What Is Anti-Marketing Content for Technical Audiences?

J_Requena (00:02) ask yourself, why three times. So you write something and say, why is that? What does it mean? And then you get into another answer is like, what does, what does that actually mean? Then when you ask yourself two or three times why, you actually get into the meaning of something. And then write that down in simple words. Then you got it. Ben Ard (00:42) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Jesus. Jesus, welcome to the show. J_Requena (00:48) Thank you, Ben. Thank you for having me. Ben Ard (00:50) Yeah, Jesus, I'm excited. This is going to be a fun episode and we're going to use some terminology I've never heard before. But before we dive into that, let's get to know you. Let's get to know your background, work history and let the audience kind of get to know you a little bit. J_Requena (01:04) I'm Jesus, I've been in the industry for a while, 15 years working in SaaS tech, leading growth teams, the managing teams, and then marketing teams in general. I've worked with great teams from companies like Unity, Figma, Algolia, and now I'm at Sanity, which is a content management system for developers, and I lead marketing there. having a lot of fun in these 15 years doing marketing for technical audiences. Ben Ard (01:29) Yeah, I love that. So what was really cool is when we were talking before the episode started, you have had this really cool experience where you have marketed for these really technical audiences and these individuals who almost don't want to be marketed to. And you use this phrase called anti-marketing content. Can you describe what you mean a little bit about that? What is anti-marketing content? What does that look like and how is that a little bit different from some of our traditional marketing content? J_Requena (01:56) I call it the anti-marketing strategy because believe it or not, my experience is that any developer or technical user persona, they actually hate marketing. Like marketing, the classic sense of like overselling or using jargon kind of words that no one understands or can be vague. So the anti-marketing is like the opposite. It's like playing language with practical examples that like anyone can understand or the person that you're targeting can understand in plain English straight to the point no jargon over selling just the facts and I think that's super powerful because especially with technical audiences because you cut through like any convoluted subjectivity in your content it's just like this is what it is is what it does this is how you do it here's a template an example here's how other do it to see it straightforward. So I love that kind of marketing. Ben Ard (02:49) I love that. So when you're kind of anti-marketing content, do you have to like go through maybe some traditional marketing content and edit it down and kind of narrow it down? And what's your process for like turning a piece of traditional jargon filled content really into the straightforward and hopefully like market specific really appreciated kind of content. J_Requena (03:10) Of the companies that I've been in that I have led marketing. So some of the companies I haven't led the whole marketing team, but the ones that I have, and I had a content team, I do writing guide and principles on how we write content in the company. And I tried to set up some example, like examples of this is a great clean and kind of anti-marketing piece. This is like. a lot of jargon thing and I show examples how to cut down like words, replace words that might be vague. Like there's a lot of words, especially on the output or what something does that marketeers or product marketing teams seem to lean a lot into like the whole efficiency thing or like time saving or like faster or whatnot. and I tried to, to showcase that those words has to be replaced. So there's two principles that I like following when creating content or this kind of anti-marketing content. And I try to follow them pretty to the point, which is number one, no words that can have double meaning or different meanings depending on the reader. If a reader interpret one word being multiple things or could interpret multiple things, that's not good. So things like, I don't know, flexibility, like speed or like efficiency or like any words that can be confusing, like don't use them. And then principle number two, you write something and if people could change the brand or the... Brand logo for another one and say someone else could say this don't write it Don't do it because a piece of content that's going out and someone 80 % of someone else could say it why you're writing it don't do it a Really easy way to get out of those two traps is to write really practical content So you might have a product with a specific feature is unique to your point focus on your uniqueness What makes you different and then speak about it in plain? language. This what it does. How you use it. Here's an example. Here's templates. Here's a blog describing why we build it in simple words, engineering simple words. Don't overdo it. That will set you apart by a long shot. By a long shot because one, you're probably going to come out more genuinely because brands like being genuine. That means that someone's going to write and come across like speaking to a friend. Your personality will come out. And then two, There's no confusion. It's going to be like straight to the point. So people are to read and say, get it. And you have nothing to say. You have a problem then. But normally products have things to say. So they just get lost in the limbo of like being vague or high level, trying to say too much or like, so I'm yeah, I try to write like a writing style guide or book with examples of like based on those two principles. And then normally share examples internally. And then just rounds of a lot of work. In the first six months that I joined companies on figuring out what was great and what is not like to your point, cutting on words, rewriting things, showing like that is big because of what, how else would you say it? also something that I ask people a lot when they're writing. It's like ask yourself, why three times. So you write something and say, why is that? What does it mean? And then you get into another answer is like, what does, what does that actually mean? Then when you ask yourself two or three times why, you actually get into the meaning of something. And then write that down in simple words. Then you got it. Ben Ard (06:25) I love that. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I've heard that as the 5-Y rule. So the 5-Y is deep. And I think that 3 to 5 is right. Sometimes 5, you get a little too deep and it's a little vague. So I love this. So one quick question I have, because I love this form of content writing and how you approach the market. You said specifically that this works really well for a technical audience. Do you feel like maybe that's true across all audiences? I know often we talk about technical audiences wanting straightforward content and not the jargon or any of kind of stuff, but do you feel like if we're talking to any audience for that matter of fact that that's the right way of doing content or do you feel like some of the jargon and some of the marketing can kind of fit in better or do you feel like audiences are just kind of jaded by? marketing content a little bit and we need to focus on this anti marketing content in general. J_Requena (07:14) I think general is the way to go. don't like saying just do it for all the personas. know that, you know, I think it's more to do with a generational shift. C-level 10 years ago had a different generation and this generation like a lot, but surely the CMO persona, some of the more high level potentially tech leaders, obviously CEOs, they like speaking their lingo. So you could call that jargon. I call it that jargon. I worked in an agency many, many years ago. And some of the content that we'll do is like, holy crap, this is just full of words that I don't, why do we need to use this language? But it worked because that generation of C-level really enjoyed those Gartner reports and those things that really sounded really bigger than they were. So a lot of companies had to market themselves bigger than they were by using these kind of terminologies and jargon and whatnot to. to feel and sound like big. I think there's a new generation of leaders that they're really like C-level and VPs and whatnot that they don't like that. They just like straightforward thing. In fact, I don't think they might consume a lot of content. The channels have changed a lot for this C-level. You don't reach C-level like the way you did before. You don't need Gartner Report. don't need this. A lot of those things are obsolete. You can reach them on... very natural to the point genuine content on YouTube and like socials and whatnot, YouTube is an incredible weapon by the way for content. Video is really, you can be really genuine on video because there's less crowded content in there. Ben Ard (08:43) I love that. That's amazing. So as you were talking about, you know, your two guiding principles, you know, if you have words that are ambiguous, they can have multiple meanings, things of that nature. What it really screamed to me is like, this sounds like perfect training material for chat GPT. Have you taken those rules and those guidelines and principles and like put it into AI and how has that helped in your content writing, you know, especially for this anti-marketing content? How are you incorporating AI and do these principles actually make it better inside the system? J_Requena (09:15) Absolutely. I think so we built a couple of LLMs internally to write copy and help us with writing copy. we feed that to using Claude and we feed that to Claude the writing style and the example. This is what great look like. And then in the prompts you use a specific keywords that will help you like make sure that the Ben Ard (09:15) fine. J_Requena (09:37) the tone and the style is on par with that. So, and we use AI a lot for at least drafting of little things that can be product descriptions, like a bunch of stuff, like just to be efficient, but you can feed that to the LLM and be like on par because the LLM will read what gray looks like and then try to copy the style. It's really great copying a style. LLMs are incredibly good at that. They might not be as creative. If you ask them to be creative, they might go different pathways and some of them might be like odd, but if you ask them to copy, they're very, very good. Ben Ard (10:09) I love it. So one final question, because we're running out of time and these episodes go by so quick. I love how you talked about content distribution. With this kind of content that is this anti-marketing content, it's really focused, it's very specific, it's not ambiguous, it's really to the point. You started to mention YouTube is a great channel. How are you discovering that people are, you what are some of the best ways to distribute this kind of content and how are people consuming content nowadays? J_Requena (10:35) I think there's a rule that's still very applicable despite that the channels have changed so much since COVID. And the rule is you need to market where your audience is. So I market a lot to developer like Sanity right now markets to web developers. We go where they are. They're in Reddit. They're in like Discord. They watch a lot of YouTube videos on mobile because that's the way they entertain themselves. So we there. They like reading content. So we have our blogs and we have like a lot of influencer video and also reading content. So you meet them where they are and then find the channels where they spend time in their free time. So I worked at Figma before, Figma was designers. So those people are more in the social channels, traditional social channels like Instagram, like TikTok or whatnot. Developers are lot on YouTube because in the free time, they might like nerd around YouTube. So we found a gold mine with YouTube. I think it hits our personas very, very nicely. And then influencers on all the channels that they are in like Reddit of the world and... whatnot, you can find them there too. So organic and pay, find where they are. organic, maybe where they spend more time on professional topics like searching about things or asking peers and whatnot. For pay to have that rule that find them where they spend their free time. Because that's when you're to hit them like sitting on the sofa scrolling down. And that's where your brand might be more effective kind of thing. Your dollars per impression, dollars per click, it might be more effective there. Ben Ard (11:58) I love that, that's amazing. Well, Jesus like I said, we have run out of time. This was awesome. I love this content. I love your approach, just how you market and you're straightforward and talk through this. I love it. If any of our listeners want to connect and reach out online, how and where can they find you? J_Requena (12:15) Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. Jesus Rekehanna, I'm a sanity leading marketing assistant. can find me, find me no problem. And then we take it from there. Ben Ard (12:22) I love it. And for anyone listening, we will link to Jesus's profile directly in the show notes. You can click on his name there. Jesus, again, thank you so much for your time and all your insights today. J_Requena (12:33) Thank you for having me, Ben. That was lovely.