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The Message Elevator

The Rubicon Agency
In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry, The Message Elevator, Thought leadership

Thought leadership in the digital age: who’s leading who?

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Opinion forming, visioning and crystal ball gazing is nothing new in the world of technology. Almost half a decade on, marketers are still waxing lyrical about tech mystic Steve Jobs and how he saw the role of computers in modern society.

It could be said that he has set the benchmark for many of today’s luminaries without the availability of social media, mobile technology or mainstream video. This begs the question, in today’s digital world are the visionaries of the 21st century actually that pioneering, or do they just have access to a bigger mouthpiece?

The dissemination of ideas

With the number of digital channels increasing exponentially, industry ambassadors have an embarrassment of riches when syndicating their opinions. If the quest is to elevate their personal brand, then measures of success are likely to include follower growth, engagement metrics, social shares and speaker opportunities. However, if their objectives are more aligned to business generation, how do you effectively attribute thought leadership notions with revenue? Do these ideas really resonate with potential buyers? Do they align with the company vision? Are these views likely to drive action?

Looking through this lens some of the vanity metrics mentioned earlier may seem a bit flaky. Can an idea that’s ‘gone viral’ really influence the sale of a six-figure purchase?

This really is the crux of the question, are the opportunities to see the content/notion diluting the actual value of the content itself?

It’s an interesting thought, are we subliminally being spoon fed these concepts that, if challenged, are reconstituted from someone else or are flimsy at best?

Beware of false idols

Today, the number of people with role adjectives such as luminary, visionary, pioneer or champion in their social profiles are commonplace. With so much digital noise out there, how do we sift through the real thought leaders from the pretenders to the throne?

Below are some telltale signs of what to look for.

  1. Expertise and knowledge: Search for individuals who have deep expertise in their field that have been recognised by their peers and are frequent sharers of valuable and unique content.
  2. Authenticity: Genuine thought leaders are transparent and unique, many replicate but true thought leaders share personal content, including failures, that make it feel real and relatable. Comfort with the good, bad and ugly shows humanity and real depth.
  3. Strong points of view: The usual background check of credentials, past work and endorsements from peers can help validate industry luminaries – but how they project insightful, visionary and sometimes unconventional thinking is they key ask
  4. Engagement: I’m not just talking about likes and shares, real thought leaders engage with their networks about their views and visions.
  5. Consistency: Thought leadership isn’t just a hit and run exercise, being able to consistently produce high-quality content that provides value and is one step ahead.

The last point on this list is very important – consistent, sustained content is vital to establishing your business or personal brand and to make sure your content is taken seriously. But it’s also worth noting that using the plethora digital channels available to you also creates its own challenges. Lazy copy and paste posturing can create white noise, with followers becoming turned off by a cookie cutter approach. Different channels are frequented by different audiences so treat them as such. This continued requirement of content can be an overwhelming task for many business leaders, but The Rubicon Agency can help.

We craft thought leadership content that commands an audience, drives engagement and opens doors. With over 25 years of B2B agency experience working within the tech sector we know what it takes to articulate a vision, a view or a notion that people will want to follow.

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The Rubicon Agency
In Insights, M4 in action, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Strategic content, The Message Elevator

Writers block: The great AI content conundrum

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According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of technology marketers say creating the right content for their audience is challenging.

This is hardly surprising given the sprawl of decision makers, budget holders and influencer groups over the years. In yesteryear things were much simpler, the balance of power sat in the IT tower. Decisions on technology purchases were sat firmly with the CTO or CIO so producing content that pushed their buttons was fairly straight forward.

Fast-forward to the present, the technology space is awash with products, services, solutions and architectures that are designed specifically for certain lines of business. In May of this year CMSwire reported that the MarTech space alone had swelled to over 14,100 solutions [hyperlink], so it’s no surprise that tech marketers are finding it difficult to create differentiated, relevant and valuable content that their prospects want to engage with, given the competition for eyeballs.

Is AI the answer to our content prayers?

With the explosion of AI into every tech application known to man, it’s no wonder that marketing has embraced generative AI like a returning relative from an overseas trip. Let’s face it, AI has been pitched to remove manual, repetitive and human centric tasks- content creation is no exception to this. The Content Marketing Institute continue in their benchmarking report that 79% of technology marketers use generative AI for content tasks and 48% use AI to write full first drafts. But this begs the question, is AI the golden goose we have all been searching for?

Well, if used correctly it can certainly remove a lot of the grunt work out of the process which is a huge plus given that 66% of tech marketers are faced with a lack of resources. However, in order to remain in control, marketing departments must adopt some form of guiderails around the use of AI in content production. These include but are not limited to:

  1. Ethical use of AI: Organisations should be transparent about AI-generated content in order to avoid bias and not to mislead audiences.
  2. Quality control: Human involvement should be applied to all AI generated content to ensure that brand tone of voice and quality standards are adhered to.
  3. Content authenticity: Ensure content feels like it’s been created by a human, making sure it’s authentic and adds value to the audience.
  4. Content validation: Check to make sure that references, statistics and sources are relevant, up to date and correct.
  5. Data privacy, security and compliance: Make sure that all content complies with copyright law, data protection and compliance regulations.

Content should be human-centric.

No doubt about it, AI has aided content creation and has certainly streamlined the process, although to be truly authentic, marketers still need to apply the human touch. Consumers often challenge and question the information they are presented with, so structuring arguments that support these and applying empathy, elevation and context to these points can promote authenticity.

People buy people, so if your content comes across as synthetic your audience may not only switch off but, on a deeper level, possibly question your products or even worse, your brand.

At The Rubicon Agency we craft human-centric strategic content that informs, educates and inspires. With over 25 years of B2B marketing agency experience working within the tech sector, we know what it takes to cut through the competition.

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The Rubicon Agency
In Insights, Our industry, The Content Spectrum, The Message Elevator

Sell aspiration not anti-perspiration – a philosophy for software marketing

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Heros need a mix of aspiration and perspiration

Imagine the scene. A TV ad for a world famous anti-perspirant, where our hero is just about to make the rock climb of their life. Picture the director, sizing the dramatic perspectives that show the peril of the route in-frame and the atmospheric shots of the climber’s preparations. Edit-in the adrenaline-inducing ropes and apparatus – and the climatic joy at the summit. You get the picture.

Now imagine the ad where the focus is just the anti-perspirant and its ability to reduce sweaty arms. It’s a passion killer isn’t it. Well, this is much like the state of software marketing – where there’s a lack of craft and flair in blending perspiration with aspiration.

New models in software make things worse

Software has been core to the tech industry since day one. And as decades have rolled by, the delivery model has changed radically – and more recently the software supply chain and operating models have been turned on their heads too.

But in all that time, software has been engineered to fulfil specific roles – such as office tasks (Word/Excel etc.), processes (SAP/Oracle etc.), horizontal functions (Workday, Adobe etc.) and many more. All are positioned to make things easier, save time, improve accuracy – and fulfil basic needs in our workday lives.

But these binary messages/measures are now table stakes and not enough to express the real value of modern software applications to a business with zeitgeist challenges.

Modern architectures, APIs and AI bring massive potential to what software can do and achieve. And now (as tech marketers and b2b tech agencies) we need to place more emphasis on presenting how it’s going to change the business – rather than the basic performance it achieves. The potential and accomplishments of our erstwhile climbing hero need to be evident and authentic.

Software needs to dare to dream

We’re now talking about new messages and yardsticks – accuracy of experience scoring, quality of predicted outcomes, performance of virtual behaviours – the list goes on.

All these messages are visionary, and all yardsticks were unthinkable just a few years ago. But what principles should be applied by modern software marketers to make sure they’re on the right track?

The modern software marketer checklist

Here’s how to achieve the right level of pitch for the software or app:

    1. Don’t think that the traditional high-touch nouns of agility, flexibility and productivity are enough these days. Break beyond these barriers into fresh air. Go beyond the blah, blah, blah
    2. Get up close and personal with the customer use cases to extract the most valuable essence(s) of the application.
    3. Get empathetic and imaginative in equal measure and apply your own ‘language translator’ to create and pitch a story for business managers/leaders, users and the IT function. All use different languages and have different care abouts.
    4. Loosen-up a bit – apply some b2c thinking (even in b2b propositions) to enforce a fresh perspective and brand expression that buyers and users can relate and buy into.
    5. Finally, don’t over-egg it! Make sure there’s authenticity and reality around the dream you’re selling to the customer. Overdo it and you’ll damage your brand and reputation.

The comfort in aspiration

The above 5 points take patience, rigour and high standards in knowledge extraction and message elevation to achieve the right results. But they sure feel like a breath of fresh air when you get there! The aspiration feels real, sweet and attainable.

The result. You end up with a differentiated, engaging and enduring pitch to your software play. And you’ll feel like our climbing hero from the outset.

The Rubicon Agency has 30-years’ experience in marketing software and applications, working with many of the leading vendors and engineers

Check out our experience in software.

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