Welcome!
Are you new here? Yeah, us too. It’s great to meet you! 👋🏼
We’ve decided to publish a weekly newsletter here on Substack, covering topics that get the MessageUp crew (professionally) excited.
In addition to our latest company news, we’ll be sharing insights you can apply to messaging and content marketing at your business.
We’ll also include a few links to other people’s posts that have caught our eye, since you really shouldn’t take our word for everything.
On Your Marks…
Prepare to be amazed.
Well, maybe that’s a stretch. How about: prepare to receive our newsletter each week as soon as it drops on Substack?
That’s easy. Become a subscriber, if you haven’t already…
Get Set…
To get you in the right frame of mind, let’s start with a free preview of the framework we use at MessageUp.
It’s designed to help leaders wrap their heads around B2B messaging and content marketing and do it right.
If you’re already familiar with this topic, scroll on down to Go! to see what we’ve been reading this week…
The MessageUp framework breaks successful messaging and content marketing into six parts:
A - Anchoring and Authenticity
Laying the foundations for effective messaging and content means having a clear understanding of purpose, mission, vision, and differentiation.
With these key pieces in your pocket, you can build content that resonates with your audience on a deeper level, getting them excited to engage with you as they complete their buyer’s journey.
B - Branding
Beyond colors, fonts, and images lies an underexplored side of many companies’ brands: their personality.
We’ll be talking about voice, tone, and style and how they allow you to humanize an otherwise sterile brand. You’ll give it consistent characteristics that help form an emotional connection with your audience.
C - Customer Focus and Content
This is where a lot of the heavy lifting gets done. Identifying your ideal customer, diving deep into the personas that will be involved in choosing and buying your solution, figuring out how to be relevant and helpful to them at each stage in their buyer’s journey, and understanding when and where to meet them with content that makes their journey frictionless and productive.
At the end of this part, you should have a clear idea of what content you need to be publishing, how frequently, and on what channels.
Which brings us to…
D - Development and Delivery
How on earth are you supposed to make all that happen?!
Conquering the content mountain can appear daunting, if not impossible, especially when you have a small team and limited resources.
Fear not! We’ve got strategies and suggestions to share that will help you scale that mountain at a pace your team can sustain (including hiring a few content Sherpas when there’s too much to carry).
E - Evaluation and Evolution
Once the wheels are turning and you’re publishing content on a schedule, the next question we address is “How do we know if it’s working?”
Evaluating the performance of your content lets you double-down on things that are working well and try to fix (or abandon) things that aren’t.
It’s also important to realize that what works today might not work tomorrow. Markets, customers, and the platforms we use to communicate with them are all constantly changing, so your content marketing must evolve as well.
F - Following Through
Did you think this was a one-and-done process? Hopefully not. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.
Although you might get lucky and bag a few quick wins, the full benefits of effective content marketing can take months to play out. Prospects who encounter your content at the very beginning of their journey might not become customers for a long time, depending on what’s typical for your industry.
Good things come to those who wait. Or, said another way, random acts of marketing seldom pay off, so stick to the plan and follow through!
Go!
Before we sign off, here are some things we’ve been reading that we think you might enjoy and find helpful.
How to Build Momentum with B2B Buyer-Driven Experiences
B2B buyers prefer to drive without you along for most of the ride, writes Ardath Albee, CEO of Marketing Interactions. B2B marketers need to deliver Buyer-Driven Experiences (BDX) that establish momentum, rather than something boring, unhelpful, complex, or vendor-focused.
Google Analytics Alternatives: 9 Different Ways to Track Your Metrics
With Google sunsetting Universal Analytics (a.k.a. Google Analytics 3) in favor of Google Analytics 4, this post by Rachel Go offers some helpful advice on setting up a secondary analytics tool - whether or not you plan to switch away from Google Analytics entirely.
The Business Case for Awesome B2B Content
Looking for some out-there examples of how B2B brands can make hay while experimenting with content design? This post by Unix Commerce has you covered. From mangling your own brand name to comic book animations, this should kickstart your creativity.
How B2B Content Marketing Can Ease Your Business Problems
Jeremy Mays, CEO of Transmyt Marketing, shares insights on how effective content marketing can endow a brand with humanity and allow it to convey empathy at a time when buyers are struggling to adapt to their post-pandemic world.
Until Next Time
Please let us know in the comments how we’re doing and be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any of our future publications…
Thanks for reading - we appreciate you!
~ Team MessageUp