The unbearable vagueness in marketing communication: How to build a robust content marketing plan

A sustainable and scalable content marketing plan is a thing of beauty. There is joy in building it from scratch, in line with business goals, persona understanding, brand positioning, SEO strategy… all within the limitations of talent, time and budget. I find it super exciting to create and put a plan into action, see how it behaves in real-time, and tweak the strategy based on how the audience responds. I enjoy the rewards of having a razor-sharp focus on a niche audience and drawing them in with problem-solving copy and content.??

Over the years, I’ve developed a special dislike for something that’s all too common in marketing communication: vagueness.?

I see it everywhere. Ads with words that don’t really say anything, landing pages with cryptic copy, unclear CTAs that make the decision-making process unnecessarily difficult for the user (goodbye clicks). I see company blogs producing passionately-written content about everything under the sun, without focus. I see businesses publish articles that are too simple for their specialized target audience, and companies run LinkedIn ads for audiences that are (still) hanging out on FB groups. I see misleading headlines, broken journeys, and users stuck in endless loops (goodbye potential customers).?

The goal of a robust content strategy (including content marketing, UX, content design, information architecture, and other related categories) is to remove ambiguity. It's to not make the audience hesitate, guess, or struggle to find, understand and use your product or service.

Do we like vagueness??

A lot of marketing copy has been ambiguous historically, especially in advertising. ("Just do it." Do what? We aren't sure but we feel compelled to take action.) We’re apparently suckers for vagueness, so much so that there’s even an NLP model for it. We are drawn to products that promise to enhance our lives or help us do something effortlessly, even if they don’t go into the details. But that space is no longer hypnotic: it has become so saturated that the proposition doesn't hold value without evidence.?

Vagueness can be good when used in a specific context. It's useful in self-expression: when you want to create space for assumption or interpretation, when you want to get out of situations or buy time, or when you just feel lazy. Intentional ambiguity in writing and art can provide food for thought, create suspense, and even work as a way to get readers to ask important questions.??

But vagueness in the digital marketing space? I despair.?

How to build an unambiguous content marketing plan ?

Content marketers can't afford to be vague. Businesses big and small are competing with each other to get to the top of SERPs. Those without handsome PPC budgets have the opportunity to leverage the power of content to outrank competitors’ positions organically. The more specific and tailored your content is to your audience, the better the chances of it ranking higher. There is little scope for ambiguity in this battlefield.?

I think being vague comes from three main problems:?

1. Not understanding your user/audience?
2. Not having a clear business goal in mind?
3. Not looking at the data?

1. Not knowing your audience?

As a content marketer, I love creating user personas and I think it’s the starting point for a watertight content strategy. It's great to be able to tailor your content to speak to one person, based on what they like, what their goals are, what they're struggling with, and what kind of language they use.?

If you don’t know whom you’re speaking to, you won’t know what to say.?

As a content writer, you might be eager to write about what you want to say about a topic. But speaking to your persona allows you to frame what you want to say within the context of what they want to read.?

Knowing your audience and their frustrations helps you avoid using generic language like “take it to the next level” because a thorough persona study means that you know what that next level looks like.?

The vague-est (and most overrated) word in marketing copy is, I think, “easy”.

I’ve used it all too often myself. Every tool and product out there offers the promise of making a process/system/your life “easy”. I remember reading Automattic’s guidelines that linked to this interesting piece about how ease is relative. I've started thinking that telling someone something is easy is being almost condescending. I think a different way to say "easy" in marketing copy might be: “Never struggle with XYZ problem again,” which sounds more relatable and human.

2. Not having a clear business goal or direction??

When I started out as a content writer, I wanted to write or source beautiful content that was broadly related to what the business was doing. I wrote with passion, but without integrating my content plan with specific business goals. But once I started to think about our content in terms of business impact, suddenly things started to magically work. Traffic improved, conversions shot up. All of our content was not only powered by a strong SEO strategy but also took into account the business intent of the user.?

I started finding beauty in precision. I started to see that a creative focus or vision need not be separate from a business goal: in fact, the closer the two of them were tied together, the better the results were.

Traffic growth in the company blog that I ran for a few years. This came with a deeper understanding of the target audience and clearer business goals.

Startups and small businesses often don’t have a clear and specific direction. Experimenting is simply how a growing business finds its feet. However, having a specific (if only short-term) goal allows you to pour your energy and resources into cracking that problem. It need not be a revenue-related goal: you could zoom in and solve a specific chunk, like increasing conversions from one specific blog post. The more detailed your experiments are in a zoomed-in view, the easier it gets when you zoom out.?

3. Not working with data?

For all writers: if you're worried that looking at numbers will make your writing worse, I can confirm that that is a myth. :)

Content writers rarely look at data. But looking at the data helps you assign a value to a piece of content and understand how it impacts the overall business. This is especially useful for you as it helps you understand what you're bringing to the table not in just in terms of creativity or writing skills but in terms of your contribution to the business.

If you’re working as a freelance content writer for someone, it’s always worth asking for stats after a couple of months to understand how you can make improvements. Everything from keywords driving traffic to your article to bounce rate matters.

I cannot emphasize how much more sorted your life will become when you spend a few hours in GA :) It also helps you streamline your resources: you can identify and invest in activities where you can expect the best results.

Clarity is power

Often, vagueness creeps in simply due to lack of space or time. You’ve got a deadline this Friday or you’ve got only 100 words to say what you want. But that’s where I believe lies the true power of detail.?

The more you know, the easier it is to say it in a few words.?

Investing in understanding your audience, your business vision and goal, and looking at the data means that you're in a position to take sound decision on strategy, content topics, customer journeys, and brand tone of voice. Your ad copy gets more refined, communication at touchpoints become stronger, your content topics become more tailored, and you make a deeper connect with your audience. Remember that your target audience is needy: they will always look for signs that you understand them. ?

The more you know about what you want to say and to whom, the more confident a marketer and writer you become.?

Building a content marketing plan requires digging deep into the details about who your audience is and what you want to say to them and why they should listen to you. It's incredibly rewarding to be able to put all of the data in one place to be able to come up with a scalable strategy. It's also gratifying to be able to distil something complex into a clear and digestible piece of content. Because to be able to say only a few but meaningful words about something, you first need to know everything.