I got hit with a jolt of inspiration.
I just got done speaking on a panel about the Modern Day Marketer hosted by Goldcast. This conversation was motivating. We’ve been on a mission to give a voice to the Modern Day Marketer and now other amazing brands and marketers are weighing in.
One of the traits that makes up the Modern Day Marketer is her willingness to orient her behavior around quality and not quantity. The topic of quality vs. quantity is one of the most discussed marketing topics on the podcast.
I became so obsessed with exploring this topic that I decided to reach out to a group of marketers and ask for them to contribute to a compilation piece that I was creating called, “The Modern Day Marketer’s Guide to Turning Down the Volume Game and Turning Up Quality Content”. We published this piece in the Fall of 2021 and just like with anything I hadn’t looked back on the content until today.
I believe that this piece can be something that you take to your boss or your boss’ boss if you are struggling to get off the volume based MQL hamster wheel that we all know and despise. It’s 14 marketers at successful brands sharing how they removed the roadblocks to focus on the experience of the audience who they are trying to reach.
Here are just a few of my favorite quotes:
“It takes consistent delivery at an exact standard for a significant period of time to deliver quality content that cuts through the crap. But the rewards at the end are worth it.” - Jason Bradwell, Better B2B
“One of the core reasons I’m obsessed with a quality-first approach is the psychological link among storytelling, emotions, and how we buy. Focusing on executing these aspects of content (i.e., quality!) instead of worrying about how many articles I’m writing helps achieve more outstanding results.” Chelsea Castle, Chili Piper
“First things first, stop focusing on what you want to tell your audience and start listening to (and understanding) what they want to hear. When you put the focus on your audience and align your strategy and content to them, it more easily unlocks topics, themes, pain points that you can address to help your audience.” Holly Pels, Casted
Rereading these contributions is motivating. Also, it’s a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do to swing the pendulum back to a place where quality reigns supreme over volume based activities.
I’m coming in hot.
Here are the 3 ways The Juice prioritizes quality over quantity
Be a community oriented marketer
Community is one of the buzziest of buzz terms in B2B right now. This isn’t a recommendation to start a community tomorrow and then expect the leads to come in overnight. It’s an opportunity to build trust and relationships with fewer, but higher quality connections.
When I joined The Juice it was a return to marketing to the marketer for me. I had my own preconceived notions about what I cared about, but wasn’t sure if that translated across the community. In order to validate some of my assumptions I started to explore.
I started listening to conversation on #MarketingTwitter.
I joined Slack communities like Superpath where our audience was hanging out to learn
I found opportunities to answer questions and share what I was working on.
The more I shared the stronger the connections got. I invited these new connections to share their thoughts on Modern Day Marketer. These collaborations turned into relationships. In some cases these relationships turned into customers.
The marketers that I met in communities became the people who helped us launch the beta version of Creator Pages (Join the waitlist here). These Creators became an extension of The Juice brand.
Being a community oriented marketer means that you are a marketer focused on quality.
Quality learning.
Quality connections.
Quality customers.
Playing the volume game might get you there, but will be extremely inefficient and might cause some brand damage along the way.
Promote your content the modern way
If you’ve been following my content recently you probably can tell that I’ve got some beef with content syndication. The tactic is expiring. It stinks as bad as the old milk carton that’s in the back of the fridge that you forgot about. The reason why content syndication sucks is because it’s all about your volume based metrics and not about the experience of the people who you are trying to reach.
Here’s how it goes:
Send money to the content syndication dealer.
Win a CSV file of high quantity, low quality leads.
Upload leads into CRM and assign sales.
Sales says the leads suck.
Prospects get voicemails and are like “WTF!”
But you get to hit your lead goal for the quarter…HOORAY!
Modern content distribution is important because of the mindfulness it puts on the consumer. It’s not a batch and blast strategy. It’s a culture shift with how you promote your content. It takes thought, research, and great copywriting to execute. It’s anti-content syndication. It forces the creator to think critically about the channel and customize messaging around that piece for the specific audience member they are trying to reach. Being great at modern content distribution takes time. Also, it’s about earning trust which builds connections. It’s not about generating a bunch of leads that you can upload into your CRM.
I’m using The Juice as a modern distribution platform to connect my content with a higher quality audience. It’s better than paying a bunch of money for a CSV file that wastes your sales team’s time.
If you are interested in learning more talk to my teammate Kate. She’ll listen to what you are trying to accomplish and see how we can help.
Embrace modern reporting
We are obsessed with MORE as marketers.
We need more leads because we believe it means more pipeline and more pipeline means more customers.
Our bosses want more. The board asks for more.
What’s more done for you lately?
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be some volume based reporting, but it shouldn’t paint the entire picture.
We’ve been investigating the things that need to take place before your future customers even become leads in your CRM.
What are the things that they do?
Things like following your brand on social media.
Consuming content from your creators.
Searching for topics that your brand talks about.
These are the types of things we want to report on. We believe that if we have visibility into these activities then we will be able to create more quality content for the right type of individual.
That’s why we’ve built Intent Signals for The Juice.
It’s my gut check on quality. It helps me understand what’s resonating.
Also, it provides me with signals that I can share with my sales team to enhance their outreach.
Every test that we run around Intent Signals leads to higher quality activities.
There are so many more ways that you can remove yourself from the quantity game and step into creating for quality. I’ll be sharing more here and on the podcast.
You can start exploring higher quality content that will help you level up in your role by joining The Juice for free today. 🧃
