Cybersecurity content IS hard to read: Here’s proof!
Cybersecurity content IS hard to read: Here’s proof!
Cybersecurity content IS hard to read: Here’s proof!
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Bryan Reid
Source:
Bryan Reid
In a previous post, Content Readability: Why It Matters I discussed the concern that a lot of cybersecurity content is likely unreadable for a significant percentage of its target audience. The more I think about it, however, I don’t think that’s true. The content is likely readable…but only if the reader puts enough time and effort into it.
Which they probably won’t.
Business communicators know all too well the challenge is cutting through the noise to get the reader’s time and attention. If you don’t effectively combine the message with clear visual communication, your readers may miss the key messages or decline to share the content with other stakeholders. This is especially consequential when those stakeholders are involved in the buying decision.
75% of Cybersecurity Content Could be Easier to Read
How big is the problem? Big enough to make readability a priority. We reviewed over 600 pieces of marketing content (in PDF format) from the 13 cybersecurity leaders listed below:
Akamai Technologies
AT&T Cybersecurity
Broadcom Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies
CrowdStrike
DXC Technology
F5 Networks
IBM
Palo Alto Networks
Secureworks
Sentinel One
Trend Micro
Zscaler
Then we scored them using Readable.com’s AI scoring platform. Readable’s algorithm taps widely-used readability formulas to provide a score from A to E (with A being the most readable).
What did we find?
Only 24% of cybersecurity content scored either an A or B
It’s fair to say that an AI readability tool like Readable.com doesn’t account for unique cybersecurity terms and concepts that many (but not all) readers would be familiar with. With that caveat, there’s still a tremendous opportunity to simplify content for increased comprehension.
“Three out of four pieces tested, didn’t earn an acceptable readability score.”
Have you thought about your cybersecurity content from a readability perspective? If you haven’t, what are the chances your biggest competitors have?
Prioritizing Readability is a Competitive Advantage
Nearly half of Company 1’s content is likely to be understood easily, which is a significant advantage over companies 6 to 13.
From a sales and marketing perspective, this is where relative scores against competitors might mean the difference between your product brief or whitepaper being consumed or ignored because someone else’s content was easier to understand.
It’s also interesting that within each company, we found diversity in the scores. It makes me wonder if some marketing teams are more focused on readability than others or if it’s simply coincidental. From a company perspective, these differences could explain why it’s harder to get leads for some offerings or move them through the sales funnel efficiently.
Readability Can Accelerate or Slow Down Sales
If we look at individual company results, we found readability can vary across product categories. The example above shows results for one company that had five different product categories on its site. How much more effective would their marketing efforts be if all their content was as readable as the content in the top two categories? It would be interesting to overlay their lead gen results relative to how easy it is to consume the content. It’s likely there’s a correlation between better lead behavior for Category 1 than for Category 5 or 6.
The Big Caveat…Relevance Still Matters
When looking at readability across products within one company, it’s possible that some easy-to-read content simply doesn’t provide the level of detail necessary to be effective in moving a prospect forward in the buyer’s journey. Readability does not equal relevancy and relevancy is as crucial as readability. Sacrificing either can significantly reduce the value of any marketing content.
So, what improves readability? In part two, we’ll share five recommendations for improving your readability scores. We’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this research. Leave a comment below or reach out to Jennifer Throop.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
In a previous post, Content Readability: Why It Matters I discussed the concern that a lot of cybersecurity content is likely unreadable for a significant percentage of its target audience. The more I think about it, however, I don’t think that’s true. The content is likely readable…but only if the reader puts enough time and effort into it.
Which they probably won’t.
Business communicators know all too well the challenge is cutting through the noise to get the reader’s time and attention. If you don’t effectively combine the message with clear visual communication, your readers may miss the key messages or decline to share the content with other stakeholders. This is especially consequential when those stakeholders are involved in the buying decision.
75% of Cybersecurity Content Could be Easier to Read
How big is the problem? Big enough to make readability a priority. We reviewed over 600 pieces of marketing content (in PDF format) from the 13 cybersecurity leaders listed below:
Akamai Technologies
AT&T Cybersecurity
Broadcom Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies
CrowdStrike
DXC Technology
F5 Networks
IBM
Palo Alto Networks
Secureworks
Sentinel One
Trend Micro
Zscaler
Then we scored them using Readable.com’s AI scoring platform. Readable’s algorithm taps widely-used readability formulas to provide a score from A to E (with A being the most readable).
What did we find?
Only 24% of cybersecurity content scored either an A or B
It’s fair to say that an AI readability tool like Readable.com doesn’t account for unique cybersecurity terms and concepts that many (but not all) readers would be familiar with. With that caveat, there’s still a tremendous opportunity to simplify content for increased comprehension.
“Three out of four pieces tested, didn’t earn an acceptable readability score.”
Have you thought about your cybersecurity content from a readability perspective? If you haven’t, what are the chances your biggest competitors have?
Prioritizing Readability is a Competitive Advantage
Nearly half of Company 1’s content is likely to be understood easily, which is a significant advantage over companies 6 to 13.
From a sales and marketing perspective, this is where relative scores against competitors might mean the difference between your product brief or whitepaper being consumed or ignored because someone else’s content was easier to understand.
It’s also interesting that within each company, we found diversity in the scores. It makes me wonder if some marketing teams are more focused on readability than others or if it’s simply coincidental. From a company perspective, these differences could explain why it’s harder to get leads for some offerings or move them through the sales funnel efficiently.
Readability Can Accelerate or Slow Down Sales
If we look at individual company results, we found readability can vary across product categories. The example above shows results for one company that had five different product categories on its site. How much more effective would their marketing efforts be if all their content was as readable as the content in the top two categories? It would be interesting to overlay their lead gen results relative to how easy it is to consume the content. It’s likely there’s a correlation between better lead behavior for Category 1 than for Category 5 or 6.
The Big Caveat…Relevance Still Matters
When looking at readability across products within one company, it’s possible that some easy-to-read content simply doesn’t provide the level of detail necessary to be effective in moving a prospect forward in the buyer’s journey. Readability does not equal relevancy and relevancy is as crucial as readability. Sacrificing either can significantly reduce the value of any marketing content.
So, what improves readability? In part two, we’ll share five recommendations for improving your readability scores. We’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this research. Leave a comment below or reach out to Jennifer Throop.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
Ready to move your
B2B buyers forward?
Contact Altitude today to clarify your complex solutions—so your B2B audience quickly understands, trusts, and takes action.
Copyright © 2025 Altitude Management.
All rights reserved.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Bryan Reid
At Altitude, we’re interested in learning more about the state of cybersecurity marketing. Between July and October of 2022, we picked 13 leading cybersecurity companies and reviewed their marketing content. We reviewed all of their content available within the product and solutions sections of their websites and noted their type, age and readability.
Here’s the list of companies whose content we reviewed:
Akamai Technologies
AT&T Cybersecurity
Broadcom Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies
CrowdStrike
DXC Technology
F5 Networks
IBM
Palo Alto Networks
Secureworks
Sentinel One
Trend Micro
Zscaler
What did we discover?
“Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) pieces of cybersecurity content was over 2.5 years old, or in other words, pre-COVID. ”
There’s no specific age whereby content is automatically out-of-date but we think any content more than two years old is worth reviewing and potentially updating.
In an earlier post we discussed why the age of cybersecurity content matters, because the industry is evolving so quickly:
The environment changes
Your solutions are evolving
New attack vectors appear constantly
The language of cybersecurity changes
Your branding changes
You’re probably wondering how each company compared with this average. It was quite revealing, actually.
Different Companies. Different Results
For 6 companies, less than 10% of their content was created prior to 2020.
For 4 companies, 10-30% of their content was that old
And for 3 companies, 31-41% of their content was pre-COVID.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that these last three companies don’t have as much newer content as the others, as some companies simply have more content available on their sites. It does, however, mean that a prospect is more likely to download or view content that is potentially out-of-date. When we work so hard to get quality visitors to our sites, the cost of disappointing them with content that is no longer relevant is likely significant. A competitor’s site is always just a click away.
Video: The Senior Citizens of Cybersecurity Content
If we delve into the different types of content, we see that videos (28%) are most likely to be more than 2.5 years old. Given video tends to be a higher cost to produce, it’s understandable that a company may keep an older video on their site longer than other content. But…if prospects are more likely to engage in video content, perhaps investing in updating or replacing the video makes sense?
Neglected Product and Solution Portfolios
In our research, we also noticed that content age varied significantly across different product and solution portfolios for each company. Some portfolios had very recent content, while others had much higher percentages of older content. It made us wonder how much of that variation was strategic, based on which portfolio was of higher importance, and how much was simply due to new portfolios have newer content.
It Might Be Worth a Look
When you look at your website, how does the age of your cybersecurity content impact the user’s experience? Is it worth looking into this issue?
We’ve also heard from some cyber leaders than even more outdated content lives on internal sales enablement sites, which can make it hard for sellers to find the right piece of content to share with prospects.
At Altitude, we’re continuing to look at other cybersecurity leaders sites and their marketing content.
If you’re with one of the companies we’ve already looked into, please reach out to Jennifer Throop and we can share what we found. If you’re with another cybersecurity leader, do the same. You might be on our list of companies we’re currently reviewing.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Bryan Reid
At Altitude, we’re interested in learning more about the state of cybersecurity marketing. Between July and October of 2022, we picked 13 leading cybersecurity companies and reviewed their marketing content. We reviewed all of their content available within the product and solutions sections of their websites and noted their type, age and readability.
Here’s the list of companies whose content we reviewed:
Akamai Technologies
AT&T Cybersecurity
Broadcom Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies
CrowdStrike
DXC Technology
F5 Networks
IBM
Palo Alto Networks
Secureworks
Sentinel One
Trend Micro
Zscaler
What did we discover?
“Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) pieces of cybersecurity content was over 2.5 years old, or in other words, pre-COVID. ”
There’s no specific age whereby content is automatically out-of-date but we think any content more than two years old is worth reviewing and potentially updating.
In an earlier post we discussed why the age of cybersecurity content matters, because the industry is evolving so quickly:
The environment changes
Your solutions are evolving
New attack vectors appear constantly
The language of cybersecurity changes
Your branding changes
You’re probably wondering how each company compared with this average. It was quite revealing, actually.
Different Companies. Different Results
For 6 companies, less than 10% of their content was created prior to 2020.
For 4 companies, 10-30% of their content was that old
And for 3 companies, 31-41% of their content was pre-COVID.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that these last three companies don’t have as much newer content as the others, as some companies simply have more content available on their sites. It does, however, mean that a prospect is more likely to download or view content that is potentially out-of-date. When we work so hard to get quality visitors to our sites, the cost of disappointing them with content that is no longer relevant is likely significant. A competitor’s site is always just a click away.
Video: The Senior Citizens of Cybersecurity Content
If we delve into the different types of content, we see that videos (28%) are most likely to be more than 2.5 years old. Given video tends to be a higher cost to produce, it’s understandable that a company may keep an older video on their site longer than other content. But…if prospects are more likely to engage in video content, perhaps investing in updating or replacing the video makes sense?
Neglected Product and Solution Portfolios
In our research, we also noticed that content age varied significantly across different product and solution portfolios for each company. Some portfolios had very recent content, while others had much higher percentages of older content. It made us wonder how much of that variation was strategic, based on which portfolio was of higher importance, and how much was simply due to new portfolios have newer content.
It Might Be Worth a Look
When you look at your website, how does the age of your cybersecurity content impact the user’s experience? Is it worth looking into this issue?
We’ve also heard from some cyber leaders than even more outdated content lives on internal sales enablement sites, which can make it hard for sellers to find the right piece of content to share with prospects.
At Altitude, we’re continuing to look at other cybersecurity leaders sites and their marketing content.
If you’re with one of the companies we’ve already looked into, please reach out to Jennifer Throop and we can share what we found. If you’re with another cybersecurity leader, do the same. You might be on our list of companies we’re currently reviewing.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
CONTENT STRATEGY
/
Bryan Reid
At Altitude, we’re interested in learning more about the state of cybersecurity marketing. Between July and October of 2022, we picked 13 leading cybersecurity companies and reviewed their marketing content. We reviewed all of their content available within the product and solutions sections of their websites and noted their type, age and readability.
Here’s the list of companies whose content we reviewed:
Akamai Technologies
AT&T Cybersecurity
Broadcom Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies
CrowdStrike
DXC Technology
F5 Networks
IBM
Palo Alto Networks
Secureworks
Sentinel One
Trend Micro
Zscaler
What did we discover?
“Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) pieces of cybersecurity content was over 2.5 years old, or in other words, pre-COVID. ”
There’s no specific age whereby content is automatically out-of-date but we think any content more than two years old is worth reviewing and potentially updating.
In an earlier post we discussed why the age of cybersecurity content matters, because the industry is evolving so quickly:
The environment changes
Your solutions are evolving
New attack vectors appear constantly
The language of cybersecurity changes
Your branding changes
You’re probably wondering how each company compared with this average. It was quite revealing, actually.
Different Companies. Different Results
For 6 companies, less than 10% of their content was created prior to 2020.
For 4 companies, 10-30% of their content was that old
And for 3 companies, 31-41% of their content was pre-COVID.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that these last three companies don’t have as much newer content as the others, as some companies simply have more content available on their sites. It does, however, mean that a prospect is more likely to download or view content that is potentially out-of-date. When we work so hard to get quality visitors to our sites, the cost of disappointing them with content that is no longer relevant is likely significant. A competitor’s site is always just a click away.
Video: The Senior Citizens of Cybersecurity Content
If we delve into the different types of content, we see that videos (28%) are most likely to be more than 2.5 years old. Given video tends to be a higher cost to produce, it’s understandable that a company may keep an older video on their site longer than other content. But…if prospects are more likely to engage in video content, perhaps investing in updating or replacing the video makes sense?
Neglected Product and Solution Portfolios
In our research, we also noticed that content age varied significantly across different product and solution portfolios for each company. Some portfolios had very recent content, while others had much higher percentages of older content. It made us wonder how much of that variation was strategic, based on which portfolio was of higher importance, and how much was simply due to new portfolios have newer content.
It Might Be Worth a Look
When you look at your website, how does the age of your cybersecurity content impact the user’s experience? Is it worth looking into this issue?
We’ve also heard from some cyber leaders than even more outdated content lives on internal sales enablement sites, which can make it hard for sellers to find the right piece of content to share with prospects.
At Altitude, we’re continuing to look at other cybersecurity leaders sites and their marketing content.
If you’re with one of the companies we’ve already looked into, please reach out to Jennifer Throop and we can share what we found. If you’re with another cybersecurity leader, do the same. You might be on our list of companies we’re currently reviewing.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Bryan Reid
While reading stories to my kids when they were young, I realized that some of our best B2B marketing work was essentially creating “picture books for adults”. When you’re trying to share information with a prospect about a new, complex technological solution they have never heard of before, it’s hard to overstate the value of an intuitive illustration that creates that “A ha!” moment in their mind.
At Altitude, we take pride in our ability to devise and design simple, intuitive, audience-specific illustrations that help bring a solution or topic to life for the audience. I would never venture to say that we’re the best at it, but we have created enough illustrations over the past 20 years to have learned a few things along the way.
Here are some thoughts on our approach that have allowed us to create B2B illustrations for our clients with lasting value. These same illustrations have been frequently repurposed in multiple forms of digital content, from websites to pitch decks, video, infographics, sales enablement guides, product briefs, etc.
1. Understand the intended audience and their level of expertise: While self-evident, this point can easily be overlooked, particularly by internal individuals who are intimately familiar with their solutions. We frequently encounter process diagrams developed by technical teams that clearly resonate among their colleagues but become overly complex or challenging for external audiences, often due to the inclusion of icons or process flows that aren't immediately intuitive or self-explanatory.
Even a technical audience might be confused by an illustration that uses visual elements they aren’t familiar with. That is even more true when the target is a non-technical executive.
2. Know the single purpose: What is the one job the illustration needs to do? Is it to show how a solution works or how it is architected? ? Is it to bring the value of the solution to life in a business use case the prospect will recognize? In the words of a popular craft brewery here in Canada (Steamwhistle), we believe an effective B2B illustration should focus on “doing one thing, really, really well”. It’s better to create two illustrations for different purposes than to try to create one that does a mediocre job of both.
3. What’s important? Secondary? Unnecessary?: Less is definitely more when it comes to creating intuitive illustrations. What are the essential components that have to be included? Make sure they stand out and are the focus of the illustration. What additional elements are required to provide context or emphasize a point? Include them but ensure they don’t compete for the user’s attention with the essential elements. What visuals, if included, will end up being more distracting than informative? Leave those out. Some of our best illustrations are so simple they look like they took minimal time to create, but it took considerable thought, discussion and revision to arrive at the final version.
4. Get the concept right, then design: Before a B2B illustration is ever designed at Altitude, there is a preliminary stage where a rudimentary version of the illustration is ‘mocked up’ by one of our content experts. This serves a key purpose, as it allows us to test our assumptions with the client regarding our understanding of the process, flow, architecture, and use cases, as well as the elements the illustration needs to include (or exclude), before investing time in design.
If we immediately design an image without this stage, it’s easy for us and the client to fall in love with how it looks, without asking if it truly serves its purpose for the target audience.
5. Test it: In an ideal world, you could test an illustration with members of the target audience but that’s not always an option. Instead, run it by someone else on your team or an industry “friendly” who has no involvement in the project. If it’s clear enough to make sense to them, odds are it will work for your audience.
6. Create an Image Library: Consider the value of having multiple illustrations that focus on a central theme, and the many ways they can be leveraged. We originally created this group of 29 AT&T Cybersecurity use cases for sales enablement training purposes, but they were quickly repurposed for use across the website, and a variety of digital channels. Carrie Cassée, former Director, Marketing Management at AT&T Cybersecurity and experienced cybersecurity marketing leader, shared:
“Investing the time upfront to collaborate with the Altitude team helped us to clearly define our audiences and use cases. Once they were complete, we realized we could extend the value of our investment, by activating this library of intuitive, audience-specific illustrations across multiple marketing and sales enablement channels.”
Creating an effective B2B illustration isn’t easy and often includes a lot of trial and error but the results can be incredibly rewarding and have lasting value across multiple content formats. I hope these tips were useful to you.
If you’d like to learn more about how Altitude Management can help you create effective B2B marketing illustrations, please reach out to Jennifer Throop.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Bryan Reid
While reading stories to my kids when they were young, I realized that some of our best B2B marketing work was essentially creating “picture books for adults”. When you’re trying to share information with a prospect about a new, complex technological solution they have never heard of before, it’s hard to overstate the value of an intuitive illustration that creates that “A ha!” moment in their mind.
At Altitude, we take pride in our ability to devise and design simple, intuitive, audience-specific illustrations that help bring a solution or topic to life for the audience. I would never venture to say that we’re the best at it, but we have created enough illustrations over the past 20 years to have learned a few things along the way.
Here are some thoughts on our approach that have allowed us to create B2B illustrations for our clients with lasting value. These same illustrations have been frequently repurposed in multiple forms of digital content, from websites to pitch decks, video, infographics, sales enablement guides, product briefs, etc.
1. Understand the intended audience and their level of expertise: While self-evident, this point can easily be overlooked, particularly by internal individuals who are intimately familiar with their solutions. We frequently encounter process diagrams developed by technical teams that clearly resonate among their colleagues but become overly complex or challenging for external audiences, often due to the inclusion of icons or process flows that aren't immediately intuitive or self-explanatory.
Even a technical audience might be confused by an illustration that uses visual elements they aren’t familiar with. That is even more true when the target is a non-technical executive.
2. Know the single purpose: What is the one job the illustration needs to do? Is it to show how a solution works or how it is architected? ? Is it to bring the value of the solution to life in a business use case the prospect will recognize? In the words of a popular craft brewery here in Canada (Steamwhistle), we believe an effective B2B illustration should focus on “doing one thing, really, really well”. It’s better to create two illustrations for different purposes than to try to create one that does a mediocre job of both.
3. What’s important? Secondary? Unnecessary?: Less is definitely more when it comes to creating intuitive illustrations. What are the essential components that have to be included? Make sure they stand out and are the focus of the illustration. What additional elements are required to provide context or emphasize a point? Include them but ensure they don’t compete for the user’s attention with the essential elements. What visuals, if included, will end up being more distracting than informative? Leave those out. Some of our best illustrations are so simple they look like they took minimal time to create, but it took considerable thought, discussion and revision to arrive at the final version.
4. Get the concept right, then design: Before a B2B illustration is ever designed at Altitude, there is a preliminary stage where a rudimentary version of the illustration is ‘mocked up’ by one of our content experts. This serves a key purpose, as it allows us to test our assumptions with the client regarding our understanding of the process, flow, architecture, and use cases, as well as the elements the illustration needs to include (or exclude), before investing time in design.
If we immediately design an image without this stage, it’s easy for us and the client to fall in love with how it looks, without asking if it truly serves its purpose for the target audience.
5. Test it: In an ideal world, you could test an illustration with members of the target audience but that’s not always an option. Instead, run it by someone else on your team or an industry “friendly” who has no involvement in the project. If it’s clear enough to make sense to them, odds are it will work for your audience.
6. Create an Image Library: Consider the value of having multiple illustrations that focus on a central theme, and the many ways they can be leveraged. We originally created this group of 29 AT&T Cybersecurity use cases for sales enablement training purposes, but they were quickly repurposed for use across the website, and a variety of digital channels. Carrie Cassée, former Director, Marketing Management at AT&T Cybersecurity and experienced cybersecurity marketing leader, shared:
“Investing the time upfront to collaborate with the Altitude team helped us to clearly define our audiences and use cases. Once they were complete, we realized we could extend the value of our investment, by activating this library of intuitive, audience-specific illustrations across multiple marketing and sales enablement channels.”
Creating an effective B2B illustration isn’t easy and often includes a lot of trial and error but the results can be incredibly rewarding and have lasting value across multiple content formats. I hope these tips were useful to you.
If you’d like to learn more about how Altitude Management can help you create effective B2B marketing illustrations, please reach out to Jennifer Throop.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.
CONTENT CREATION
/
Bryan Reid
While reading stories to my kids when they were young, I realized that some of our best B2B marketing work was essentially creating “picture books for adults”. When you’re trying to share information with a prospect about a new, complex technological solution they have never heard of before, it’s hard to overstate the value of an intuitive illustration that creates that “A ha!” moment in their mind.
At Altitude, we take pride in our ability to devise and design simple, intuitive, audience-specific illustrations that help bring a solution or topic to life for the audience. I would never venture to say that we’re the best at it, but we have created enough illustrations over the past 20 years to have learned a few things along the way.
Here are some thoughts on our approach that have allowed us to create B2B illustrations for our clients with lasting value. These same illustrations have been frequently repurposed in multiple forms of digital content, from websites to pitch decks, video, infographics, sales enablement guides, product briefs, etc.
1. Understand the intended audience and their level of expertise: While self-evident, this point can easily be overlooked, particularly by internal individuals who are intimately familiar with their solutions. We frequently encounter process diagrams developed by technical teams that clearly resonate among their colleagues but become overly complex or challenging for external audiences, often due to the inclusion of icons or process flows that aren't immediately intuitive or self-explanatory.
Even a technical audience might be confused by an illustration that uses visual elements they aren’t familiar with. That is even more true when the target is a non-technical executive.
2. Know the single purpose: What is the one job the illustration needs to do? Is it to show how a solution works or how it is architected? ? Is it to bring the value of the solution to life in a business use case the prospect will recognize? In the words of a popular craft brewery here in Canada (Steamwhistle), we believe an effective B2B illustration should focus on “doing one thing, really, really well”. It’s better to create two illustrations for different purposes than to try to create one that does a mediocre job of both.
3. What’s important? Secondary? Unnecessary?: Less is definitely more when it comes to creating intuitive illustrations. What are the essential components that have to be included? Make sure they stand out and are the focus of the illustration. What additional elements are required to provide context or emphasize a point? Include them but ensure they don’t compete for the user’s attention with the essential elements. What visuals, if included, will end up being more distracting than informative? Leave those out. Some of our best illustrations are so simple they look like they took minimal time to create, but it took considerable thought, discussion and revision to arrive at the final version.
4. Get the concept right, then design: Before a B2B illustration is ever designed at Altitude, there is a preliminary stage where a rudimentary version of the illustration is ‘mocked up’ by one of our content experts. This serves a key purpose, as it allows us to test our assumptions with the client regarding our understanding of the process, flow, architecture, and use cases, as well as the elements the illustration needs to include (or exclude), before investing time in design.
If we immediately design an image without this stage, it’s easy for us and the client to fall in love with how it looks, without asking if it truly serves its purpose for the target audience.
5. Test it: In an ideal world, you could test an illustration with members of the target audience but that’s not always an option. Instead, run it by someone else on your team or an industry “friendly” who has no involvement in the project. If it’s clear enough to make sense to them, odds are it will work for your audience.
6. Create an Image Library: Consider the value of having multiple illustrations that focus on a central theme, and the many ways they can be leveraged. We originally created this group of 29 AT&T Cybersecurity use cases for sales enablement training purposes, but they were quickly repurposed for use across the website, and a variety of digital channels. Carrie Cassée, former Director, Marketing Management at AT&T Cybersecurity and experienced cybersecurity marketing leader, shared:
“Investing the time upfront to collaborate with the Altitude team helped us to clearly define our audiences and use cases. Once they were complete, we realized we could extend the value of our investment, by activating this library of intuitive, audience-specific illustrations across multiple marketing and sales enablement channels.”
Creating an effective B2B illustration isn’t easy and often includes a lot of trial and error but the results can be incredibly rewarding and have lasting value across multiple content formats. I hope these tips were useful to you.
If you’d like to learn more about how Altitude Management can help you create effective B2B marketing illustrations, please reach out to Jennifer Throop.
At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.