Interviewing Content Experts

Interviewing content experts for background for white papers and other marketing materials is different than interviewing customers for case studies (as I discussed in my last blog post) because you can’t work from a pre-established set of questions for the interview. Instead of simply asking about the problem, solution, and benefits of using your product as you would for a case study, you may need to obtain a high level overview of areas that may need to be covered in a particular white paper in one interview while in another interview for a datasheet you may need to drill into the specific details of technology or messaging.

How can you effectively interview these content experts to get what you need without taking too much time from their busy schedules? The following tips can help.

1.    Determine and communicate your objective for the interview.  Do you need to have a high level discussion to determine the direction for a particular piece? Do you need to know the primary messages a piece should convey? Do you need clarification of messaging? When you set up the interview, let the content expert know in advance the areas you’d like to discuss so they can prepare themselves before your meeting or call.

2.    Do advance research to come up with a list of questions. Content experts are typically so busy that you need to make the most of their time while you have them on the line. As a result, you’ll want to be as specific with your questions as possible. If you’re looking for high level direction, you might simply ask the questions from a creative brief. A creative brief will ask about the goals for the project, the audience, the customer problem the piece is meant to address, the highest level message, the 3-5 supporting messages, and so on. Alternatively, if you need detailed information for a white paper or datasheet, start by reading existing company materials on the topic, those from competitors, as well as articles from trade magazines and organizations. The content expert will be most useful if you can ask for clarification of key points mentioned in the materials, rather than asking them to give you a basic education on the topic. For example, instead of asking them to describe the capabilities their product offers, see if you can read existing materials from competitors then ask how their capability is different from one that sounds similar from your competitors . 

3.    Always ask why.  Many content owners are highly technical and are happy to talk about features. Frequently, your goal will be to find out how those features help customers and why those benefits are important. How will it allow them to improve their business processes? What will it allow them to do that they couldn’t do before and why is that important?

4.    Request specific examples. Software tends to be very abstract. Marketers often describe benefits that include improving business processes or speeding time to market. I find these phrases meaningless and often find my eyes glazing over when I read them. Instead, I prefer to ask content experts to describe an example of how a customer would use a particular capability in their business and how using that capability allows the customer to perform the task better, faster, cheaper, or more intelligently. For example, a content owner for an ERP solution might mention that talk a healthcare provider could use the accounts receivable module of his company’s product to save money. I’d ask them to expand on that and tell me how they save money. It may, for example, turn out that the ERP automatically matches the original purchase order to the actual invoice to ensure that the healthcare provider did not pay more for supplies than specified in the original purchase agreement.

By having a plan, specific questions, and providing content owners with amble opportunity to explain why things are important, you’ll get more value out of content expert’s time.

What are your experiences gathering information from content experts?

Comments

[Randy Kemp]

Good points. Preparation is laying the foundation.