The Future of Marketing is Recorded: Reach Your Audience with Compelling Conversations
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Today’s B2B marketers are expected to do the impossible: create a huge volume of content at a rapid pace while striving to make it engaging, timely and relevant to their audience — then they wake up the next day and do it all over again. They need a better way to generate powerful marketing that fosters connections with their audience and gives them a real return on effort. They need an amplified marketing strategy.
After 15 years in B2B marketing, I grew frustrated watching content teams overproducing new content without making the most of it. I realized the greatest assets in the hands of marketers are captivating conversations that speak directly to the needs of their audience and serve as the source for their other marketing assets. By capturing those conversations with audio and video, marketers can amplify the source material into an array of video clips, podcasts, social media posts, email campaigns and blog posts. With the right tools to measure the success of their content, marketers can run in the direction of their audience’s interests.
Audiences are savvy. They have limited time to consume and unlimited options. To stand out from everything else, your content has to offer something unique. An amplified marketing strategy helps to foster a connection between your audience and the expertise they need, and marketers serve as the connective tissue. This approach helps build your audience’s trust, letting your team create real value for them instead of focusing on satisfying the infinite demand of search engine algorithms.
Start with a conversation
The first step of an amplified marketing approach is to identify what interests your audience. What subjects inspire them? What questions do they need answered? Instead of starting a list of blog posts to research and write on those topics, think about people with the knowledge you’re seeking: industry experts, internal thought leaders, provocative changemakers and customers with insight. They don’t have to be well known, but they should have experience relevant to your audience and a passion to share their story.
Record the conversation and share it
Once you’ve identified the subject and the expert, have a conversation and record it. You can use video conferencing technology, simple gear for an in-person chat, or anything in between. Focus on having a compelling, informative conversation that uncovers fresh perspectives, considers unique perspectives, and most importantly, centers on your audience’s interests. The length and formality of the talk are up to you. What matters is coming away with a recording jam-packed with ideas, insights and flavor. Once you’ve got that, share it.
Amplify the conversation across channels
What does it mean to amplify your content? Instead of sharing that interview, podcast, webinar or panel discussion once — then starting the content creation process again — marketers atomize the initial conversation into smaller parts, generating videos, audio clips and social media posts. Maybe you’ll embed clips from the video into an email marketing campaign or use the audio transcript to fuel a series of related blog posts. By using a robust piece of content to create a collection of aligned content, marketers save time and money while also serving their audience by highlighting the most insightful takeaways from an expert voice.
Measure and reflect
Amplifying your content optimizes the work of marketers. But to make that work worthwhile, you should be able to measure its performance to keep improving output while refining focus. You need insights that go beyond vanity metrics and offer actionable data to help your team chart a course that strengthens your brand and stays aligned with your audience.
Consider these brand awareness and demand indicators as a starting point:
- Audience growth
- Traffic growth
- Social shares
- Social media mentions
- Traffic to conversation-driven content
- Conversions from conversation-driven content
- Content’s impact on the buying cycle
- Revenue attributed to content
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
The key to an amplified marketing strategy is repeating the process. Let the performance of that first conversation guide the next conversation. Keep looking for the best voices, asking incisive questions and using that authentic exchange to fuel your work.
By focusing on the audience, choosing people who can address their interests and using those conversations to generate aligned content across channels, marketers can strengthen their brands, cementing their identity as reliable, informative and customer-focused. It’s time for marketers to put creativity before quantity, audience before engine and connection ahead of everything. An amplified marketing strategy makes that possible.
Lindsay Tjepkema is the CEO and co-founder of Casted, the first Amplified Marketing Platform and the only audio and video podcast solution designed for enterprise marketers.