Archive for June, 2008

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Does Quality Really Matter?

Published June 10th, 2008 in communications strategy, marketing | No Comments »

We’ve spent our careers championing quality—and we’ll continue to do so, despite the sometimes quixotic nature of the quest. Why? For starters, the quality of your communications reflects the quality of your work. It sends the message that you’re credible and trustworthy.

Quality content, in particular, is important if you’re addressing new technologies, emerging markets, or skeptical audiences (the clean tech sector faces all three challenges).

First-rate content delivers crystal-clear information about your services or products, your values, and why you’re different or better—and backs up those claims with facts and concrete examples. This is critical in a website, organization brochure, or other materi­als that introduce you to key audiences. People aren’t going to buy your pitch just because you say it’s so.

Homework: Not Just for Kids
That’s why, when developing critical communications for clients, we make sure everyone does their homework, so we have the information needed to clearly convey benefits and value and provide substantive information rather than vague claims. We also make sure the design serves the information and reflects the personality and values of the organization.

Getting Away With Good Enough
Can you ever get away with “good enough”? Even we have to admit that sometimes, the answer is yes. With a one-time handout or a simple, event-specific website, for instance, you don’t need to add to your workload with elaborate planning and complex execution. Just know what you need to say and the results you need, and cre­ate only what you need to accomplish the task—no more.

One organization, for instance, recently sent an HTML e-mail an­nouncing a few upcoming teleconfer­ences. The design wasn’t great and the copy had a first-draft feel. But they didn’t need more. They’re a pretty ca­sual group, the message was sent to people who already knew them, and the content was fundamentally sound: the class descriptions were engaging and the message clear. On the other hand, the teleclass message probably did nothing to raise anyone’s esteem for the group. And if this were the first contact we had with the organization, we wouldn’t think too highly of it.

When You Care Enough …
Good-quality design, active writing (free from errors), and substantive content send the message that you care about your audience and you care about what you do. Quality communications are compelling because they speak clearly to your target audience and reflect what your company is all about. Sloppy copy, weak content, and poor design convey exactly the opposite.

So, if you want to attract discerning customers, educate skeptics, or win converts to your cause, it pays to put your best foot forward. First published in Words That Work, October 2007.  

Think Outside the Hallway

Published June 6th, 2008 in communications strategy, marketing | No Comments »

It’s tempting to structure websites and other substantive communications based on your organization’s internal categories. You get a head start on the project groundwork. You don’t have to create content to suit a new approach. You don’t have to worry about stirring up internal political struggles.

It just makes sense—to you. But to an external audience, maybe not so much. Internal categories that are useful to insiders are often opaque and frustrating to outsiders. Using them can lead you to promote your work from a process perspective, when your audience cares about results and benefits. And internally framed communications may send the message that you’re insular and bureaucratic.

If you want results (and who doesn’t?), don’t take the easy way out: ask yourself the following questions.

How does this structure shape my content? Make sure your structure lets you present information in a way that’s both logical to your audience and appropriate to the type of communication. Organizing content by your program or service areas sometimes makes sense on a website or in a brochure, but it’s rarely a good idea for newsletters or reports, which should focus on results and actions.

Whose interests am I serving? Sometimes organizations structure their communications to cover every program, service, or department because it satisfies internal needs for recognition. But readers want to hear about what’s important to them—how you can help them solve a problem, say, or how you’re advancing the cause.

Of course your colleagues should have a say in what’s important, but if their concerns are irrelevant to your audience—or to your communications goals—they don’t belong in your external communications.

What does my audience know? If your programs or services are highly technical or unfamiliar to most people, you might want to avoid using them as an organizing framework even in cases where it would normally make sense. If you’re working on a website, for example, it can be useful to pull together a model user group (four or five people will often do) and ask where they’d expect to find various types of information, what they expect to see under the categories you’re using, and what they most want to know about what you’re doing. It may make the most sense to organize pages by benefits or needs.

There’s no avoiding a certain insularity in the way you think about things within your organization; just don’t let that perspective guide your communications strategy. If you do, you may find that you and your colleagues are only talking to each other. First published in the March 2008 issue of Words That Work.

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