Company content is created by all aspects of a company: engineering, marketing, sales and staff writers. But, employees in different sections of a company have different responsibilities and are wired to think and share ideas differently. This affects the brand consistency of a company; materials are produced by multiple departments, but the voice isn’t the same across the board. In order to ensure a singular brand voice, it is essential to ensure content quality at the source of creation. Recently, Jennifer Beaupre, Acrolinx Director of Global Marketing, held a webinar discussion with Mary Laplante, Lead Analyst at Outsell’s Gilbane Services, and Robert Rose, Chief Trouble Maker at The Big Blue Moose, over how content quality acts as a driver of global marketing success.
Marketing Environments
Marketing activities are fragmented; people just want to get their work done, so they don’t pay attention to the other departments. Transformations are undergoing great changes as traditional strategies like advertising are being shifted towards a digital frontier. There has been an emerging need to “fail faster”; i.e. don’t waste time with stuff that doesn’t work. This is especially important when 90% of all purchase decisions start with a search for content. What’s more 90% of HP products are sold on content alone, without the customer ever touching the product. It becomes the responsibility of marketing people to figure out how to get out in front of these people looking for help. Potential customers look for information everywhere, so the goal for marketers is to be found everywhere. This takes a great deal of effort. Images, videos, written content, blogs, social media, and even other customer’s opinions are all vehicles for communication. When trying to be “everywhere”, the same message needs to be presented with the same voice. But sometimes the message is delivered by the consumer. The hope is that consumers who will be vocal about your product are supporters of your product and reflect the same voice that you broadcast.
Business Goals
Brand consistency is a common business goal, but it is often overlooked by the higher-ups in a company. But it’s often difficult to explain the need for a consistent voice in content creation; web marketing is often like the Wild West: it’s being made up as we go along. Problems arise when inconsistencies proliferate across multiple fronts. An error can become reposted over and over again when the it is not caught at the source. In the end, the user is affected. They cannot correctly use the product they are using, and that creates a bad experience and possible loss of sale.
Content Quality Strategies
Lack of quality content affects all aspects of a business. Mediocre content affects time to market, slows down sales and hurts the business as a whole. Streamlining the content quality assurance strategy and catching problems before they expand can help the business run efficiently from top to bottom.