A marketing team writing with the rigour of technical authorship should have many advantages, and will create content people actually trust.
Marketing and traditional technical authors don’t always have a lot to do with each other. Yet they share the same challenge: explaining something complex in a way that a broad range of people can understand. Technical authors are trained to have a culture based on clarity and record-keeping; but is this always true for marketing? If accuracy and trust now define reputation, maybe marketing should steal a few pages from the technical manual.
First, clarity. Technical writers know how important this is. Their job isn’t to persuade but to ensure understanding. In marketing, we often prioritise persuasion. But the two aren’t opposites. The most convincing copy is the kind that leaves no doubt about what’s being offered or how it works.
Second, record-keeping. In documentation teams, nothing should exist without a note of who created and then changed it, when and why. It’s not bureaucracy; it’s insurance. In marketing, assets frequently evolve across emails, PDFs, and slides until no one knows which version is current. Borrowing even a basic versioning process can avoid costly mistakes.
A marketing team that writes with the rigour of technical authorship should have many advantages. Not least of these will be creating content that people can actually trust.