How one person’s ideas can destroy an entire city and strangle the auto industry throughout the country

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Hey, it’s KOMREDA: Stories. We’re actually a content marketing agency, but we tell stories just for fun.

In 2013, Detroit was declared bankrupt with debts of $18.5 billion. It’s the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy.

Today in this article, we’ll tell you:

• how Henry Ford sent the wrong person to the USSR and thereby killed the entire automobile industry in the USA;
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• why all the problems stem from childhood;
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• why using sledgehammers and stickers against competitors is necessary.
  
  It’ll be packed, we promise.

The main culprit.

Meet Walter Reuther — the highest-paid mechanic at the Ford plant.

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In the 1930s, Walter organized the UAW (The United Auto Workers) — a union for automobile industry workers, which ultimately contributed to Detroit’s downfall.

Why did Walter decide to help the workers?

From a young age, Walter and his brothers were instilled with ideas of equality, brotherhood, and a world of broad opportunities for everyone. Every Sunday, their father organized debates for his sons to reflect on social issues: yellow journalism, child labor, civil rights, and the rights of women and black people. Quote:

On my father's knees, we studied the philosophy of the labor movement. We are confronted every day with the struggles, hopes, and aspirations of the working class.

At the age of 19, Walter got a job at the Ford plant and quickly rose in his career and salary. When he was 21, Ford offered him and his brother Victor to go to the USSR for 3 years and teach Russians how to work. Ford had sold its automobile assembly line technology to the Soviet Union, and someone had to show them how to use it.

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In the USSR, Walter was shocked. People worked in half-destroyed factories, lived in unheated barracks, ate poorly, while the management lived in luxury and didn’t care about any improvements in the factories. Walter even wrote letters to various committees and to the Moscow Daily News, an English-language socio-political newspaper, criticizing how the communists managed the factories.

Walter lasted in Russia for almost two years and snapped. He took his brother Victor, bicycles, and went on a tour. On bicycles. From Nizhny Novgorod to Japan. On bicycles! He said he wanted to see how people worked in other countries. The irresponsible Soviet people really got to him. By the way, before arriving in Nizhny Novgorod, the brothers also cycled all over Europe.

Later, Walter said that the trip taught him a lot. He said:

All people on earth crave simple things: jobs with certain guarantees, vast opportunities for their children, and, of course, freedom. We feel that we can contribute to the common cause and help American workers build strong and democratic unions. That's why we joined the labor movement.

Walter’s three-point plan to help American workers:

After returning from his journey to Detroit, Walter decided that if he wanted to help workers in the automobile industry, he needed to go after the top three fattest producers: Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler.

He couldn’t do it alone, so he turned to his brother Roy.

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Roy also felt deeply for American workers. By the time Walter approached him, Roy was already involved with unions himself, seeking to improve conditions in factories and bring back workers laid off during the Great Depression.

The brothers decided to form a workers’ union. That’s how UAW came into being, with nothing but good intentions. Later, however, all those intentions seemed to vanish somewhere, but more on that later.

Walter’s first strike

So, the target was the top. And Walter decided to start with “Ford”. But simply walking in and causing a stir wouldn’t cut it. So Walter decided to approach from the side — through the “Kelsey-Hayes” plant, which supplied “Ford” with brakes and wheels.

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Walter learned that “Kelsey-Hayes” wanted to speed up production. And at this plant, workers already occasionally lost fingers, limbs, and sometimes even their lives. They complained that it was difficult to keep up with the constantly increasing production speed. That was the reason for the strike.

Walter sat the workers down. Literally. The workers refused to get up and leave until management spoke with Walter, their representative. Management attempted to enter the plant and remove equipment, but thousands of sympathizers blocked the passage from the outside of the plant.

A strike is the conveyor’s worst nightmare. Everything that goes down the line is products from other productions, where similar conveyors work. And if assembly stops, for example, wheels, then the entire production stops: cars will only be assembled up to the “inserting wheels” stage. And then nothing. There will be no cars, sales will collapse, dealers won’t get goods, managers won’t earn from sales, customers will turn to competitors, and the brand’s reputation will plummet.

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A halt in the conveyor, even in one spot, immediately disrupts the entire production system. Restoring the operation of all companies requires a lot of time and money.

Let’s remind ourselves that “Kelsey-Hayes” supplied brakes and wheels to “Ford” — a major client that they didn’t want to lose. Therefore, the strike only lasted for 10 days. “Kelsey-Hayes” agreed to slow down production and provide equal pay for women. Additionally, UAW prohibited the company from firing workers who join the union.

Even if these workers were slacking off, drinking, and not showing up to the plant — to fire them, permission from UAW was required.

So now only Walter could decide who to fire and who not to.

After this event, everyone learned about UAW. 200 union members turned into several thousand. And Walter went to other plants to organize even more strikes.

Strike in Flint

When Roy and Victor learned about the victory, they immediately drove to Flint, a suburb of Detroit. And exactly one week after the end of the strike at “Kelsey-Hayes”, they sat down the workers of “General Motors”. It was December 31st.

The workers declared that they would celebrate the New Year at the plant and would sit for as long as necessary until the management made concessions and joined UAW, which had previously saved the workers of “Kelsey-Hayes”.

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At that time, “General Motors” was the largest automotive corporation in the world, so they could withstand the strike. The management waved off the workers and cut off electricity and heating at the plant. They said, “If you’re going to act up, then so will we.” The workers were freezing, but they didn’t leave the plant.

A few days later, the whole country decided to support the guys from Flint, and sit-down strikes spread across the states.

The police came to the plant in Flint, trying to negotiate. Negotiations were conducted with tear gas and bullets. Meanwhile, Victor drove around in a car, shouting through a megaphone, urging the workers to resist. The workers sprayed the police with water from fire hoses. The temperature outside was -8°C.

The state governor sent 2,000 people from the National Guard. He didn't want to remove the workers from the plant, but to ensure safety.

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General Motors owned the only plant in the country that produced engines for Chevrolet — their biggest client, from which the main income came. And when this plant also sat down, General Motors surrendered and signed a contract with UAW. The strike in Flint ended 44 days after it began.

Quote from Brother Walter about the Flint strike:

When the guys walked out of the plant, I had never seen such a night, and I probably never will. It was as if the whole country had gained independence, families were reunited for the first time since the start of the strike, children ran into their fathers' arms with tears in their eyes. It was a sea of humanity, where workers no longer felt fear.

A month later, 60,000 Chrysler employees were sitting on the floor. The strike lasted for four weeks. And they too signed a contract with UAW. Two out of three were wearing hats.

The ‘genius’ plan for Uncle Ford

The only one who understood what was going on was Henry Ford. He was against unions. To prevent workers from joining them, he empowered his security guards to roam the factories and ‘physically punish’ anyone who mentioned their rights or joining the UAW. This happened rarely because Ford’s workers labored at the most comfortable plant in Detroit and earned three to five times more than others. Therefore, they valued their jobs and understood that if they acted up, they would be fired. And somewhere else would be much worse, and even the UAW wouldn’t help.

Walter understood that everything was very well organized at Ford’s factories. And there was also a mini-army of three thousand security guards. It wouldn’t be possible to just storm the factory and cause a commotion. A plan was needed.

Two months after the strike at Chrysler, Walter invited friends and journalists to the Ford factory. There he simply handed out leaflets and called on them to join the happy 300,000 workers from other plants.

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Ford’s security guards didn’t bother Walter and his company. So what if they were handing out leaflets? Nothing else happened—workers just took the papers and went back to work.

Movement was needed—Walter took two more UAW leaders and tried to force their way through the gate to get onto the factory grounds. But this couldn’t be done. Handing out leaflets was questionable, but okay. But no one invited him onto the actual premises.

For attempting to enter without an invitation, Ford’s security guards roughed up Walter and his friend, leaving them with bloody faces.

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Walter Reuther (left) and Richard Frankensteen (right, also from the top of UAW). As you can see, Richard got much worse, but the press only wrote about Walter.

In essence, Walter just got his nose broken a bit, but the press really tried hard and solidified Walter’s title as the man who fights for workers’ rights to the last drop of blood.

The press started going all out against Henry Ford. Earlier, in 1932, there was the Hunger March—a procession of 5,000 people, which the headlines dubbed as the “Ford Massacre.” The press wrote then that the Hunger March started peacefully, but when the procession approached the Ford plant, they were met with clubs and bullets. Five workers died. Henry Ford took a beating from the press back then.

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Walter got it from the security guards in 1938. Only six years had passed—the hunger march was still fresh in memory, and Ford was attacking people again. It didn’t matter that UAW provoked it themselves. So Walter’s broken nose was carried like a red flag. They wrote something like, “Workers of all countries, unite, or Ford will do the same to you.”

Ford tried to defend himself however he could. Four years after the provocation, he also accepted UAW’s conditions.

First closed plant in Detroit

UAW brought down the biggest manufacturers and gradually began to control smaller factories.

While the big three could withstand strikes because they could compete and make money selling cars, Packard couldn’t. First, UAW shut down several factories supplying parts to Packard, and then the Packard workers themselves went on strike. As a result, the factory closed in 1958, leaving 40 thousand workers jobless.

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The factory still looks like this to this day. It’s gradually being demolished, but not very actively.

The building in the city center has turned into a huge abandoned area, attracting all the “undesirable” population of the city.

It can be said that the closure of "Packard" became a symbol of the impending collapse.

After the factory closure, those left without jobs began to leave the city abruptly. Only those who were extremely impoverished remained—mostly African Americans. With no work available, the situation worsened with the presence of white-hooded figures exacerbating tensions. Street protests, riots, police sirens, and increased military presence became more frequent for safety measures.

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The final nails in Detroit’s coffin came from the Germans, the Japanese, and the UAW

Factories were slowing down, workers were being laid off, but some still remained. They had to work, they had to earn money. But in the 1950s, car sales suddenly plummeted, not because people lacked money, but because foreign cars appeared in the States, and manufacturers faced competition from other countries for the first time.

The first foreign car for Americans was the Volkswagen Beetle. It was several times cheaper and consumed less fuel. Americans saw the tremendous demand for the Beetle and tried to compete somehow. But the workers, who couldn’t be fired, didn’t care about the quality of their work, and unreliable and crooked cars often came out from under their hands. The cost of maintaining an American car skyrocketed—cars cost tens of thousands of dollars, consumed 6 gallons per hundred miles, often broke down, and parts were also expensive, not to mention that fuel prices went up.

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People wanted cheap ordinary cars. The American automotive industry understood that it needed to change. But UAW hung over them and prohibited doing anything that could negatively affect the workers’ comfort, even if it meant preserving the industry.

And they couldn't care less that without the industry, there would be no workers, no Detroit, and no UAW itself.

Manufacturers tried to beg UAW for permission to restructure the assembly lines, production, and come up with new cars. But UAW refused and decided to be cunning. They engaged in propaganda to turn the population against foreign competitors. For instance, they bought Japanese cars, displayed them in public squares, and handed out sledgehammers to passersby. Yes, you read that right. To smash the cars.

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People fell for the propaganda. And smashing cars didn’t just happen in public squares. It became normal to wake up in the morning and find out that your Japanese car had been stolen, vandalized, or set on fire. Not because you were a bad person, but because you bought the wrong car.

Laid-off factory workers were told that it was all the fault of the Japanese. They came and disrupted the American economy, rather than acknowledging that there were no jobs because UAW prohibited anything that could compete in the market, like reconfiguring assembly lines.

UAW members were even given bumper stickers reminding them of Pearl Harbour…

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“Those same people who brought you Pearl Harbor brought you this. Be an American — buy American.”

And here it is, a little more minimalist:

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Germans and Japanese were capturing the market so quickly that at some point even the American government stepped in. They issued a decree that reduced the volume of imported foreign cars. Upon seeing this, Honda and Toyota… built their own factory near Detroit. And UAW couldn’t infiltrate there because the factory operated under Japanese conditions, and union rules didn’t apply to them.

Manufacturers couldn't do anything against their competitors. They missed the market, and UAW didn't give them the opportunity to recover.

Workers didn’t want to work, UAW prevented restructuring of production and reallocating resources, car sales were weak, and automakers were running out of money. Factories were closing, jobs were being cut.

The city saw more and more abandoned buildings and closed businesses (not just automotive ones). The number of unemployed people was also increasing, and criminal gangs and drug trafficking were on the rise. Those who couldn’t leave had to find a way to live and make money.

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Mostly marginalised and predominantly African American population remained in the city, organizing gangs. In the 70s, they almost entirely controlled local drug trafficking, which was growing due to heroin and cocaine epidemics. The city was then dubbed the murder and violence capital. This destroyed urban tourism, and other countries even issued warnings about Detroit for travelers. There could be no talk of reviving the status of the automotive industry king.

Frequent strikes shook protest sentiments among people. They were used to achieving their goals through undemocratic methods. Perhaps if it weren’t for this, Detroit would be different now.

And now Detroit is like this: life exists only in the downtown area. Buildings are being rebuilt there, cultural people are being attracted to turn the city into an art capital, and many sports competitions are being held, attended by tens of thousands of people. But the population talks about Detroit as if all the rebuilt and entertaining aspects are just facades for the sake of facades, and in essence, the government is not doing much to bring the city into order.

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Beyond downtown, almost no one lives there; everything is destroyed, abandoned, and looks grim. There are areas where even the police don’t go. Ordinary people carry weapons in their pockets because they fear for their lives.

In the 1950s, the best time for Detroit, almost 2 million people lived in the city. After the Packard plant closed, people started leaving, and the population was decreasing every year. Now only 630,000 people remain in Detroit.

Bottom line

The main reason for the decline of Detroit is usually attributed to the UAW and Walter Reuther. If we judge Walter based on what we’ve written above, then his activities raise questions in some places. But what doesn’t raise questions?

• He devised a plan for Roosevelt to produce 500 aircraft per day through automobile factories, thus aiding in World War II.

• He persuaded Kennedy to create an organization that would later become the Peace Corps.

• He assisted Martin Luther King Jr. in marches against racism and spoke alongside him at the same microphone.

• He discussed civil rights legislation with Kennedy.

• He donated $50,000 from the UAW to striking sanitation workers, which was the largest financial contribution from any external source.

• He established the Department of Conservation and promoted environmental ideas, urging the purification of water, air, landfills, and slums, and advocated for creating “a common habitat worthy of free people.”

• He funded the first Earth Day, printed and distributed all necessary materials, and mobilized UAW members to participate in public demonstrations across the country.

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And here’s another ambiguous fact: Walter, while advocating for workers’ rights, doesn’t seem to have been a communist because he fought against communist views within the UAW and expelled openly communist members from there. He even met with Khrushchev to discuss the fight against communism.

But! Despite this, Walter was constantly accused of being a communist, and there is evidence of his close friendly and financial ties with the Communist Party USA, which supported all of his activities and openly declared it. Walter vehemently denied his connections, but he began to deny them only when communists in the United States became sharply disliked.

That’s Walter Reuther for you. But you can draw your own conclusions

If you liked the text, you can order one for your company.

At KOMREDA Agency, we create blogs, media content, special projects, social media content, and much more. And in our Telegram channel, we share tips on building profitable content marketing strategies.

By COMREDA: Explore business, marketing, scandals, intrigues, and investigations through the lens of the content marketing agency project KOMREDA: https://komreda.ru/
The text is published with the permission of COMREDA.
The original text is here.

Copy, copywriting: Creating high-quality content is expensive, which means releasing it once and forgetting about it is too wasteful. In this article, I will share how I distribute content in my projects to maximise reach from a single piece.

Hello! My name is Pasha Molyanov, and I lead the content agency “Sdelaem” (“Let’s Make It”). We produce a lot of content for self-promotion: I have blogs on Telegram and VC, conduct webinars, and my agency team manages social media, releases articles, creates courses, and videos. You could say we have a small content factory.

We strive to maximize the distribution of the limited content produced by this “factory.” I’ll talk about 8 ways how this happens.

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1. Write a copy in the media

In January, I conducted a webinar on the Tilda Education channel, where I discussed 7 ways to improve text for landing pages. Approximately 100 people watched the live broadcast, and the recording gathered 5,400 views.

A couple of weeks later, I provided the recording of this webinar to one of our authors, and he turned it into an article. We published it on VC, and it garnered 9,600 views. I didn’t come up with entirely new ways to enhance landing page text, nor did I conduct an interview with the author to generate material. I simply edited the text a bit before publication, and that’s it.

Case 1: Webinar. 5400 views.
Case 2: Article on the VC. 9600 views.

2. Make a lead magnet

Once, we hosted a webinar on how to write articles on VC, and following that, a brief guide on the same topic was published directly on VC. Taking it a step further, we created a mini-course based on the same theme. Now, it can be used for advertising purposes to attract a new audience.

Case 1: VC 8400 views
Case 2: Pikabu 6000 views
Case 3: Habr 2900 views

Currently, we are working on another lead magnet – a knowledge base on content marketing. To achieve this, we’ve compiled the best posts and articles from our blogs over the entire period of their existence, and we’ve organized them into a personal dashboard. Access to this dashboard will be granted in exchange for an email address.

As a result, everyone benefits: people have convenient access to advice they no longer need to search for across channels, and for us, it presents a new opportunity to attract individuals into our sales funnel, garner additional reach, and provide a second life for posts that might otherwise have been lost in the depths of Telegram.

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3. Cross-posting in the media

If you’ve published an article in your blog or on VC, you can repost it without changes on other platforms, such as at least Pikabu and Habr. They treat non-unique content normally, and there are no sanctions for it.

I’ve recently started using this method, and there’s already an effect. For example, I wrote an article on VC about hiring a personal assistant, and it gained good traction with 14 thousand views. On Habr, it almost reached the same number: 13 thousand. Doubling the reach literally from scratch!

Of course, there are instances where cross-posted articles don’t perform well. For example, the same article about the assistant on Pikabu didn’t yield anything except for sharp comments. Well, that’s okay, as the publication cost me practically nothing.

We’re implementing this process in our agency, so currently, we only publish on Pikabu and Habr. There are other publications where you can follow the same principle. Someday, I’ll gather them into a comprehensive collection and publish it on my blog.

My agency’s primary social network is Telegram. We don’t specifically create content for other platforms; we simply copy it there.

Again, if a post doesn’t gain traction on other platforms, well, that’s okay, as it only took a couple of minutes to publish. But if it does, that’s fantastic because it’s free exposure.

On VKontakte, where I have 5,000 friends-subscribers, posts typically reach 600-1200 views, sometimes spiking to 2500 views.

On Zen, this tactic has brought in 8,400 subscribers since 2018. Posts there average 1600-1800 views, with a cumulative reach exceeding a million people.

On Tenchat, where I simply republish posts from my Telegram, I’ve become one of the largest bloggers, with 11,000 subscribers and a weekly reach between 20,000 to 100,000.

There are leads as well, not just reach. Over 4 years of managing blogs:

• From Zen: 89 agency service leads and 80 purchases of paid training.
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• From Tenchat: 30+ leads.
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• From Facebook, several targeted leads come in every month. Recently, for example, a lead from there resulted in a deal worth 1.2 million rubles.

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5. Resizes for social networks

When we release a long read or conduct a webinar, the content is repurposed for social media: the essence remains the same but in a condensed format. If the material is extensive, we might even create multiple posts.

When we used Instagram advertising, we followed the same strategy. Additionally, we ran ads for these posts, gaining subscribers at a cost of 30-40 rubles per follower.

Resize according to the article about resizes as an example of how resizes can be done.

6. Republishing

Reposting successful posts after some time is a smart strategy: new followers may not have seen them, and even if the existing ones did, they are unlikely to react negatively if your overall content provides value.

There are different ways to repost:

1. Direct Reposting: Simply repost the same content without changes. Throw the post back out there after six months to a year. Unless you’re Artemiy Lebedev, chances are no one will notice.
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2. Create Content Collections: Compile several posts at once to boost overall reach. You can create a collection of the best posts for the month or organize posts around a specific theme.
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3. Reference Old Posts in New Ones: This is something I do in my Telegram channel. I add a link to a related post at the end of a new one. If there’s no post specifically on the topic or if I’m feeling lazy, I just link to a random post.

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7. Mailings

If you have an email database, you can include already released content in a lead nurturing sequence. Here’s how it works for us:

1. Someone receives a lead magnet in their email and joins our email database.
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2. We identify which of our content performed the best, gauged by social media reactions or media coverage. If we conducted a newsletter campaign announcing an article, we can also evaluate it based on open rates and clicks.
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3. We craft emails from these successful content pieces and create a sequence. You can send only these emails or mix them with product-related messages and offers, depending on your goals.
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4. Voila! New subscribers receive an email with our most impressive content every few days. We don’t do anything extra for this; subscribers think we release gold every week =)

This strategy not only keeps your audience engaged but also showcases your best content to new subscribers, creating a positive impression.

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8. Conferences

I began this article with a story of how a presentation transformed into text. Now, I’ll end with a tale of how the text turned into a presentation.

In the middle of last year, I invested heavily in advertising for my Telegram channel—placing ads in 34 channels, experimenting with various creatives, and creating a convenient table to analyze the results.

Later on, I decided to share this experience and wrote a post on how I purchase advertising. The post gained traction, leading us to compile a detailed article for VC, which has now garnered over 50,000 views.

When I was invited to speak at a conference on sales and content marketing, I simply crafted a presentation from this article and went on stage.

In short, if you’ve produced successful content once, release it a second, third, fourth, fifth time. Why let something good go to waste?

By the way, this article is also a result of such an approach. I’ve long been writing in my blog about zero-waste content production, and now I decided to share it with you.

If you found this helpful, consider subscribing to my Telegram channel on content marketing and agency development. Most of my content appears there first → @molyanov

BY PAVEL MOLYANOV
I blog about content and marketing. 
I run a content marketing agency.

"We are a young, dynamically developing company" copy on your web does not work any more. 
In the article, I discuss how to obtain a cool texture for your website without struggling with the text and without inundating future readers with watery content.

I'm Pasha Molyanov, the head of the "Sdelaem" ("Let's Do It") agency. We create content for businesses, launch remote editorial offices, and, among other things, design landing pages.

When clients come to us for a new website, I often inquire about how they came up with the old one. The process typically goes like this: a marketer or company leader solemnly declares, “Let’s create a corporate website!” Then everyone starts scratching their heads and begins to laboriously present themselves:

→ Individual approach to each client…

→ Working with Scrum and Agile…

→ Our story began back in 2003…

→ We love our work more than life…

→ More than mom…

In general, employees do their best to praise themselves and their company. It’s good if they do it sincerely, but even with such content for the website, there remains a problem:

This is how every other company writes about itself. It’s a dull nonsense that can be placed on the website of almost any business without losing its meaning. Both plumbers and dentists and photographers individually cater to each client—just that it doesn’t say anything about the business ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

For a website to turn out genuinely impressive, preparation is key. Dig up information about the business and its customers. It’s worth compiling the main advantages of the company and also understanding the interests and needs of the customers. At the intersection of these realms, a good commercial website will emerge.

What information about the business is worth seeking for a good copy

The task of a corporate website is to introduce the user to the company and convince them that you’re impressive. It’s crucial to structure the narrative so that the reader has no lingering uncertainties after viewing the page. To achieve this, it’s essential to address three overarching questions:

Question 1: “What do we do?” Provide information about the product directly on the first screen. It should be unequivocal, clear, and concise. To formulate key points, consider the following additional questions:

• What is the essence of our product?

• How can the product be described in a couple of sentences?

• Who needs the product and why?

• In what situations is the product beneficial?

…

The complex Digital Foreign Trade service has been encapsulated in a couple of sentences by our company’s specialists. These highlight the main aspects, with details available on subsequent screens.

Question 2: “Why is what we do considered impressive?”

Having introduced the website visitor to the company, it’s now essential to convince them of our professionalism. To achieve this, gather information that highlights the company’s advantages and distinguishes it from competitors. Here are some guiding questions:

• How is our product superior to competitors?

• What features are exclusive to our product?

• What are we particularly proud of?

• What do customers praise most frequently?

…

The document workflow service EnDocs lists all its advantages in a concise list, then further elaborates on each of them in detail.

Question 3: “How does it work?”

Explain to the reader the mechanics of interacting with your business. Users should understand how the service is provided, what the product looks like, and how to use it. This alleviates concerns before making a purchase. Consider the following points:

• How is our product structured?

• What happens after placing an order?

• What additional perks do we offer?

• What aspects are typically unclear to buyers?

…

Dasha.AI, the conversational AI, can be a complex product for the average user. That’s why the company has placed a video explaining its functions on the second screen to make it more understandable.

All the information for the future website can be squeezed out through independent brainstorming, but it’s time-consuming, challenging, and it’s easy to miss important details. Instead, it’s better to use more reliable methods. More about them in the next section ↓

How to extract meaningful information about the product

When a company has been operating for a while, it accumulates a wealth of valuable data about its own product. This includes marketing statistics, customer correspondence, technical support reports, and much more. All this data should be extracted and processed. Where to dig:

Talk to employees. Inside any company, there are specialists who can share interesting information about the product. A sample interview list might look like this:

• Company Director: Most likely, they know almost everything about the business. You can inquire about how the product is structured, its purpose, and why it is designed the way it is.

• Product Manager: This specialist can provide additional information complementing what the director shared. As they are usually more involved in operational work, they can share finer details that may be overlooked by the director.

• Sales Department Manager: This employee has a better understanding of what motivates potential customers to make a purchase. You can find out which product features seem more attractive to the audience and which ones might be off-putting.

• Marketer: This professional can provide insights into the company’s strategies for product promotion and what proves to be more effective. This data can be a basis for crafting future text.

• Technical Support Operator: This employee knows the challenges customers face. They can share information about which parts of the product are more prone to issues, what tends to break most frequently, and what customers struggle with. This information allows for a more detailed exploration of nuances and helps navigate controversial details.

…

Most often, employees willingly engage and even propose their own solutions for gathering information.

Send the brief to the product manager. It’s a straightforward method of information gathering: you work through the questions in the document once, and then you can use it dozens of times in similar situations. The product manager will independently approach all specialists in the company and extract valuable data from them.

Briefs come with their drawbacks—sometimes, documents are filled in haphazardly, during smoke breaks or lunch breaks. As a result, the information in the file turns out fragmented and not detailed enough—details still need to be extracted independently.

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Fragment of the brief we send to clients. In the document, we include an example so that the client better understands what information to provide.

Refer to the knowledge base. The company almost certainly has repositories from which you can extract a bit more data. This includes the old website, product presentations, sales instructions, technical support scripts, and marketing reports. Ask the company specialists if you can access these files and thoroughly sift through them—perhaps you’ll discover interesting details.

When you receive the files, immediately click on all the links and open all the archives. It would be awkward if the client provides links, and you come back for access a week later.

If you gather information about the product following this algorithm, you’ll likely have more than you need. Don’t force-fit it all onto the website. Leave space for the client.

Where to get information about the client

When the entire landing page is dedicated to the company, it turns into continuous self-admiration. Clients will find such content uninteresting—what’s crucial for them is understanding what they will gain from your product. To achieve this, gather information about the audience, their interests, and needs.

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What is important to the reader versus what you wrote.

Talk to the employees again. Consult with the director, product manager, sales department manager, marketer, and technical support operator. Inquire about how customers choose a product, what factors they consider, and what problems they solve with it. This will give you an initial understanding of the audience.

Questions to ask include:

• Who uses our product?

• Into which segments can they be divided?

• Where can these people be found?

Surveying employees in this case is just the first step in gathering information. Beyond that, extensive research begins. Ideally, after the interviews, you’ll compile a list of information sources. This could include a collection of blogs followed by the audience, contacts of regular customers, or a database of customer reviews.

Explore social media. Find relevant public pages and groups, join thematic chats, and subscribe to competitors’ pages. Then, read comments on posts, follow discussions, and note popular topics. You need detailed answers to five questions:

• What do people find confusing?

• What questions do they commonly ask?

• What can’t they find?

• What frustrates them?

• What do they praise and why?

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I have a community called “Overheard in Copywriting” with 30 thousand subscribers. When launching a new product for authors, we draw inspiration from the discussions in it.

Listen to recorded calls and review correspondences. You can gain access to them through sales representatives, account managers, and technical support. It’s beneficial if you’re provided with the password to a work account so that you can review everything yourself. Ideally, gaining access to the CRM system allows you not only to extract compelling arguments but also to see the outcomes of the conversations.

In CRM, you can filter calls that resulted in a sale. By listening to them, you can understand which arguments or statements are most effective in convincing people to make a purchase.

Conduct surveys. Create a list of questions that will help better understand the audience. For each company, these questions will be unique, so it’s better to focus on global blocks that need to be covered:

• What does our average buyer look like?

• What convinces the user to make a purchase?

• What prevents users from making a purchase?

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For creating surveys, we often use Google Forms. It’s a free tool, users don’t need to register, and the data can be easily uploaded to CRM.

Once the questions are ready, it’s time to distribute the survey. You can reach out to the existing customer database and also publish the questionnaire on social media, your website, and send it to customers via email.

If the existing customer base is insufficient to gather enough information, consider joining relevant communities. If you sell fishing hooks and lines, reach out to the administrator of a “Fishing Club”; if you offer services for digital marketers, contact the owner of an advertising-related community. It’s likely that you’ll have to pay for placement in an external community, but the insights you gain will justify the investment.

To obtain more surveys, you can use survey services. For example, you can organize information gathering through Yandex Vzglyad. In the service, you can create a form and then launch the survey. The target audience will see the questionnaire, but you’ll need to pay for promotion.

5 rules for conducting in-depth interviews

A complex but highly effective way to gather important information about clients is to conduct in-depth interviews with them. Request contacts for a few clients from company employees; in most cases, 10 people are sufficient. Call them and inquire extensively about their interests, needs, perceptions of the product, and decision-making motivators.

During interviews, focus on five principles:

1. Don’t sell or praise the product. Sometimes we do this unconsciously when describing a company’s product or service. Neutral characteristics can be easily presented in a way that makes them look advantageous and appealing. This leads to two distortions:

• People agree with you not to offend you.
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• In the moment of the interview, the person might show interest in the product, but in reality, they won’t actually make a purchase in the future.

2. Don’t believe compliments. During interviews, people may offer compliments out of politeness or enthusiasm. It’s not guaranteed that these praises accurately reflect reality. You might even choose not to record compliments to avoid distorting the research with them.

3. Don’t talk about the future. Immediately discard questions in the spirit of “what if… would you buy…”. They don’t contribute to sales because many people simply don’t know what they really want. Right now, the idea may seem cool and interesting to them, but when you come to them with the product, they’ll likely have more important matters to attend to.

Instead of hypothetical reasoning, it’s better to talk with the audience about the past and present:

Would you use an orbital laser with auto-targeting on your car to warm up the engine in half a minute?

How do you usually warm up your car’s engine?

Questions about what is already present in the client’s life will provide much more insight into their needs. Theorizing about the future makes it much more difficult to obtain information that aligns with reality.

4. Ask open-ended questions so that people can elaborate and provide more information:

Do you think this product will solve your problem?

What do you currently see as an issue for yourself?

5. Don’t impose the desired answer. Interviewers often try to confirm an existing hypothesis. Therefore, they unconsciously steer towards the answer they want to hear. This leads to a distorted picture: the buyer agrees with the interviewer on everything, is ready to buy anything, and doesn’t see any flaws in the product.

At the end of all your research, you’ll have a wealth of information that can be used on the website. However, there’s no need to cram everything in – the reader’s head will explode before they buy the product. Organize and structure the data beforehand, extracting the most important elements.

How to link information together

A great website highlights the product’s advantages and takes into account the buyer’s interests. We already have data on both aspects. Now it’s a matter of weaving everything together, discarding the unnecessary, and retaining the essential.

When preparing landing pages, we gather information into five groups:

• What sets the company apart from competitors.
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• What concerns buyers more profoundly.
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• What is unclear to users.
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• What is important to the audience.
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• What solves the problem for consumers.

Almost always, the information we place in these categories finds its way into the final version of the website.

Conduct a consolidated analysis. Read through all your notes again and highlight information that connects customer queries with your solution. For example:

Customer Concern: Not enough time to monitor contractors.

How You Solve It: Clients in your agency are accompanied by an account manager who sends a weekly report on tasks.

Website Text: You won’t have to spend a lot of time monitoring progress – every week, we send a detailed report on tasks. You will always be informed about the project’s progress even without deep immersion.

Segment Your Audience: Organize customer data to better understand which segments to target with website content. Here are common methods:

• Use Customer Avatar descriptions – profiles of the average customer. Describe their age, interests, and why they turn to your company. Multiple avatars may emerge, and you can work with all of them.
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• This method is very visual. When crafting texts, you can envision a real person rather than focusing on dry data. However, it’s not commonly used due to its time-consuming nature.

Example of a Target Audience Portrait for a Self-Employed Service. When designing the website, one can envision this young woman and carefully consider the information she would like to see.

Name: Anna

Age: 28 years

Occupation: Copywriter, freelancer

Lifestyle: Anna values freedom and flexibility in her work. Being self-employed and active, she often finds herself on the go – in cafes, at events, or in the park. Her day is filled with work, creativity, and socialising.

Problems and Needs:

• Financial management: She wants an easy way to track income and expenses to plan her budget effectively.
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• Legislation: Tax-related and self-employment rules interest her, but she prefers the information to be presented in an accessible and understandable way.
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• Insurance: Concerned about her future, she wants to understand how to ensure insurance protection for herself.

Expectations from the website:

• Mobile-friendly interface: Considering her active lifestyle, it’s essential for her to manage all aspects of her business from her phone.
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• Clear articles and guides: Information about taxation and insurance is presented in simple language.
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• Income tracking tools: The ability to manage her finances and generate reports easily.

When designing the website, the designer and copywriter can imagine how Anna interacts with the content and tools, making them as user-friendly as possible for her.

You can simply make a sign with different groups and write down the needs, motivators, interests. Everything is approximately the same, but without representing a specific person.

Here’s a simplified table with different groups and their corresponding needs, motivators, and interests:

This table provides a general overview of the diverse target audience groups, their specific needs, motivators, and interests. Designers and content creators can use this information to tailor the website to meet the expectations of each group effectively.

Create a list of hypotheses. Review all the gathered information and brainstorm ideas for the future website. Highlight the company’s advantages that align with the audience’s needs. Present the theses in a way that is clear and beneficial to the potential user you have identified.

To filter out wild ideas that may arise, present the ideas with reasoning: “Let’s include X on the website because our clients want Y. This will convince them that our product is A and alleviate concern B.”

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Hypotheses that we formulated before designing one of the landing pages. It’s only after confirming such decisions that we should proceed to develop the prototype.

Who should write text for the site?

After preparing the hypotheses, the next step is to defend them before the team. Those that survive the collective brainstorming session will be implemented on the website. When it comes to writing the text, there are different approaches:

1. Do it Yourself: This is a cost-effective option if you’re on a tight budget. If you can dedicate several hours a day to the website, you can manage all the texts within a week.
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2. Hire a Professional Copywriter: Hiring a good copywriter is crucial. Opting for a cheaper specialist might result in low-quality work. Sometimes fixing poorly written text can cost more than hiring a quality professional from the start. The cost of a copywriter could range from 30,000 to 50,000 rubles.
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3. Delegate to a Marketer: A marketer can outline the structure and then find a more affordable copywriter to produce decent texts. The expenses in this case would include paying the marketer for their work and an additional 10,000 rubles for the copywriter.
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4. Engage an Agency: Turning to an agency is a great option for a turnkey solution. Agency specialists will conduct research, identify copywriters, and then design and develop the website. While it provides a hassle-free experience, development costs start from 50,000 rubles.

If you’re interested in content marketing, subscribe to my Telegram blog → @molyanov

Every day I share my experience of attracting clients using blogs, social networks and the media.

BY PAVEL MOLYANOV
I blog about content and marketing. 
I run a content marketing agency.

Copywriting: We make cool projects, but the cases turn out dull. What is the problem? 

I'm telling you about 8 reasons why it's challenging to showcase how truly cool and professional you are in stories about work.

Hello! My name is Pasha Molyanov, and I lead the content agency “Sdelaem” (“Let’s Do It”)

If I had to choose just one format from all of content marketing, I would choose case studies. Because in them, you have everything: showcasing results, telling the story of the work process, demonstrating your expertise, and illustrating how a product can be based on the client’s task.

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But I know that many struggle to streamline case study production because they turn out differently than expected. At first, it seems like each case will be a significant event and lead to a bunch of clients, but in reality, they end up as a small splash with zero comments.

Here are the most common problems with case studies that prevent them from succeeding ↓

Issue #1. Inflated Expectations from Case Studies

Perhaps, cases may only seem unsuccessful because too much is expected from them: likes, comments, tens of thousands of views, and a flow of service inquiries on top. While such cases do exist, they are genuine gems, like this case.

Most cases, however, are workhorses that don’t break the internet. For instance, with “Bathyscaphe,” we wrote a case about tax optimisation. The article got 3200 views, which isn’t a lot. Yet, it brought in four clients.

Another essential function of cases is to be in the right place at the right time:

• A client chooses between two companies and prefers the one that published a case on dealing with their specific task and industry.
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• During negotiations, a client doubts whether their task can be solved, and the seller immediately shows them a relevant case.
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• A client visits the website, sees 150 successful cases, and the mere presence and quantity add a plus to the trust in the company.

In these cases, it’s not even about popularity at the level of 3200 views, but cases fulfil their purpose.

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All else being equal, cases always lose in popularity to guides, explanations, analytics, reviews, sketches, and storytelling. If one case out of ten takes off, that's already impressive. The purpose of cases is different: to demonstrate how you work with a specific user scenario.

Issue #2. Lack of Interesting Texture

A qualitatively executed project can be downright uninteresting. For example, our agency writes articles for clients on VC. The vast majority of such projects follow the same script: the editor communicates with the client, selects a few topics for articles, chooses one with the client, conducts an interview based on it, writes and approves the text, and then publishes it: done.

Often, advice on writing cases includes suggestions like: “Tell about unexpected situations! How you dealt with things not going as planned! How you made mistakes! How you made a difficult choice!”

I completely agree with this, but what if there isn’t any of that? Make things up? We approached the client call with trepidation: we had to choose three out of five approaches for the article. Those very three approaches that would determine the fate of the entire advertising campaign in PromoPages!

The copywriter is giving birth to an intriguing and epic approach to one more copy about setting up advertising in Telegram Advertising.

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Even for “ordinary” projects, cases are necessary. I am generally an advocate of having a case for every project. However, they can be released in a light version: simply showcasing the results of the work.

“An article in the media about how to save money on preparing advertising content.”

And we don’t have to struggle, and the client will see: here’s the article, it’s interesting to read, the views are good. So, these guys are great, we can turn to them.

Issue #3. Project authors don’t want to deal with case studies.

In publishing cases, two people are most interested: the owner who needs cases to attract clients and the copywriter who is paid for their production.

For everyone else, it’s task number 100500.

The problem is that neither the owner nor even the copywriter can write the case on their own. It’s crucial to have the person (or persons, compounding the problem) who worked on the project.

This person is usually busy working on another project. To write a case, they need to recall the course of the previous project, gather materials, give an interview to the copywriter, and approve the text before publication. It’s a big task, and that’s why cases get stuck. The copywriter hangs around, is treated to breakfasts, and when those stop, they get a “quick” interview.

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Employee to copywriter: “Let’s write a case.”

I haven’t come up with an elegant way to solve this problem yet. There’s only one that works with a script, but at least it works.

To address this issue:

1. Incorporate case creation into the employee job responsibilities. Make it so that saying “It’s not my job” is not an option.
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2. Devise clear motivation for the team. In our “Let’s Do It” agency, editors receive a fee for cases. “Non-Boring Finances” shared that producing a certain number of cases is a condition for moving to the next grade.
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3. Assign someone responsible for cases. Have a person who will push everyone. It’s crucial that this person can’t be told, “Let’s do it sometime later,” “I don’t want my case published,” “I’ll send the screenshots in 4 weeks,” or just be ignored. In our case, it’s the marketing director handling this. Hopefully, he can delegate it =)

Issue #4. The copywriter is not familiar with the subject matter.

When the project is excellent, the expert has provided interesting insights, and the case should turn out fantastic—yet the outcome is something crumpled and amateurish, with oversights and even factual errors—it’s often because the copywriter is not familiar with the subject.

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This can happen when a copywriter is just starting to work with a new topic they are not acquainted with. The key is not to write off the copywriter as soon as you get the first “amateurish” case. Accept that the first five to ten cases may need extra effort: finding articulate experts, attending meetings with the copywriter, editing the cases several times, and providing materials for learning.

In the early stages, evaluate purely copywriting skills: structure, logic, formulations, visualization skills, and the ability to conduct interviews. Expertise will come later for such a copywriter if you help them immerse themselves in the subject, as it’s entirely new to them.

If you’re not ready for this, seek out copywriters with experience in your field. It’s challenging, but then the cases will be excellent right away.

Issue #5. Not a story but a collection of facts.

Even the most interesting project can turn into a dull, unreadable case if you simply bombard the reader with facts: conducted an audit, implemented one thing, fixed another thing, conducted a plan-fact analysis after a month, here are the results, thank you and goodbye.

In such cases, what’s lacking are the connections that bind the facts into a coherent story:

We began our work with diagnostics and noticed that one of the salespeople was experiencing a drop in conversion → Our task was to increase the conversion rate, but the company lacked detailed analytics. Without it, it was unclear what exactly to focus on. So, we started with diagnostics: for two weeks, we measured the results of the sales department as they were, without any changes. When we tallied the results, we saw that one of the salespeople was experiencing a drop in conversion.

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To boost conversion, we developed an individual training program for the salesperson → Usually, conversion drops when the salesperson lacks knowledge about the product or doesn’t follow the sales process. To check this, we listened to dozens of calls by Ilya – but there was nothing significant there. However, we noticed his speaking style: calm, quiet, sometimes even monotonous.

To the project author, all these connections might seem obvious because they’re accustomed to making such decisions. However, for an outsider, these connections help in better understanding the situation, making it more enjoyable to read.

Moreover, notice how many interesting details have been added: you can see how the specialist reasons, relies on their experience, and finds solutions based on the situations. This is where expertise lies.

Issue #6. Lack of visualisation.

The text effectively conveys facts but struggles to create a mental image for the reader. As a result, cases with weak visuals become overly abstract.

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Header: “How did “PlanFact” solve the problem.”

Pointers: “How it looks in the service?”, “You can also show it.”, “How is this displayed?”

Did you set up an advertising campaign? Show the advertising creatives and placements where they were used.

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Did you implement financial accounting? Take screenshots of the reports and show what familiar metrics look like in them.

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Have you completed a long-term project and gradually achieved the desired results? Create a chart so that the dynamics can be seen at a glance.

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Have you built friendly relations with the client, surrounded them with love and care? Instead of directly talking about it, it’s better to insert screenshots of conversations into the narrative.

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Issue #7. The case is about everything and nothing.

This happens when a comprehensive project is completed for a client or when there’s an extensive and long-lasting collaboration resulting in a multitude of accomplishments. It might seem logical to cover all these aspects in one case, but it often leads to a case that is either too lengthy or overly superficial.

It’s better to release multiple cases for one client: one focusing on cost optimization, another on the employee motivation system, and yet another on the financial planning system.

If it’s crucial to showcase the complexity of the services, these cases can be assembled into a mega-case. This is what we do with our most significant and prolonged projects: compile cases on one page and showcase them to potential clients when necessary.

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Issue #8. Cases are just sitting on the website.

If a company has many cases on its website, that’s already great. They will fulfill their basic purpose: a potential client visits the site and sees that the team is experienced and has already solved tasks similar to theirs. However, more can be done:

Announce the cases on your social media. Let the audience see that the company is not just talking about smart theories but is engaged in real and rigorous practice.

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Create resized versions for social media. A detailed, lengthy case can be simplified to a 30-second read, increasing the likelihood of wider reach.

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Include cases in your warm-up email sequences. After all, what better way to warm up than with cases? Nothing beats it.

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Use cases everywhere in content marketing. Writing a helpful article? Support your points with practical stories. Need to provide an example in a webinar? Refer to one of your cases. Creating a collection of articles on a topic? Include cases in it as well.

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Integrate cases into the sales department. Encourage sales representatives to incorporate cases into their presentations, choose relevant cases before calling clients, refer to cases when making arguments, study user scenarios and the company’s methodology through cases. It’s frustrating when cases are produced, but the sales department isn’t actively leveraging them.

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Several slides from our agency’s presentation.

I hope this article helps someone write cases more frequently and effectively. There’s also my personal interest in this because I always enjoy seeing a cool case somewhere on the internet =)

If you’re interested in the topic of content marketing, subscribe to my blog on Telegram → @molyanov

Every day, I share my experience in attracting clients through blogs, social media, and the press. I also talk about how I’m developing the “Sdelaem” (“Let’s Do It”) agency.

BY PAVEL MOLYANOV
I blog about content and marketing. 
I run a content marketing agency.