This month four of our Rockstar CMOs chime in on the topic of this month’s issue, when it comes to building an audience do you rent or build?
Welcome to the Green Room, where we gather some of our Rockstar CMO’s, socially distanced of course, and ask them a question based on the theme of the month.
In content marketing we talk about “building on rented land” when it comes to building a content strategy and audience on platforms we don’t own, on social media, LinkedIn, Medium and others.
It’s generally regarded that the best way to build a deep relationship is build an owned platform. This strategy of course takes time, marketers are under pressure to deliver results and the quid pro quo on renting has always been that you can quickly build an audience in exchange for feeding them content.
But as we saw with Google Plus and the current ongoing challenges with platforms based in China, things can change. Publishers on social media are also dependent on an algorithm to get eyeballs and the platforms drive to monetize the content with paid promotion.
So, we this month we asked our marketing leaders, what do they recommend?
Wendy Bryant Beswick
In today’s environment, marketers must adopt a blended approach and do both: rent and build their own content. Having a customer library of content that provides value to both their prospects and customers is critical, and the development of the audience is even more crucial. Your content strategy is key, and developing the most value will determine success.
You have to be brutal in leveraging these platforms and determining where you will gain the most traction. Organic content is even tougher to gain authority on — having a paid strategy is table stakes now. By building your own content, you have more control but fewer eyeballs as these platforms have an audience that’s already baked in.
Blending your approach offers more control and puts you in the lead singer spot. I also believe we need to redefine how we measure success and think about what attention means vs. earning or maintaining the value of attention.
Wendy Bryant-Beswick is an award-winning marketer with 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry. She is currently VP of Marketing at Service Credit Union. Go backstage with Wendy.
Kate Bradley Chernis
We build. It takes serious sweat equity, which no one ever wants to do. But you have to decide: are you creating customers or evangelists?
BIG difference! “Renting” is a shortcut, which is why renters churn. “Owners” put down roots. And then they tell others about you, spontaneously. The value is infinitely greater.
This is the biggest mistake that startups especially make, time, and time again. And it’s why marketing is the single most valuable component of any business. It bleeds across sales, customer service, accounting, HR, engineering – you name it.
When your internal team communicates your values and mission as one, your external messaging becomes a default; the struggle goes away because everyone is united.
Don’t forget: inconsistency is the number one reason for lack of customer trust and sales loss. Yet most businesses toss away marketing as an afterthought, consistently, and default to “Rent.”
Stop that.
Kate Bradley Chernis is the Founder & CEO of Lately, which uses Artificial Intelligence to automatically transform blogs, videos and podcasts into dozens of amazing social posts.
Learn more from when we went backstage with Kate
Eric Jan van Putten
Build both on rented land, and have a strategy to get them into your own community
Building upon rented channels like Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, and WeChat is a key part of many companies marketing mixes. These channels get you access to highly targeted audiences, build awareness with content, and offer the ability to convert and get the audience in your own community. From there on, you have the ability to engage further and be less dependent on the rented land.
Eric shares more in this article from this issue.
Eric Jan van Putten currently runs Marketing at Dynamicweb. He believes that marketing is a function that works in close collaboration with Sales, Customer Operations, and Product Strategy.
Eric’s experience over the last 15 years ranges from field marketing to marketing operations to leading marketing in international software vendor companies
You can learn more about Eric when we went backstage with him.
Ted Rubin
“Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate! All of my content is posted to TedRubin.com and syndicated from there. I use Medium, LinkedIn, and blogs owned by others to support and repost my content.” – Read more from Ted’s post this month.
Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, influencer, keynote speaker, Photofy CMO/advisor… Speaker, Author, Provocateur Ted is our resident rock star. Read more about Ted.
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