Deliver Value Through Bricks and Feathers

Over recent months I had the opportunity to hear a speech and read a couple of articles about marketing bricks and feathers. Chris Sietsema, the pioneer of the concept “bricks vs. feathers”, and digital marketing strategist, Joel Baer, both from the firm “Convince & Connect”, have written and spoken extensively about how bricks and feathers can help to strengthen online marketing content. In his article “Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers“, Chris does a great job of explaining the difference between bricks and feathers, and why by using them, companies can potentially realize short-term and long-term benefits. Chris also shares his knowledge about what it takes to create and deliver a brick or a feather, and how to measure success.

As a professional marketer, I help technology businesses of various sizes and experience levels to create their marketing strategies, resources, and communications. I am a fan of bricks and feathers, and I think more technology companies should take a closer look at what they have to offer. I believe bricks and feathers do provide technology-based firms with great opportunity that is currently untapped or not optimized.

Bricks and Feathers: What are they?

Bricks and feathers are types of online marketing content. Each delivers information of value, however each performs a different role.

BRICKS! They are the resources that help to build a strong marketing foundation. Often written by thought leaders and subject matter experts, they contain content of substance and consist of resources that can be downloaded, saved, or printed. Bricks deliver in depth information and usually provide the “go-to” content for decision makers. Some examples of marketing bricks are: white papers, product videos, events, and case studies. To create marketing bricks requires significant investment in time and money; however, they last for a long time and can be used over again, many times.

FEATHERS! Feathers, on the other hand, are marketing communications that are used to keep a company, its brand, or its products and their benefits top–of–mind with a targeted audience. Feathers deliver snippets of fresh and relevant news and information. They are short-lived, generally impacting the audience for a few seconds, minutes, or possibly up to an hour. Marketing feathers are used to quickly engage the audience, and if successful, entice the recipient to take action. A feather takes less time to create than a brick, however a feather is delivered only once so you need to create more of them. Examples of feathers are: e-Shots and social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or on other social media sites. Feathers “tickle” you to capture your attention and they work best when used regularly to provide useful information and relative content.

Bricks and Feathers in a Technology Business

The reason I chose to write about bricks and feathers, is to help technology companies, especially the small-to-mid-size businesses, think more broadly and deeply about how to engage their prospects and customers online. What I have realized working with newer technology companies is that often they consist of technologists and technology leaders who are too busy and more interested in working on the product, than to develop a solid online marketing strategy and to build the necessary content.

Also, I have found that technology companies lean more towards creating bricks over feathers, probably because technologists or engineers like to work more with nuts and bolts. For those technology businesses that have created some bricks, I have learned that often their bricks are more like “pseudo bricks”. They contain content, but not necessarily the content that would be most relevant and useful to the intended user. These bricks don’t allow companies to be as successful as they could be. For some technology companies, feathers are not even on their radar.

Build Solid Bricks and Effective Feathers

Today providers of technology products and services need to have an effective online presence to be successful because most prospects first seek information from the web. As a result, it is essential that technology companies deliver content that allows prospective customers to be familiar with your company and its solutions, and to find the information they need to make informed decisions. Creating a combination of bricks and feathers is one way to tackle this challenge.

I offer the following advice to technology companies wanting to create a better online presence using bricks and feathers.

1. Plan your online content strategy. An ad hoc approach does not work well. Get professional marketing advice, when you need it.
2. Determine what content is useful and relevant to influencers and decision makers of your targeted audience. Create these bricks according to priority and budget.
3. Investigate using social media to keep your company and brand visible with your customers and prospects. Choose to use one or more social media tools that will best connect you with your targeted audience. Remember, you don’t need to use every social media tool available or post all the time. Just tickle your audience on a regular basis with helpful content utilizing the most appropriate tool.
4. Re-use your bricks because of their great content. Also, feathers are a great way to remind your audience that these bricks still exist.
5. Consider engaging your audience with regular eShots. Make sure these feathers include a call-to-action and offer something of value.

I wish I could provide technology companies with a formula that shows if you use this number of bricks and these numbers of feathers, you will attain optimal results. Such a formula does not exist, nor is there an absolute guarantee that bricks and feathers will be the perfect solution for your company. However, based on the success of bricks and feathers in other companies, I recommend giving them a try. So the next time your company starts talking about online marketing, make sure bricks and feathers are part of the discussion.