One of the most challenging hurdles for marketers in the age of AI is to deliver content that drives action. And no one will act on your content if they don’t first trust your brand. So, how can you earn that trust — with constantly evolving cultural expectations, shifting buyer behavior, and a flood of low-effort content?

Today, everyone and their pet cranks out content at a mind-numbing pace. Thanks to generative AI and automation, anyone (and everyone) can churn out “good enough” content in seconds. To ensure your content doesn’t get lost in this rising tide of sameness, your content needs to answer two deceptively simple questions: Why now? And why you?

Marketers often pride themselves on “knowing the audience.” We build personas, map out pain points, and plan messaging accordingly. But how often are those pain points rooted in vague assumptions rather than lived realities? Are we truly tuning in to how our audience feels — about our product, our industry, our brand?

Too many B2B tech marketers focus on features and jargon, forgetting the one question buyers actually care about: “What’s in it for me?” WIIFM — or “what’s in it for me” — marketing flips the script so you can stop selling widgets and instead sell outcomes and solutions to people’s problems.

If your message doesn’t resonate with your audience, all the marketing genius (or budget) in the world won’t save your content from certain digital death. There are many simple ways of making sure your current and future customers and supporters relate to your message.

Storytelling is a buzzword today in just about any field that involves communication. It’s an essential tool that, if used well, can make or break a product, a cause, and even an entire business. But what, exactly is a story — and storytelling?

Stories tap into our psyche, tug at our heartstrings. They inspire us to act, encourage us to dream and remind us we’re human — and that the organizations, brands and companies we interact with have humans behind them as well.

Humans are emotional creatures. For professional communicators, stories create opportunities to deliver a message that can accelerate our audience’s understanding, help people relate — and, hopefully, take action as they see fit (though sometimes that action simply entails tuning the message out).

If you’ve ever been turned off by a weak handshake or a person’s business attire, you understand the power of first impressions. In business, that power is often held by your company’s website and other customer-facing materials. Sloppy or poorly executed marketing content is like having a tattered welcome mat at your door or peeling paint in your lobby — it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Too often, business owners think they can just copy an image off someone else’s website and use it in their own materials. Even if that image is a logo of a company sponsoring your event, or a photo of a product you’re selling, you are violating that company’s copyrights unless you have its permission to use those images.