I recently recommended the book The Discipline of Market Leaders by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema. In that book, Treacy and Wiersema tell us how they’ve discovered that businesses become market leaders in one of three ways:
- Operational excellence
- Product leadership
- Customer intimacy
By excelling in one of these areas, a company can lead their market. In this blog, I want to talk about the role that content plays in supporting each one of these.
Operational excellence
Content that supports operational excellence includes any content that directs, instructs, or outlines measures of use and productivity. Content in this area talks about how to do something well and is frequently internal to the organization. Content may include guides and training manuals, best practices.
Product leadership
Content that supports product leadership will be a mix of internal and external content. The internal content will need to help employees understand and communicate the product while the external content will need to explain / demonstrate the product. The more innovative the product is, the more it will need to be explained or demonstrated.
Customer intimacy
Customer intimacy content is primarily external. There will need to be some internal training and posted philosophies and workflows but customer intimacy will be primarily outward-facing content. You’ll want to combine current sales and marketing content with blogs and newsletters. Some of it can be available to everyone while other content should be sent only to customers.