Sara Salarvand – headstartcopywriting.com

Interviews with Marketers: Kathleen Siddell

Kathleen Siddell is a versatile content creator with diverse experiences including 10 years as a high school teacher and several years living and working abroad. She is currently the Senior Content Marketing Manager for alwaysAI, a Vision AI solutions provider.

Tell us a little bit about your own marketing experience. As a “lone ranger marketer”, what do you do differently?

I’m part of a small team. So, it’s me, our marketing director, and our social media manager, but the heavy lifting of the content falls on me. That’s everything from website copy to newsletters to press releases, anything that needs to be written, aside from social media. When I first started, I was doing that as well.

I think I have an advantage because I’m not a career marketer. I spent 10 years as a high school teacher. When I got the job at my current company there was nobody in my role, so I think that was a real advantage for me because I got to see all aspects of marketing. I didn’t have any expectations because I wasn’t coming from a big marketing team.

I think as a teacher, you are a CEO of the classroom in many ways. You’re handling every aspect, and your skills are transferable. Have you experienced this? How was the transition from teaching to marketing?

It always felt manageable. My director is good at checking in with my workload. We would stagger deadlines, helping me in the beginning to prioritize deadlines, so it didn’t feel overwhelming in that way. It did sometimes feel like there were skills I did not know and yet it worked out to my advantage because I didn’t approach content writing in a traditional way. I didn’t dig in with the general pain points and the tried-and-true methods, even though sometimes they do work. I was given the chance to break the norm and try new things. And like I said, I was lucky enough to land in an environment where that was okay. It was so important that I had the support and that they were willing to try things with me.

Have you had a chance to see how other teams operate to compare to your own “lone ranger” marketing tactics? Is it a more organic process?

It’s been more organic. I’ve been able to learn a lot from my boss and she came from an agency. So, I’ve been building on some of her experience and just learning from her about how things work at other organizations. She’s very transparent in discussions with me when it comes to any constraints or opportunities where we can flourish in our marketing. There could be things that I’m missing which may be a disadvantage because I don’t have a structure in place. I’m not quick at writing necessarily. So, I do sometimes feel if I had a larger team, or if I had other people I could rely on, we could turn around content pieces a little bit faster.

How do you prioritize what you need to do for your audiences?

Blogs are always weighing on me. For example, I have only gotten two blogs out this month and my goal is to do three. Blog writing tends to be the thing that slips, because when we look at measurables, the ROI is difficult to measure. We’re really focused on driving sales, and it’s difficult to measure the impact of blogs on bringing in leads necessarily. We try to connect the dots to see if there’s a direct correlation there. So, it ends up being less of a priority, although it might be the thing that I prefer to do, rather than writing a sales email or ad copy.

Are your customers in obvious places? Do your audience’s channels present a challenge for your prioritizing?

This is a huge challenge. When I started, we were more of a developer-oriented product, and very technical. They were pivoting as I joined, looking to hit the enterprise decision makers, who don’t care how the tech works, they just want to know what it can do. However, even though we are targeting enterprise decision makers, we don’t want to turn our backs on the developers. Many of these enterprises have their own development teams that could use our platform, so we want to appeal to their needs also. But developers are not the decision makers, they’re not the ones who are necessarily going to buy it. Creating content that kind of speaks to both audiences is difficult. But it’s also difficult because we’re also a horizontal solution that spans across industries, so that is a challenge as well.

To create quality content, I must learn what the retailers need, and what the manufacturers need, and other industries. And so, from creating content, it’s a constant pull of not only writing blogs, or ad copy or emails, but also making sure we address the retail industry, the manufacturing industry, and the mining industry, etc.

Do you think that being a “lone ranger” gives your company an advantage? Do you have to have a marketer in each vertical?

If we had more people, everything would be a little bit easier.

But you’re finding it doable? And you are obviously seeing some results?

I am finding it doable; I am getting results. I think with content, there’s this constant push of doing more and more. Maybe that philosophy is not the best, and we would end up with filler. But because I have to be really thoughtful about where I put my energy, maybe being a lone ranger is an advantage.

I do think there’s a personalization when you’re the Lone Ranger. I am currently starting outreach to industry publications – researching popular industry-specific publications. I’ve been able to find some writers and reach out directly to them, writer-to-writer. I think this gives less of a corporate marketing approach with the need to try to sell something. The goal for me is more about educating the market with the hope of spreading brand awareness. I’m able to personalize my outreach, explain that I have a small team and that I’m looking for some help getting our message out – not trying to advertise. Maybe this feels more personal, than if I was with a huge company, with a huge marketing team.

Is there a difference between having a lot of marketers on the team versus just you and the budget?

Obviously the company is trying to balance the budget. If I’m doing too good a job with content marketing, then it may seem like I don’t need the extra help. But there are areas where I’m obviously not an expert. I’m not an SEO expert, I don’t particularly like SEO but we were able to budget for an outside SEO firm, because our leadership team also recognizes that landing on the first page of Google is important. We’re trying to reach all these different industries, and I don’t really know what the best keywords are, so we were able to present SEO expertise as a real need. SEO takes a lot of time, it is a science, and it’s always changing, so I could put my effort towards that, but then we’d lose the other value that I can bring.

Are there any tools you want to tell other marketers you appreciate in your daily world?

I do use LLMs like Gemini and ChatGPT more. These tools are good for some tasks but I see them as simply one more tool. For example, I’m not great at writing headlines. I’ll ask Gemini for some help, but I rarely just copy and paste the result as they tend to be formulaic. But there might be a phrase, a snippet, or verb that I can use. I think I like Gemini because it often gives you options.

I think Google Analytics is very useful. If you play with it, you can pick it up without much experience and get some good insights into where traffic is coming from, where users click and for how long. So, I find some of those insights valuable. We were using HubSpot for social media scheduling, but all social media sites have gotten better about their own scheduling tools like LinkedIn. You can schedule posts on almost all platforms, so you don’t need to go off-site.

How HeadStart Supports You in the Briefing Process

The writing process at HeadStart begins with an outline (also known as a brief). First, you send in the outline to us (or submit it via our private portal) and then we register it. It sounds simple, but we know how time-consuming outlining can be. Our team is here to take the headache out of the process and support you with your outlines. How can we help, you ask?

Before you send in an outline, ask yourself these important questions:

What is the title?
What message are you trying to get across to your B2B audience?
What are the top points/facts you need to address?
What is the CTA?
Do we need to quote any experts or research in this draft?

If you are not able to answer these questions right away, then it may be best for us to get on a call with yourself or another expert on your team so that we can outline the piece for you. When we outline the piece, we’ll be able to retrieve all the information needed within the call so that you don’t have to worry about filling out any outlines. We know how busy the day-to-day of a content marketing manager is so our goal is to free up your time so that you can focus on other pressing tasks.

With Freedom, you have two outlining calls available per month. With Freedom Plus, there is no limit to outlining calls per month. Compare our subscription packages.

We can be your partner to help create outlines along with all your other B2B writing needs. Our team will take some of the work off your plate. Reach out to book an information call.

Stay tuned for more tips, insight, and news from the team at HeadStart Copywriting.

Photo credit goes to Judit Peter from www.pexels.com

Interview with Sue: AI Generated Drafts and HeadStart’s New Editing Packages

What are the implications of generative AI in content creation and copyright?

It’s a big question to ask, who owns what? Everyone has become a database, whether private or public, that is the question. I think companies will start creating gated ChatGPT apps for themselves. So, let’s say they have a lot of material, maybe it’s an old User Guide, maybe it’s a Terms and Conditions document, they’ll create their own AI apps, to put all the information about their products and services, and then perhaps generate their own copy based on that data, so that they can own the copyright outright.

What people are really scared of right now is if they put some public information out there on the internet, it can then go into anyone’s database, and it can be searched. So, this is a risk for companies who do not want to talk about themselves publicly in that way and give them give their competitors access to information.

So, there are all kinds of issues that no one has really thought about. I am amazed that they could produce this product by mining the internet and not encounter issues with who is the author? That is a huge question.

We are ghostwriters and ghostwriters do not own anything, we provide them with copy, and the companies own the material. Obviously, we want to make sure like everything else it is truthful, accurate sighted, check for spelling and grammar. And we want to build trust with audiences. So, they pay for that privilege to own the content that we create.

Why is it so important for you to provide editing as a service subscription to B2B content creators?

My original vision for the company included editing services – but I could not sell it. No one had any drafts to edit, and they needed more help writing. So, I dropped it from our product offering.

I am bringing it back because now people are using tools like ChatGPT to outline, summarize and draft their work. They may not have time to do the fact checking they need; add subheadings and keywords; add a call to action – it can create extra work – so our editing packages help them out in this way.

These drafts are also very neutral in tone and style so they don’t really stand out for their audience. We can help them fix that.

Click here to learn more about our two new subscriptions now available at HeadStart: Editing and Editing Plus.

Photo credit goes to Todoran Bogdan.

Your B2B Marketing Top Three: Social Media, Landing Pages, and Newsletters

What are your top three pieces of content that you think are best to write on a regular basis?

I think it’s definitely social. Social is number one for marketing. So, LinkedIn posts, specifically if they’re in B2B, as their main channel.

Related to social media but not as public, there are many amazing B2B Slack communities no one ever talks about, because that is a very text-based medium. It’s important to join your audience communities and post in Slack as well to share tools and advice. If your audience, is in, for example, cybersecurity, look up the slack communities in cyber, and start participating.

People are also exploring more; they’re using video as an entry point as well. It’s huge. But what are they going to click on? What are they going to read? What are they going to search for? Ultimately, since they’re going to land on your website, I would say number two in the priority list is to really focus on your website and landing pages. Make sure the content says what you do: it’s amazing how many websites don’t really say what the company does. So, if you are writing social and linking to it, if you are doing video and linking to what you’re trying to promote, make sure what they land on it. And make sure you get the right words there to communicate your message quickly.

Finally (number three), you want to have a reason for them to come back. You know, blogging is great, and it’s one of our most requested items. But the newsletter format is more compelling because you must engage, and you can combine your blog with the newsletter, to bring people back again.

Unless people are considering a purchase, there’s no real reason for people to come back to your website. So even though it’s kind of old school, I’m a big fan of just email newsletters where you can put your own content in, you can announce your next blog post, you can engage with them. When they come back, they might check stuff out, they might act on it. So those are my top three.

Why do you feel more marketers are losing their jobs these days?

I love marketing. It’s exciting and innovative. But part of the problem with being innovative is usually you need money to try new things. And especially things that aren’t tried and tested. So, marketers don’t get a lot of support, unless you have a real advocate internally.

Many companies have this fundamental problem: they don’t see marketing as a way to grow effectively. And it’s hard to justify the expense when you’re always trying to be innovative and try things that may not work. It’s very risky.

So, when we see announcements about companies that tend to lay off CMOS, or marketers, it’s because they are seen as expendable and not an integral part of the company. It’s ridiculous. Without marketing, or marketing efforts, your company will not stand out from the crowd. You won’t have any great reason for being. There are some people out there who don’t want to fund marketing initiatives.

It’s tough because the marketers exist in a world where they have to get everyone on their side, not just their immediate bosses, but the finance team and the sales team as well. They must win people over all the time, and then do their jobs on top of that.

Generally, companies don’t want to invest in things that don’t bring in results, and marketers take risks all the time. I feel that marketers are almost like the canaries in the coal mine. They’re always the first to go if there’s a problem. That tells me a lot about how a company operates, and how they treat marketers.

When a company prioritizes their marketing efforts and invests in innovation, and stands behind their marketing teams, that is where marketing shines and helps to grow revenue. I feel that marketers should look for job opportunities at the companies that really value their worth and want to support that kind of risk-taking.

We are holding a rare virtual event this month! Learn from HeadStart’s Managing Editor? Be sure to sign up for our virtual event taking place on February 22, 2024at 12PM EST. Amanda will have important writing tips to share and earlier this month she shared two as a sneak peak. Sign up today to get your ticket!

Elevate your Writing with Amanda’s Two Top Tips

What is your number one tip to marketers when they edit their own content?

My #1 tip for writers or marketers when editing their own content is to take more time. Ideally, you should plan to spend more time editing than writing. Best practice is to take a break between writing and editing. If you can let your work sit overnight, you’re more likely to see common editing errors like missed or duplicated words – the kinds of errors that a spell checker won’t catch.

If you’re really pressed for time and you must start editing right away, start by reading your work aloud, which helps shift your brain from “writing” mode to “reading” mode. Next, try covering everything below the line you’re reading with a ruler or sheet of paper. Another useful strategy is to give your piece at least one pass while reading bottom to top. Of course, this works best for short pieces, 2 pages or less. But reading your sentences backwards can trick your brain into seeing errors that your eyes might otherwise skip over.

How do you go about writing an impactful piece? What steps do you recommend following?

Many writers start writing too soon, and don’t spend enough time generating ideas. Plan to spend some time brainstorming before you start drafting. Ask questions that can help you nail down what the piece needs to do. What are you writing about? Why is it important? Who is reading the piece? Why are they interested in the topic? And what do you want the audience to do after reading the piece? Coming up with answers to questions like this goes a long way towards ensuring that your writing is clear and direct.

Want to learn more from HeadStart’s Managing Editor? Be sure to sign up for our virtual event taking place on February 22, 2024at 12PM EST. Amanda will have more important writing tips to share. Sign up today to get your ticket!

Amanda Spencer’s Bio

Amanda Spencer, Managing Editor, has an in-depth, investigative approach to writing and editing. Whether helping with outlining, researching, stylistic editing, or proofreading, she supports HeadStart’s team at all stages of the writing process. She evaluates all submitted work against rigorous standards to ensure that every HeadStart piece meets the client’s expectations and is of the highest quality.

Amanda is currently enrolled in the Editing Certificate Program at Simon Fraser University and is working toward completing the Editors Canada professional certification exams. A former lecturer at Brock University and OCAD University, Amanda has also worked in retail management, human resources, and corporate training.

Interviews with Marketers: Tariq Khan

As Director of Content Marketing at Algolia, Tariq heads the creative development and content strategy for thought leadership as well as marketing campaigns. Prior to joining Algolia, Tariq previously worked in a number of countries as a journalist, ad copywriter, brand manager, creative director, and a content strategist across a number of industries including news-media, luxury travel, public education, banking and financial services as well as cross-national advertising. Based out of Austin, TX., Tariq enjoys reading, traveling, photography and is a self-professed sci-fi and history nerd.

What do you love most about the marketing world?

I think right now is a very exciting time to be a marketer. We’re truly living in the golden age of marketing technology with access to innovative software, analytics tools, and online learning opportunities. Marketing has become less of an art form and more like science. There’s so much more freedom of action. We can now bring campaigns to market much quicker, prototype concepts more easily, and test initiatives in real time. However, all this progress comes with a level of accountability never before seen in the history of marketing as a profession.

There are so many different things you can do as a marketer. What are you top three technologies that you always go to?

This is a tough question due to the proliferation of role-specific marketing technology. Having worked across the entire marketing value chain (including news media, advertising agencies and in a number of industries on the brand side), I’ve had different sets of “favorite” tools that I have relied on depending on the job.

However, if I had to pick three favorites, I would say first the Atlassian tools suite, Jira and Confluence to facilitate my team’s agile shared service model.

The second would be Figma because as a design tool it is very user-friendly. Figma gives my team the flexibility to rapidly prototype concepts and surface them quickly. The ability to present multiple content formats and creative artwork at a higher level of fidelity helps us better communicate with diverse work groups – particularly non-marketing functions such as engineering, R&D, and product teams. This helps us get decisions we need quicker to bring things to market at a higher velocity.

Finally, our suite of analytics tools allow us to monitor content engagement and how effective we have been in delivering value for our stakeholders and customers.

Tell us about a few challenges you have had to overcome? What kind of challenges would you talk about that other marketers would be interested in learning?

In my experience in multiple industries and countries, the key challenge for marketers in every situation is: how do you continue to keep moving the needle for your customers, your organization, and your team in meaningful ways that drive growth? You need to continually add critical skills, capabilities, and knowledge to stand out and stay ahead of your competition.

However, the great part about living in the golden age of marketing is that you’re also living in the golden age of online learning. You can learn a new skill or become platform certified within the span of hours. Online learning is a great opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and add new capabilities and insights to your team that help you deliver to the organization’s overall growth strategy.

At a more macro level, another constant challenge is ensuring that your initiatives are laddering up to the content strategy goals of the organization. Marketers are now managing a plethora of channels and touchpoints – all of which have streams of data that give actionable intelligence. Marketers need to be able to read into that data to identify the trends, distill the information, and ensure that each moving part is contributing to the larger strategic plan that is driving key deliverables for the business.

Lastly, a challenge that I see a lot of marketing teams struggle with is creating processes and structures to maintain quality while delivering at scale. As we build out a steady stream of successful initiatives, marketers need to create a process architecture to execute on strategies in a repeatable, reliable, and scalable way. I am a big proponent of using project management frameworks like agile that let teams work in an independent, self-managed structure with established methods to manage dependencies and key accountabilities. This gives my marketing team the freedom to be creative along with the flexibility to quickly pivot while consistently delivering quality work.

Are there some skills you bring to the table that you did not know would be relevant in your field?

I am an avid reader of history. I find that understanding historical perspectives has helped me recognize emerging trends in customer behaviors, markets, and business cycles as well as how they connect to wider patterns.

Also, speaking multiple languages and having lived in many different countries has given me cross-cultural awareness that is important in our globalized world. This awareness helps me empathize and see things from other people’s perspectives. I cannot overstate how important this has been for my personal and professional growth.

What is your #1 piece of advice that you have for someone who wants to become a better marketer?

Advice that I got very early in my career is that good strategy is extremely important, but excellence in execution can make all the difference. So, as you’re building strategy, as you’re building scale, put equal focus on your execution plan because that’s what truly makes any campaign successful.

I would also advise that whatever stage you are at in your marketing career to show up and focus on getting things done. Because once you’ve built a reputation as someone who can produce quality work reliably, whether it’s strategizing or executing on a tactical level, more opportunities will open that will supercharge your career’s growth trajectory.

Lastly, embrace a culture of accountability and be open to learn and relearn things at all times. Whether you do that through structured channels like training or informal ones like seeking mentors around you — make sure the learning never stops.

You’ll find that everybody thinks they can do a marketer’s job but not many can do this job well — at a level of reliable accuracy. This means the race is always on to show the value that you add through a snowballing effect of consistent good marketing.

About HeadStart’s Mini Style Guide

What is a style guide?

A style guide provides instructions and guidelines about writing and formatting written content. Style guides help companies establish and maintain a consistent brand voice.

Corporate style guides usually include the following information:

The company’s mission and values statement.
Information about the company’s customers and audience.
How the company is different from its competitors.
The company’s tone, voice, and style.
The preferred style manual. The AP Stylebook and The Chicago Manual of Style are common choices.
The preferred dictionary.
Information about preferred research sources and reference style.
Company-specific instructions about grammar, punctuation, spelling and abbreviations, DEI considerations, numbers, and dates. This section of the style guide is often accompanied by examples showing what writers should and shouldn’t do.

Corporate style guides may also contain design guidelines, such as preferred colors and fonts.

What does HeadStart provide as part of a mini style guide?

First, we’ll review selected pieces of your company’s online content. Then we’ll schedule a call with you to discuss:

Your company’s competitors, main differentiators, key audiences, and customer personas.
Your company’s preferred tone and voice, as well as platform-specific style concerns.
Grammar, spelling, and punctuation guidelines for your company’s content.
Preferred and unacceptable research sources.

After the call, we’ll document these points in a short (2-3 page) guide. It’s the ideal quick reference for anyone at your company who produces or edits written content.

Photo credit goes to Burst from Pexels.com

Interviews with Marketers: Gina Orlando

Gina Orlando is a product marketer with 10 years of experience in the government technology sector. She has built public sector-focused marketing functions from the ground up at startups like Dataminr, Mark43, and goTenna. She currently works as a Product Marketing Manager for government and supply chain risk management solutions at BlueVoyant.

As a product marketer, did you start your career with this goal in mind?

When I first started out as a marketer, my original role was “business analyst”. Before I even knew what product marketing was, the first startup I ever worked for did not have a marketing team. It was at an early stage, and they didn’t want to put the investment to create a true marketing budget, which is pretty common for early-stage companies.

But I was on a team that was supporting business development which, at the time, meant creating a lot of personalized materials for sales meetings. As the product became more sophisticated, I was given other projects – a one-pager on this new feature, or an email that’s describing how to use it for the current customers. So, my title of “business analyst” made no sense.

It was an interesting journey to help my managers and the leadership at the time to understand that what I was actually doing was product marketing, not business analysis. After I left that company, I think after about three years, I looked specifically for “product marketing” job titles, knowing my entire resume was describing what that role was.

What challenges do you have with the sales team and getting the product to market?

Pace of development and bandwidth can be the biggest challenges. The pace of development is usually not as fast as the sales team would like. The sales team is always looking for something new and interesting to say: here’s this new feature, here’s this new enhancement, here’s this new partnership, etc. And sometimes those things take time.

It can also be challenging to make sure everyone on the team has enough bandwidth to keep effectively pushing a project through all the stages. My focus has to be not only on my own bandwidth, but also the bandwidth of the subject matter experts within our company.

To preserve bandwidth, I try to find resources that can help multiply the team. Sometimes brining on freelancers and agencies can help you work a little bit faster, but that leads to a different challenge: trying to find the right mix of people in house and out of house that can help you scale up as quickly as you need to.

Is marketing at a startup different from marketing at an established company?

I’ve found this sweet spot of an early- to mid-stage startup. At this point a startup has product that’s in a solid spot, and usually a couple of marquee customers that use it and love it. At that point it’s time to scale up and ask, “How can we take this out to a broader market, you know, past our friends and family and the people that we know, well? And how do we attract new people?”

At that time a startup needs to establish their brand and showcase the product. For me, that’s always been the most exciting time to join a startup and the most beneficial to my career. I’m always most excited by the kind of growth that involves figuring out who a company is and introducing it to the larger market, and then coming up with a mix of brand creativity and a little bit of digital magic to kick it off. And that’s always been the most exciting thing for me.

I’m at a company now where in many ways I’m working at a startup within a startup because we’ve just brought a new subsidiary into the fold. They have a really great product and they have less than 10 customers, but they’re all solid. So, I’m in that sweet spot within the startup where it’s a different kind of growth that’s really exciting.better.

Is there anything in your MarTech stack that has become really useful to you?

LinkedIn has been a really great way to get to know people, and not only in the targeted aspect of being able to drill down into the data, but it’s also just been a way to get that “top of funnel” brand content out that we would have traditionally wanted to do through an email.

One new feature on LinkedIn, for example, is the newsletter that can be provided on an ongoing basis, like a subscription. We’ve turned articles into subscription newsletters as another way to get in front of people.

Introducing HeadStart’s “Unlock Your Expertise” Package

What is the “Unlock your Expertise” package?

Many executives and subject matter experts do not have the time to express their thoughts in written form. However, their expertise is key to winning business.
This package showcases your executives’ and technical experts’ knowledge online with the help of our writers to “unlock” their thought leadership.

Why did we develop this package for companies?

Your customers want to hear from your executives and technical experts directly so that they can trust you online before they reach out to you. Building trust through individual thought leadership can reduce your sales cycle.
Executives (and the knowledge locked inside their heads) are key to winning ongoing and future business. Their knowledge and points of view will stand out from the flood of content being created by ChatGPT.
Your future and existing customers want to buy but not be sold… so it’s important to showcase individuals’ knowledge so they have someone to reach out to at your company (put a face to the name). Your own people can help answer questions in the first stage of the customer journey (and amplify your company reach with their own networks).

Executive and technical knowledge is more easily extracted by external, professional writers with a quality assurance team behind them to move all aspects forward. We can reduce your internal administrative tasks related to bookings and spend less time “chasing” them for interviews with a formalized process.

The deliverables for each executive or technical expert include:

An updated or new bio for your website/their LinkedIn profile.

A thought leadership blog on a topic of their/your choice (interview and revisions included, 1200-1500 words).
A LinkedIn post so they can share the blog.

Turnaround times vary but we start work asap after the interview. We work with you on timelines using a benchmark of 10-15 business days.

Does this interest you for your team? Email Sue dot Varty at HeadStartCopywriting dot co.

Photocredit goes to Pixabay from www.pexels.com

Interviews with Marketers: Tonya Cardinali

Tonya Cardinali has 19 years of experience leading marketing efforts for B2B companies focusing on strategy, demand generation, content, and sales enablement.

She delivers results by being creative, adaptable, and agile. Partnering with Sales and connecting with clients to understand how to solve customer problems she delivers valuable, relevant content that drives engagement. She brings an integrated marketing approach to deliver qualified leads that contribute to achieving revenue goals.

Outside of work, Tonya enjoys cycling, roller skating, standup paddleboarding, and pottery. She also has a neurotic Boston terrier/French bulldog mix named Crash whom she adores.

How important is it to understand user experience when creating content?

My focus is always looking through the customers’ eyes to see how a product or service can help them. I try to imagine the pain points my target market has and understand how they think about solving their problem. It’s easy to get lost in the creative process of discussing the product and how we’re marketing it and forget about the problem we’re trying to solve.

I always need to consider the user experience (UX), even if it’s walking through a landing page that was just created. I always make sure it’s easy to navigate and that the forms and links are set up properly. For an example of how I think about UX, I just took up pottery and am learning little by little how to do things better. And one of the first mugs I’ve made – it was the right size, the handle felt good. It looked great! But then I took a drink out of it, and the coffee just went right down the side of the mug. I do not want the people drinking out of my mugs to have a drippy coffee experience! I realized I had to make some changes so that my “mug users” would have a better experience. It was something I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t experienced it myself.

How do you stay on top of user experience?

I test everything from the user’s perspective. For example, I’ll navigate from a (test) email to each link or landing page to ensure the process is smooth and intuitive for our customers. I force myself to reread everything. You’d be surprised how many little opportunities you find to improve. I think about my goal – often times it is to generate engagement through a form fill. So, in that case, I’ll go through the process of navigating to the form and submitting it. Was it easy to find? How many clicks did it take? Did I receive a “thank you” message or an automated email that may have been attached to the form? And finally, did it register in my reporting? Then once I’ve made any necessary adjustments and the campaign is launched, I keep a close eye on the reporting. Data can tell you if something is going well or if something is wrong.

I say all this and it sounds like I’m a perfectionist. I am. That being said, I would rather get something done at 95% than hold onto it until it’s perfect. The cost of perfection is missed opportunity.

What about inspiration? How is it possible to find and keep inspiration in marketing?

You’ve got to expose yourself to more than just one thing and adapt yourself to a constantly changing environment. New and exciting tools are becoming available all the time. That’s the beauty and fun of marketing. If you’re really focused on one area, then you’re not going to be able to see the bigger picture. But in learning (even just a little bit) about all the parts of that big picture, you can contribute in a more meaningful way. You may also find something that interests or inspires you that you may not have been exposed to.

It also helps to surround yourself with people you’re inspired by. And people you can learn from, have fun with, and trust. People who are different than you. They’re likely better at something than you are – don’t be threatened by that – and they can probably can fill in a gap that makes whatever result you’re working toward better.

What’s your MarTech stack?

HubSpot, Pardot and Salesforce, ZoomInfo, Canva, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Salesloft, SEMRush, Gotowebinar. I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT too. One of the simplest tools I have is an inventory of all my channels in an Excel spreadsheet. I refer to this almost like a checklist to maximize my exposure on each piece of content I create.

Author: Sara Salarvand