I’ve spent 12 years in B2B marketing and I’m constantly reminded of how difficult it is to get your message to resonate with the people that you want it to. It’s noisy. We are all competing for the same attention. Everyone has a product that is BIGGER, BETTER, and don’t forget FASTER than their competitors.
How do we stand out?
This is a difficult question to answer. You can stop reading now if you are looking for a cookie-cutter, one-size fits all approach to making you or the brand that you support stand out.
Part of the problem with a lot of content in our industry is that it's built for the clicks and the algorithms, but more importantly loses sight of layering in the context needed for you to enter the ramp on the road of resonance with your audience.
How’s this for a hack? JUST BE HELPFUL!
Part of the fun of being a marketer is understanding that there is infinite opportunity to stand out, grab attention, and provide enough value that you create a connection with a stranger who you can help.
I’m working on 2 primary activities in parallel to try and stand out and create connections at The Juice.
- Operate like a Modern Day Marketer: This is the hero in the story that we are telling at The Juice, the inspiration for content pieces like this, and individuals who are a great fit for our product. You can learn more about the traits that make up a Modern Day Marketer in this piece.
- Pick a fight against the status quo: We need to battle the status quo and use messaging to show what we can offer is a dramatic improvement from outdated, legacy systems being used to “do great marketing”. Sniffing out the rubbish, picking a fight, and showing your audience the light through content works if you are consistent.
I’ve already done my fair share of creating around the first topic. If you’d like to explore the Modern Day Marketer further you can check out and follow my Creator Page on The Juice.
I am going to spend the rest of this article sharing what we’ve decided that we are picking a fight against and the reasons why.
Content Syndication is the Old Way
I referenced being a degenerate demand generation marketer in my past life in last week’s edition of The Blend. I find that using my past experience is the best way to help set the stage for why I think investing in content syndication in 2022 creates about as good of results as buying a weight loss supplement, not changing any habits or going to the gym, and expecting to change your clothes sizes.
Content syndication was how I used to “get leads” for my brand without doing any work. Remember I was a degenerate demand gen marketer and cutting corners for a CSV of vanity metrics was just another Tuesday for me.
My boss would tell me I had some extra budget to spend before the end of the quarter. I would call up my content syndication dealer and send him thousands of dollars for that feeling I was trying to chase.
You know what I’m talking about…
I just needed to hit refresh on my Salesforce dashboard to feel it. New leads were created because of content syndication!
I was hitting my KPIs, but sales thought the leads sucked (they did) and we were burning a hole in the brand we’d spent so much time building.
I was hitting my rock bottom as a marketer.
I’ve gone through marketing rehab and now see the light.
It’s never been about my metrics. It’s always been about adding value. I just needed some time to figure it out. We are going to be battling content syndication and sharing with our audience why distribution through The Juice is the way.
It’s not just members of The Juice team who think content syndication is the old way either. I brought up content syndication with Jonathan on a recent episode of Modern Day Marketer and he reflected on the first 100 conversations that he had with marketers when he was just starting The Juice.
“I talked to 100 marketers in 100 days before we started The Juice. I asked almost all of them about content syndication and there was exactly one person. I remember him very vividly because he was the only person who said they liked their content syndication program. Almost every other person I talked to about it was followed with a unanimous groan, eye roll, or head shake”
A move away from content syndication is a move towards building affinity with your audience.
If it’s not content syndication then what is it?
IT’S MODERN CONTENT DISTRIBUTION BAY BAY!
Content distribution is the thing right now because of the mindfulness it puts on the consumer. This is not a batch and blast strategy. It’s a concept that takes thought, research, and great copy-writing skills to execute.
We are picking a fight with content syndication because we think there’s a better way to invest your time, energy, and resources. We are going toe-to-toe with content syndication because modern day marketers value the content experience that their audience is receiving. Their audience reading their articles, listening to their podcast, and subscribing to their YouTube channel aren’t just another row of data in a CSV. They are humans who want to build connections with you through your content.
This is how we are helping.
The Juice for Modern Content Distribution🧃
This slide flashed to me in a meeting for the first time and fireworks went off in my brain.
You can’t really pick a fight with anything in B2B without the side by side comparison slide, right?
I manage 2 pages on The Juice that I use for content distribution:
Each of these pages get updated each time I have a new piece of content to share because it gives me the opportunity to send my “New Release” directly to the inboxes of our most engaged members of The Juice on the platform. These members get notified and our content gets seen by not just more people, but more of the right type of people.
I put together a compilation piece on fighting against the volume game with a group of modern day marketers several months ago and a quote from Adam Cohen, Director of Marketing at Campaign Monitor still stands out.
“Understanding why traffic ≠ audience is key for marketers that are trying to break out of the volume game. I’m going to use traffic as a catch-all for your volume metric of choice, since I can almost guarantee that if you’re tasked with ‘generating as many leads as possible by any means necessary’, you have also had the ‘why did our traffic drop?’ conversation. We need to shift that focus toward developing the type of content that builds affinity, resonance, and most importantly, a dedicated audience”
The Juice is not spitting back a CSV file of low quality leads that filled out a form in the content syndication program that you are running. You might upload that list to your CRM and assign the “leads” to sales, but is anything happening with them?
Probably not.
The Juice is building higher quality connections by matching the right people who want to learn (members) with the right brands and creators building content. Quantity does not drive affinity. Quality drives affinity and that is what we are in the business of creating these connections through your content.
Think about how much time and thought you put behind your content?
Is paying an arm and a leg for a content syndication program that produces fake results really the best way to get your ideas in front of the right people?
We believe that it should be about matches and not leads.
We believe you have to remove the friction-like forms to get in the game.
We believe that distribution through channels and communities like The Juice is where the modern day marketer is headed. We’re supposed to experiment as marketers. We shouldn’t keep investing in the same tactics just because they produce vanity metrics to report up.
We are picking a fight with content syndication because it’s the old way.
We’re on the distribution train.
Who’s coming with us?
If you are interested in learning more about how you can use your content syndication budget to invest in modern content distribution at The Juice then book a demo today. 🧃
