Millions of blog posts go live every day. There’s only one way to distinguish your blog content from the rest of the galaxy’s: Create SEO-fueled content with a unique brand voice, you must.
“Brafton has surpassed my expectations. They’ve been able to emulate our style, while successfully putting their own spin on it.”
– Heather Osteen, Marketing Communications and Brand Manager
Not very long ago in a galaxy not so far away …
A marketer grows weary of reading content that makes her feel like everyone knows something she doesn’t. “More tools, more complexity; make the starfleet marketing stack bigger and more sophisticated”—this is the propaganda spread by “The Empire” (an embodiment of the “more is more” mentality in marketing).
Enter the Rebel Leader. A clear-eyed messenger who strives to “disrupt the notion that more martech always equals better results.” They believe in “the power of simplicity over clutter—and focus over excess.” Their goal is “to liberate readers from the false beliefs espoused by The Empire and leave them free to achieve exceptional results with the right martech stack—not the biggest” …
Let’s pause there.
What the heck are you reading right now?
A case study, believe it or not.
That odd Star Wars-esque synopsis is paraphrased from a 1,000-word internal document we created so we would nail the editorial voice for our client, GeekHive.
The best part about that unusual document? It worked wonders.
“Brafton has surpassed my expectations,” Heather Osteen, Marketing Communications & Brand Manager, GeekHive, said. “They’ve done an incredible job at taking the information I gave them and owning the new brand messaging and voice. They’ve been able to emulate our style, while successfully putting their own spin on it.”
The challenge: Take a direct, empowering tone with top-of-funnel content
Brafton and GeekHive are kindred spirits in some ways. They’re a martech consultancy, and we’re a content marketing agency. We help marketers in very different ways, but at the end of the day, we’re both concerned with one thing: marketing that works.
And we both believe that great marketing is possible with the right tools.
In GeekHive’s case, they needed help providing clear and empowering guidance to a persona bogged down by FOMO, uncorroborated “should” statements, really big words, impossible-to-source data points and other cheap throat chokes dished out by martech monarchs.
The solution: Flawless execution … over and over and over again
GeekHive shared its writing and style guidelines with our editorial team. This was a start, but we wanted to make sure we had everything we needed to hit the mark, and then redefine the expectation.
So we put ourselves in GeekHive’s readers’ shoes, with defining persona statements like this one:
“The reader is suffering from externally imposed imposter syndrome. He or she feels inundated and overwhelmed by The Empire’s deafening din of bad advice.”
Naturally, we then started to do the opposite of The Empire. Here’s how we instructed our writers:
“You’re an essentialist, or a conservationist of sorts—you believe in choosing martech that:
- Integrates with your existing operational and tech workflows.
- Has a low or viable cost-per-use.
- Supports your team’s overall goals.”
There was a lot more guidance including a whole backstory about The Empire. But the point is that this was a creative exercise we conducted to a) understand GeekHive’s reader; b) know how to better address that reader; and c) have a real example of the tone and voice we want to use.
From there, we began creating easy-to-read, SEO-fueled blog content like this:
The outcome: ‘Content that is so valuable for our business’
“Whenever we receive a new piece, I can’t wait to read the content that they write,” Heather said. “I never have to change more than a word here or there. The research they do is on point.”
More to the point, the blog content Brafton creates for GeekHive is doing exactly what we wanted it to do.
“Brafton develops content that is so valuable for our business,” Heather said. “Not only can we post their articles to increase traffic, but we can also use their content for social media and sales enablement tools. As a result, they’re helping us establish our position in the market.”
We admit: This was one of the more droll and amusing ways we’ve gone about homing in on the right tone. But it was fun, and the ingenuity and effort that went into it was not lost on Heather.
“They listen to our needs and work hard to create content that aligns with our brand messaging. They’re really good at what they do.”
“They listen to our needs and work hard to create content that aligns with our brand messaging, she said. “They’re really good at what they do.”
Most importantly, it worked.
And just like GeekHive, we like marketing that works.