Dissecting Marketing Content: What It Really Takes to Create the Right Message

A lot of clients ask me what’s involved in developing marketing content. They usually realize that they’ve underestimated how involved the process can be.

Just a tad.

I was recently hired by a financial advisor to update and edit her profile content on her parent company’s website. I thought it would be helpful to share this experience and provide a small window into the content development process.

Financial advisors are somewhat hamstrung by industry regulations and the firms they work for. In this case, my client has control over just two pages of content, which were written about two years ago.

One page focuses on the value proposition, and the other page, accessed through a link in the sidebar, covers her professional and personal background. The rest of the site is about and controlled by the firm.

We spent about an hour and 10 minutes dissecting fewer than 750 words of content.

On a side note, this is why I tell clients that it costs just as much, if not more, to edit existing content as it does to write new content from scratch.

Basically, we went line by line and, in some cases, word by word, analyzing the content by asking a lot of questions.

Who is your specific target audience? What specific problem(s) do you solve? Does every word speak to your audience’s needs and concerns?

This was the biggest problem with the content. It talked about managing wealth and planning for retirement in general terms, but it didn’t speak to the specific problems of a specific audience.

In this case, the audience is wealthy people who recently retired or will be retiring soon. The problem is that many people spend more years in retirement than they do working, but have no plan for receiving income throughout retirement.

Addressing the specific problem of a specific audience instantly makes the content more effective.

What content is unnecessary? Why was it included in the first place and why is it unnecessary now?

What content is missing? Why wasn’t it included in the first place and why does it need to be added now?

Some information was dated. Some information simply isn’t as important as it was two years ago. Some information was never very important, so we got rid of it.

My client is also launching a new initiative and the existing content didn’t reflect that. We had to incorporate certain information that explained to this new offering.

Is this information relevant? Is it clear? Is it specific?

Will the target audience understand the point you’re trying to make? If not, how can we make certain information or language easier to understand?

Some information may be relevant and specific to a financial advisor, but it may seem fuzzy to the financial advisor’s potential clients.

For example, it does no good to list various licenses and designations if it’s not clear how the target audience can benefit from them.

Solutions to problems make for much better marketing content than a resumé.

Also, some information was generic “marketing speak” that probably sounded good in a board meeting but has no meaning to the target audience. We either made it more specific or got rid of it.

What information should have the highest priority? Why? How can we draw more attention to that information?

Every word of your content should have relevance, but some pieces of information are more important than others.

In this case, we needed to adhere to the firm’s somewhat rigid page structure, which limited our options.

The key was to rearrange a few things to prioritize the most compelling information while maintaining a logical, natural flow from beginning to end.

One problem involved the page about the financial advisor’s professional and personal background – the “About” page. The link was buried in the sidebar of the value proposition page.

When someone is thinking about hiring a financial advisor to manage millions of dollars, they’re going to read that page thoroughly. But it wasn’t easy to find.

We gave it more visibility without affecting the structure of the page by previewing that page’s content and adding a link within the value proposition content.

So why am I sharing this story?

Like I said previously, we spent more than an hour dissecting two pages of content totaling fewer than 750 words. That probably seems like a lot of time.

But if you want your marketing content to deliver the highest possible ROI, this is the required level of analysis.

You can’t just send talking points and a list of facts to a content writer and expect to get marketing content that works.

The “who” and the “what” are important, but you need to dig into the “how” and the “why” if your marketing content is going to convert visitors into clients.

In the interest of full disclosure, the process I’ve detailed above isn’t the norm. I wish it was the norm, but few business owners and marketers are willing to invest that much time and effort into their marketing content.

Fortunately, this particular client gets it. I’m confident that she’ll reap the rewards once we complete the project.

I use the word “dissect” because that’s exactly what you have to do with marketing content.

As you develop content, especially for your core branding platforms like your website, brochures, and business and professional profiles on social media, take the time to dissect it.

Break down the message point by point, line by line, and even word by word, whether the content is 200 words or 10,000 words.

Yes, it takes time. Yes, it can be tedious. But if it strengthens your message and helps you make more money, isn’t it worth it?