Does Your Content Match Your Outfit?

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Content Is A Continuum

I know, I know, I know…all I am doing is talking about content these days…but yesterday I was out walking (you know - tryin’ to get myself beach ready for summer 2032) and I was listening to this super interesting book - Trust, by Hernan Vazquez - where a character went on a long Marx-inspired rant about money being an the ultimate abstraction - so it can mean anything. (The book is really good, btw. It won a Pulitzer in 2022…)

So the idea of “abstraction” was rattling around in my head and I had this insight about content. Stick with me for a moment, OK?

The content that your target buyer responds to is based on how “abstract” that business’ point of conversion is. I know, clear as mud, right? An example might be better:

BUYER A: Owner-operator of a $2mm ecommerce brand.
BUYER B: CMO of a $500mm ecommerce brand.

BUYER A: Sees every sale in real time. VERY CLOSE TO THE POINT OF CONVERSION
BUYER B: Looks at monthly reports & data looking for trends. VERY FAR AWAY FROM THE POINT OF CONVERSION

Both of these buyers have the exact same concerns, namely, “How do I generate more sales?” but their frame of reference is different. What COMPELS BUYER A will likely REPEL BUYER B & vice versa.

Your $2mm CEO might be super interested in content that talks about how a single tactic generates a result, eg, “Using AI to iterate UGC creative generated X% increase in ROAS”.

Your $500mm CMO might be interested in that, too, but likely they know that UGC creative only represents 10% of their overall marketing spend, and that those clients tend to be 1 and done shoppers, so they don’t care.

The $500mm CMO is probably going to be really interested in your media approach that gets feedback from inventory management and customer service issues and allows you to adjust budget to optimize inventory and deprecate campaigns associated with more CS issues. That helps your CMO to be thinking holistically about their business - from merchandising effectiveness to customer service cost.

Your $2mm CEO is thinking that CS issues would be nice to have because it would mean they had a ton more customers…but that level of complexity doesn’t matter to their business.

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Complexity Continuum

Luckily, it’s pretty rare that an agency would serve both a $500mm brand and a $2mm brand, but your messaging has to match your agency complexity and the client’s complexity.

Recently, I listened to a sales call between a really sophisticated CMS integration agency & a prospect who, honestly, wasn’t very sophisticated. In order to qualify the opportunity, the integrator was asking about tech stacks and content workflows. The prospect wasn’t ready for that kind of discussion.

The prospect had responded to really simple messaging about website personalization. They were ready to learn about personalization, it’s impact and implementation. They were interested in a point solution to augment their current site. They weren’t thinking about replatforming.

This wasn’t the integrator’s usual lead flow. Normally the integrator gets referrals from CMS platforms and the prospect has already made a decision to change or upgrade their CMS. They are ready with answers to deep questions because they’ve already been scoping and planning with their CMS platform partner.

In my own experience, I’ve been on the other side of that. I had a sales call after a presentation I did at a conference. My talk was pretty sophisticated and it revolved around the interplay of paid search and programmatic display. I knew A TON about paid search, but my understanding of programmatic at that time was all theory based on data results. I didn’t know a ton about the programmatic ecosystem (which is crazy complex and makes my brain hurt). Immediately, my prospect started asking me questions about programmatic and I stammered and shuffled and tried my damn hardest to get the discussion into my wheelhouse. It didn’t work. 

I came away from that meeting embarrassed because I wasn’t sophisticated enough to keep up with the prospect. (I sent them an apology note & we landed a small bit of business with them 9 months later…) Basically, I got myself into a hard spot because I was a really sophisticated search marketer and a middling programmatic marketer who talked authoritatively about stuff where I didn’t have the depth needed.

The Big Takeaway

This is 100% obvious, but the sophistication of your content needs to match the sophistication of your prospect/client.

This stops being obvious, though, when your aren’t thinking about your target market and your ability to deliver specifically enough.

If you have a cursory understanding of market, you will come up with an overly broad message and you can’t show your buyer that you understand their need specifically. Any content you create that shows a shallow understanding is going to excite absolutely no one.

Content development becomes an exercise in empathy and self knowledge:

• EMPATHY: What are the concerns of my target buyer - not just the simple, obvious ones. What is the sophistication level of my target buyer? How much do they understand about marketing and digital? How much do they really understand about their clients/customers and their market?

• SELF KNOWLEDGE: Does what I am saying match our ability to execute and explain the impact? How much do I understand about their business? (Just because you’ve worked with a subscription based sports recovery supplement brand doesn’t mean that you understand fashion marketing.) How much do I understand about how they measure success?

When there is a strong empathy/self-knowledge overlap, you’ve got the right messaging because it will show how well you unbderstand the target buyer’s world & represent how well you can deliver.

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Don’t Be This Guy - Get Good At Being Matchy-Matchy

Old Steve-y boy doesn’t get the whole matchy thing. No matter what, if your content (website, social, sales, etc) makes somebody feel dumb, you are just being a silly goose.

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