Practice makes perfect, as they say. But how do you define perfect when it comes to content?
Here’s why I ask. You know that old schematic, much loved by project managers and all prod dev types? It’s a kind of Euler diagram, as seen here.
It shows you can pick any two out of Fast, Good and Cheap.
Depending on your needs, perfect can mean flawless quality – though may take time and cost a lot.
Perfect may mean cheap – though most people in marketing, perhaps B2B marketing especially, don’t operate like that.
And then sometimes perfect means fast – or at least in good time.
So it would seem the trade-off is often between great quality and speed, at least in terms of B2B content marketing. And, as per the model, you can have both… if you have the budget.
Sophie’s Choice?
So what’s the problem? It’s that more often than not we see marketers choose precision over speed, when they need to make a choice.
Marketing, like most things worth doing, should be done to a high standard. Slapdash is certainly not the way to go.
But we’ve heard examples – a story about one of the biggest tech companies in the world comes to mind – of a single white paper taking 18 months to be signed off. By the way, we looked into that and were eventually told by someone close to the work, but in no way an official spokesperson, that it “only took 12 months”.
For that kind of company, an executive being targeted will be concerned if quality doesn’t hit a certain threshold. The good news is that it’s possible to be at least as good as the professional media today. That’s what we mean by ‘media-grade’ content.
But it is unforgettable to be behind the times. We have heard CIOs, as a desirable type of target for B2B technology vendor, say: “They’re not talking about it.”
The “it” there can be anything. It’s some subject that is on their radar and that they’re hearing about elsewhere.
The point is that they expect their supplier to have a view on a development but instead they’re on version eight, moving around page furniture. “Will be a few weeks yet,” you might hear someone say.
What we’re saying is that in today’s world of B2B content marketing, cost and quality are pretty much a given. But increasingly too will be operating at the speed of your target audience. Anything less looks bad.
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