, and easy.
In this week’s post on the Framework blog, Cheap, Quick, and Easy—3 Red Flags for B2B Content Marketing, I explain why these ads are so insidious and how to spot—and stop—their encroachment into your business.
The bottom line is that effective B2B marketing—and content marketing in particular—is necessarily complicated, takes time to get right, and costs real money to implement. Budget and plan accordingly.
Operational Updates
Next, a quick update on things that MessageUp is doing to make our content more accessible and helpful.
First, those of you who follow us on LinkedIn should have caught the first couple of episodes in a short video series. Each weekly segment explains a key content marketing concept in about two minutes, and is also available on our YouTube channel (subscribe now, if you haven’t already!)
Second, we’ve started posting the same videos on Instagram under the handle @messageup.ig. Please follow us there as we expand our Insta content in the coming months.
And third, I’m excited to say we’re making real progress on our strategic expansion project (formerly known as the MessageUp Academy). The new platform will let us offer in-depth discussions, learning modules, and other premium content through an exclusive community portal. Much more to come on this as we work toward a Q2 launch and open the waitlist to applications.
Reading and Taking Action
This week’s What We’ve Been Reading collection of helpful B2B content marketing articles includes pieces on aligning SEO with the buyer’s journey, B2B social media marketing, AI operations (AIOps) in marketing, and pitfalls small businesses must avoid when it comes to marketing.
I particularly enjoyed David Iscove’s piece on “AIOps” because it sets us on the pathway to normalizing the use of AI in day-to-day marketing operations. As he explains, that requires establishing sensible processes, metrics, governance, and best practices—just as we would for any other key aspect of our business.
And to round out this week’s edition, my One Step actionable tip challenges your perspectives on how cheap, quick, or easy you think B2B marketing efforts should be—and how that might be affecting your company’s performance.
Enjoy the last few hours in January—already!—and I’ll see you back here next Wednesday.
Cheers!
~ Matt
Our Latest Posts on The Framework Blog
Jan 31, 2024 - Cheap, Quick, and Easy—3 Red Flags for B2B Content Marketing
Jan 24, 2024 - 8 Lessons From Homebuilding You Should Apply to Your Website
What We’ve Been Reading
Here are some articles we’ve been reading this week that we hope you will enjoy and find valuable:
9 Tips for Aligning SEO With the B2B Buyer’s Journey
We take issue with the definition of buyer's journey used by Alex Klugerman in this piece for Search Engine Land because it omits the implementation and loyalty stages. However, the advice he gives for creating content at the first three stages is solid. Just remember to extrapolate the approach to customers/users searching for helpful information while using your solution and talking to others about it.
B2B Social Media Marketing: Strategies to Boost Your Brand
Brenna Kelly at SemRush provides a comprehensive introduction to using social media as part of a B2B marketing strategy, including which channels to prioritize and some expert tips on setting your company up for success.
The 5 Key Pillars of AIOps in Marketing
RevOps, SalesOps, MarketingOps, … and now, AIOps! As we get to grips with the proliferation of AI-enabled tools, AIOps refers to the application of AI technologies to enhance business operations. In this piece for MarTech, David Iscove examines what this means for marketing and where you should focus to establish a solid foundation for effective AI operations.
8 Pitfalls Small Businesses Must Avoid When it Comes to Marketing Themselves
Thomas Helfrich, CEO of InstantlyRelevant.com, writing for Entrepreneur, provides a succinct summary of key steps that many smaller businesses fail to take when implementing their marketing strategies. These align very nicely with the MessageUp content marketing framework and the approach described in the book, Content Marketing: Mission Critical.
Books on B2B Content Marketing
Secure yourself a copy of Content Marketing: Mission Critical, a guide for B2B CEOs, and Content Marketing: Making the Magic Happen, a guide for B2B marketing leaders, in paperback, e-book, or audiobook format, by visiting www.messageup.com/books. There you’ll find discount codes as well as details on limited edition boxed sets that include copies signed by the author.
One Step…
Today’s One Step actionable tip challenges your perspectives on how cheap, quick, or easy you think B2B marketing efforts should be—and how that might be affecting your company’s performance.
As a business leader, you’re constantly under pressure to do more with less—whether that means money, physical resources, or people’s time.
Marketing is no exception. In fact, many leaders view marketing as a nice-to-have, discretionary expense that can be flexed (i.e. minimized) when necessary to help balance the books.
As regular readers of this newsletter will know, the MessageUp team does not subscribe to that viewpoint!
Not only is content marketing a mission critical element of growing a B2B business, it’s one that requires considerable effort and time to get right.
Ask yourself these questions:
How much is my company (or team) investing in content marketing? Am I confident that investment is sufficient to achieve our goals?
How long am I prepared to stick with our content marketing efforts in order to see the full results? Is that timeframe realistic?
How much time am I contributing to content marketing? How much time am I asking my team and others across the organization to commit? Is that combined effort sufficient for us to achieve our goals?
If you find yourself working hard to justify the (lack of) money, time, or effort that’s being invested, schedule some time to think things through more deeply.
That gut feel is a red flag you must take seriously, otherwise the money, time, and effort you are investing is likely to be ineffective and wasted.
If you’re confident that the levels you’re investing and expending are sufficient, then keep up the great work. However, remain vigilant for bogus initiatives promising to make things cheaper, quicker, or easier as they can seriously undermine your efforts.
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