Canright Communications

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Canright Communications

Communications Conversations: June 13 – June 17

Random Notes on Technology and Marketing

This week we focus on how to deliver information and content to stakeholders in a clear, concise format. The following methods detail how we transform the raw material of interviews and discussions into concise, easy-to-understand documents.

Knowledge Briefs

This week Jess describes how to give stakeholders the information they need in a simple, clear format.

Why

  • Breaking down concepts for the layperson helps business professionals understand the importance of technical work.

Use Cases

  • Pitch decks, explainers, and other internal communications

Method

  • Conduct research to get a clear technical understanding of the subject matter. Using a journalistic framework (who, what, where, when, why, how), break it down into pieces that make concepts simple to understand no matter the expertise of the reader. Aiming for broad readability without talking down, these briefs help boil down technical speak for non-technical audiences.

Creating a Digital Knowledge Base 

Ryan shows how our digital content creation strategy helps stakeholders benefit from a business and organizational standpoint.

Why

  • Give the team content in a digital format that is searchable, filterable, and acts as a knowledge base. Improving productivity and reducing training time.

Use Cases

  • Write new help content and revamp legacy content to fit an organization’s digital transformation. Making information more accessible to the end-user.

Method

  • Determine the audience which can include internal, existing customers, and new customers.
  • Plan for new content to be written into the digital knowledge base.
  • Add resource pages based off of the aspects the audience wants to learn in relation to products and organization. 
  • Create visuals in the content to clarify the message.
  • Make sure the site is easy to navigate.
  • Customize content based on the topic to help the end-user better grasp the concepts.

Communications Conversations is a weekly recap of the solutions and themes we’ve been working on. At Canright Communications, we’ve spent decades helping clients market and sell their ideas, innovations, products, and solutions through clear technical communications and marketing writing.  

Contact us if you’re interested in our services at collin@canrightcommunications.com

API Marketing Strategy and Tactics

APIs can provide a competitive advantage. They enable businesses to provide new solutions by making it easy for developers a way to incorporate your software’s capabilities into theirs.

As the marketplace for API publishers continues to expand, with vast libraries of tools available to would-be developers from all over the world, developing a comprehensive marketing strategy is core to standing out.

While having the best API offering possible and striving for product excellence is important, it isn’t enough to win in the marketplace. Discoverability is key, along with a clear plan to build associations and differentiations with your competition every step of the way. 

List in API Directories

The most straightforward way to make sure that your product is visible to customers is to make sure it’s on store shelves.  Online API directories are a ubiquitous part of the marketplace for developers, and usually include search functionality that helps people narrow down the best API for their needs.

Listing capabilities vary by directory, but all of them include keyword functionality – it’s important that you provide as much information about your API as possible in the space provided to maximize results.

Some of the most popular directories include:

Tailor Content to Client Business Needs

No matter what your product is, your clients are looking for a business with a clear expertise, and clear ideas for just how best to use what you’ve built.

Knowledge articles and blogs offer a natural entry point for customers to discover your product through search engines, providing answers that naturally point the way towards your API as the best solution for their business problems.

You can also tailor your content to the niche audience that best fits your product through participation in Q&A sites like Stack Exchange, Quora, and Stack Overflow.

Whatever your strategy, it’s important to remember that tailored content is marketing, but it’s not an advertising pitch – references to the product should be restrained, only brought up where appropriate, with the general focus centered on providing information. Nothing undermines your credibility as an expert like coming across too much like a commercial.

Above all, engagement is key in this space; making voices available to answer questions that arise is the most solid way to engage the developer community and build trust with your customers.

Focus on the Audience

Business. You’re proud of the work you’ve done, and it’s tempting to fill your product marketing with technical information about how you built your API and how it works – but this kind of data can come across like a foreign language to the business people who make the purchasing decisions around your product.

As a primary strategy, that complexity should be made compelling to a lay audience – broken down into simpler terms with a clear focus on the capabilities and solutions your API can bring to a business, not the jargon.  It’s a simple concept, but easy to lose sight of:  focus on what your API does, not how it works.

Know your API’s unique selling position: what makes it distinct from the competition,  and addressing potential objections before your customers can even mention them.

Developers. Software developers are unlikely to be the audience that makes the purchasing decision for a particular API – but they are the ones who are going to be using it. Focusing some of your marketing content for them, with the kind of technical information they need, is vital to give them reasons to advocate for your solution above others.

Provide Documentation

Your API needs to be as simple for developers to utilize as possible if it’s going to stand out in the marketplace. Comprehensive documentation, traditionally through collaborative spaces like Confluence or various wiki software, is key to driving adoption.

Publishing and promoting new API documentation can even be a great way to push awareness of a new offering in the space.

Standards should be focused on following OpenAPI specifications – documentation that’s both human- and machine-readable. From there, it’s just a matter of covering the relevant territory; from authentication, to error handling, and any other situations that developers using your product are likely to run into.

To see how Canright has helped clients with API marketing materials, see Getting Started with the Envestnet | Yodlee Platform API – for Non-Coders. For a basic introduction to APIs, what they do and how they work, see Bridging the Gap.

Grow Your Brand in 2022 With Powerful Digital Marketing Tools

In today’s digital world, businesses must have an online presence to be competitive and attract prospective customers and clients. Having an online presence helps drive sales and improves brand visibility. Global brands like Amazon and Adidas, all the way down to small, local mom and pop stores benefit from having websites designed to market their products and services and rely on some form of digital marketing to reach their audience. 

What is digital marketing, though? How does it differ from regular marketing and why does it matter for small businesses? Digital marketing, or online marketing, is when businesses promote their products, services, and overall business online, whether via search engine optimization (SEO), email, social media, texting, or other forms of online or digital advertising. It matters for small businesses because it’s an affordable, productive, and relatively easy way to attract leads and reach customers.

Attract Attention with Digital Marketing

When businesses first start out, one of the most important things to tackle is determining who the target audience is and then using digital marketing tools to increase brand awareness. For example, a company specializing in installing terrazzo for commercial customers may cater its content and marketing efforts toward businesses and organizations. By using SEO, social media, and email marketing this hypothetical terrazzo business can reach out to and connect with business leaders to pitch their services and hopefully make a sale. It’s a process, but when done correctly, it works.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important and powerful digital marketing tools for small businesses in 2022. It’s the act of optimizing a business’s website with keywords, quality content, and links to improve rankings in search engines to reach more prospects. Website usability and responsiveness are also important. Ranking high on search engines like Google is important because it means potential customers will see your website over others when searching for products and services that your business offers. 

There are a lot of technical aspects that go into SEO, and when you’re able to get everything right, your business will have a better chance of ranking high. Website content, including targeted keywords and links, is vital to SEO. Content should always be well structured and researched and include keywords that you want to rank for on Google and other search engines. For example, if your business specializes in installing terrazzo or offering technical writing services, make sure the content on your website includes common phrases that researchers or prospective customers and clients might use when Googling businesses like yours. 

Social Media

Social media is another ubiquitous digital marketing tool. It’s everywhere and is an affordable option for small businesses. Think about how much time you spend on social media. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, the time people spend on social media has increased exponentially in recent years.

Because there is such a large potential audience already on social media, social media marketing is an affordable way for small businesses to market their brands and connect with potential and existing customers. With the right content, images, and/or videos, businesses can use social media to build connections, drive engagement, and direct traffic to their websites. 

Email Marketing

Even in 2022, email marketing remains one of the most effective digital marketing tools for small businesses. It’s affordable and a great way to market events and business news to a wide audience. Email marketing is also a great tool for attracting leads because email campaigns can be personalized with targeted messaging and attention-grabbing subject lines. When done correctly, email marketing can drive clicks to a particular landing page and improve website traffic and brand awareness.

Seize the Moment and Grow Your Brand

Digital marketing is a tool that can be personalized depending on a business’s budget. While small businesses may not have the budget for marketing that Amazon or Adidas does, tools like SEO, email marketing, and social media are affordable, effective, and help small businesses market their brand online. In the digital age we’re living in, it’s important for businesses, no matter the size, to have some sort of online presence and digital marketing plan in place to attract leads and grow their business. 

Relationship Building with Social Media and Email Marketing

There a many different ways businesses can attract leads. Social media, in-person events, online events, advertising with billboards and print media, are just a few ways businesses can appeal to prospective customers. One method, however, stands out from all the rest because of its simplicity and effectiveness. Email marketing. 

Despite the rise of social media and the appeal of in-person events, email marketing has stood the test of time as one of the most effective and easiest ways to reach prospective leads and existing customers alike. When done correctly, email marketing can stir enthusiasm for your brand and serve as a way to inform customers and prospects of events, products, services, and other relevant news to your business. 

Because of its effectiveness and simplicity, email marketing is an essential part of any marketing plan, no matter the business size or industry. Sure, interacting with prospects and customers via social media channels can boost engagement and visits to your website, but as a lead generation tool, social media doesn’t stack up to what email marketing can do. Carefully crafted email marketing campaigns are a prized tool when attracting leads because they can be personalized with targeted messaging. 

When done correctly, email marketing can drive clicks to a particular landing page, allowing businesses to analyze results and deliverability rates via analytics. This data come in handy when you want to assemble an ad campaign. After all, successful digital advertising isn’t possible if you don’t have the correct email addresses on hand. 

Email Address Lists: Clean Them Up!

Email is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal when it comes to communicating with prospects. For it to truly be effective, though, it’s important to maintain clean email address lists. There are many platforms out there, like MailChimp and Salesforce, that allow businesses to build and edit email lists. Keeping these lists clean and updated ensures emails actually reach your targeted audience and reduces the likelihood of bouncebacks. Email bouncebacks happen when an email fails to be successfully sent to a chosen recipient. This is likely to happen if you have outdated or incorrect email addresses on file, which is why regular maintenance of email lists should be part of any email marketing plan. 

What Makes Up a Good Marketing Email?

While email marketing is often praised as a simple marketing tool, that doesn’t mean you can just slap on any phrase in a subject line and expect spectacular, groundbreaking results. Think of the content in your subject line as the hook. It should be attention-grabbing, catchy, and stand out from other emails in your prospect’s inbox without sounding spam-y. The body content is important as well and should contain targeted messaging directing the reader to a particular landing page, event, or whatever your campaign is advertising. For example, if you’re advertising an event, make sure the body content contains a sign-up link. 

It’s About Relationships

With the right messaging and engaging subject lines, email marketing allows businesses to build relationships with prospects and customers. It can track down leads and the data collected via analytics can be an important tool for advertising campaigns. Even though it’s been around for a while, email marketing is no less important than it was a decade ago. In fact, it may end up being one of your most effective and reliable marketing tools. 

New Horizons in Cryptocurrency

What’s on the horizon for cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies? It’s a question on a lot of people’s minds, and there’s a potential for more than a good profit margin for financial professionals who come to the right answers: a potential paradigm shift in payments, investing, and the way we use the internet itself could be on the line.

For its April talk, the Chicago Payments Forum consulted an expert on this subject – Lamont Black, a Ph.D. Associate Professor of Finance in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University in Chicago. Black has become something of a regular fixture for a wide range of financial institutions in recent years, with a particular focus and expertise in all things crypto.

Black suggests that a real understanding of what’s next for crypto is built around an understanding of what cryptocurrency is – a more complicated question than it may seem at first blush. He suggests three major subject areas: cryptocurrency as money, as an asset, and as a platform for application development.

“The thing about crypto as it relates to money is that the original idea of Bitcoin was as digital currency, peer-to-peer electronic cash,” Black said. “I’d like to point out we’ve transitioned from physical cash to electronic payments, but it’s still heavily intermediated. What would it look like to have purely digital cash that is peer-to-peer?”

Some institutions have made leaps in this area – payments giants Visa and Mastercard are rolling out a program to support converting crypto into fiat currencies – but Bitcoin’s extreme volatility in particular still makes it a dicey prospect for wider adoption, and one that almost always relies on that intermediary step of conversion to a more common fiat currency like the U.S. Dollar.

But other concerns about crypto, or that Bitcoin has no intrinsic value? Increasingly less of a concern for financial professionals, suggests Black:

“I would argue no money has intrinsic value, so bitcoin being digital has no real bearing on value,” Black said. “The U.S. Dollar and the Fed… I think people are starting to have a few doubts about the dollar as it relates to inflation. You start showing pictures of the CPI index and inflation over the last 40 years, and you start to show, whoa, we are now 7.9% inflation. That’s going back all the way to the 1980s since we’ve seen numbers like that. Where is this headed? Could we wind up in stagflation?

“This is a great opportunity to raise questions about the central bank model. Central banks manage fiat currency, but there are times with monetary stimulus that some of that can start to get out of hand.”

An area of arguably more interest for financial institutions, in particular, is looking at cryptocurrencies as an asset class – and looking beyond bitcoin into Ethereum applications and NFTs.

“Understanding the technology in an Ethereum-based NFT, the asset itself is unique,” Black said. 

“It’s not just about cool pictures or fads, but a digital record of ownership. This whole wave we’re seeing of the creator economy using NFTs, using these digital platforms, to provide proof of ownership, is super interesting, and can be way more than just cryptocurrency.”

The potential for solving the problem of digital scarcity, and creating real ownership, would be a major feather in the cap for the creator economy, though major problems of fraud in the space will have to be addressed before that potential can truly be realized.

But perhaps the most potentially transformational aspects of cryptocurrency aren’t about crypto at all, but about the underlying blockchain technologies powered by currencies like Ethereum, with their programmable capabilities and the platforms they could empower.

“Even things like Metaverse and Web3, I think these are partly buzzwords, but also potentially watershed moments we’re seeing in our generation,” Black said. “As the economy digitizes, what does it look like to build these digitally native economies, like Second Life? This is not Facebook rebranding as Meta, this is Metaverse built on blockchain. Those are different things.”

And as Web3 continues to develop, Black argues that it could have effects far beyond the financial, and perhaps help us as a society reclaim that thing that seems almost entirely forgotten in an age of digital surveillance.

“We talk about how the internet is a system of data collection, data monetization, and the tech giants starting through personalized advertising are collecting information about you,” Black said. “I think the narrative around privacy used to be, ‘if you want privacy you must be a criminal.’ Privacy, in the national dialogue, is starting to emerge as something that we value. A lot of the internet is making money off of observing your behavior. If we can start to use that cryptographic technology to create a different system for browsing, for using decentralized applications using private keys, I think this could be a real paradigm shift where it’s no longer just transferring value through the internet, but how we use the internet.”

It’s a broad topic, but it’s not hard to see why it’s exciting so many professionals. As we continue to accelerate into a digital world – or maybe even a Metaversal world – the potential applications will only continue to balloon out. In many ways, today’s pioneers are still just scratching the surface.