No excuse, December starts tomorrow.
There’s a lot of things that make me cringe about LinkedIn, but it has its benefits.
I treat LinkedIn as a place to workshop ideas to see what gets a reaction. If I get a response to a topic that’s an indicator that other people are thinking about the same thing.
I don’t claim to be a marketing guru who posts 7x a day and has a massive reach on LinkedIn, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn once!
All horrible jokes aside, if a conversation starts from a post that’s an indicator to me that it might be a topic that I want to go deeper on.
I shared this post earlier this week.
Because it got a small, but mighty response I thought it would be a good idea to use this article as a way to expand on a couple things:
- Defining “big swings” and why we should all be trying to “go yard” in 2023
- Share some non-traditional ways we can invest our marketing budgets to stand out in a crowded market in 2023
I set the stage for this article in an episode of Modern Day Marketer on Assessing Where We Allocate Our Budgets Towards in 2023 if you want some extended listening on this topic.
For now, let’s get out of the batter’s box and start taking big swings.
Defining Big Swings in B2B Marketing
Think Scotty Smalls from the Sandlot.
He took several big swings as the “new kid” getting acclimated with a new friend group through the game of baseball. His biggest swing was 2 fold:
- Heisting his step-dad’s Babe Ruth signed baseball to use for practice
- Smashing said Babe Ruth signed baseball over the fence to The Beast (a giant freakin’ dog)
While he might not have actually realized that the damn ball was signed by the greatest legend the game of baseball had ever seen, Smalls took on risk by taking the chance that this ball might not make it back to his step-dad’s office in the same shape. The big swing might have gotten Smalls into hot water, but I’d argue the reward was worth it.
He bonded with his new friends trying to recover the ball. Also, he transitioned from “new kid” to being part of the team in the process. I think we all can learn a little something from Sandlot.
We’re in a spot in B2B right now where budgets are getting cut, teammates are departing, and resources are diminishing. What got your brand to the dance likely won’t keep it there during this climate. The concept of taking a big swing is all about taking on the risk because you believe the reward can have a substantial impact over the status quo.
You must have conviction when taking your big swings next year. You’ll need to do your homework and create a business case for your boss in order to take your first big swing.
Your big swing can be starting a podcast, sponsoring a community, investing in content distribution, hiring freelancers, or some other big idea. You’ll need to make sure you are able to map your big swing to business outcomes from organization or you’ll strike out before it starts. I recently recorded an episode of Modern Day Marketer with Nicole MacLean of Compose.ly and it was full of great advice on building business cases for investment as marketers.
At The Juice, we spent 2022 investing more energy in content distribution than ever before. Content distribution has helped create a content culture at The Juice. It’s about maximizing each piece of content that we create. It’s about getting that content in front of the right people at the right time. It’s about understanding how our customers think about distributing their content on The Juice.
We’re doubling down on content distribution by taking some more big swings in 2023.
Here’s how we are doing it.
How The Juice is investing in Content Distribution in 2023
Newsletter Sponsorships
First, I think it’s important for me to clarify what I don’t mean by newsletter sponsorships.
Remember when you were scrambling to hit your lead total and you’d get emails about third party sponsorship opportunities? Typically, the companies reaching out had a generic name and a clunky website. The only thing that mattered in this era of sponsorships is that they promised you an amount of leads that you could take back to your boss and call the investment a success. We bit because we were desperate. We’d upload the “leads” in salesforce, assign them to sales, and then hope no sales pros put us on trial for how much these “leads” really sucked.
We aren’t talking about transactional sponsorship.
We're talking about brand sponsorship that drives conversion because trust has already been established. We’re in the era of Newsletters 2.0 in B2B. It’s not about investing in a sponsorship that feels like a transaction. It's about investing in a sponsorship that aligns with our mission and has an audience to back it up. It’s about finding the right people and platforms who’ve built their audience the right way and always try to give back to them. There is no better opportunity to extend your brand, distribute your content, and test offers than to invest in these trust agents who can help shine a positive light on your company.
Alaina Thompson, Head of Growth at The Juice believes deeply in the power of sponsorships and the impact that they can have on your content and brand. When I told her I was writing this piece and asked her why we are continuing to invest in sponsorships she said,
“Trust is built in, which increases conversion rate, compared to paid and organic. We’ll continue to work on our organic and paid channels, but the quality of sign-ups is so far, unmatched”
Some of our top performing sponsorships in 2022 were from The Quota, Please Advise!, Workweek, Why We Buy (Shout out Katelyn Bourgoin), and Swipefiles (Shout out Corey Haines). We’ll continue to distribute our content and offers through trusted channels in 2023 because it works.
Digital Events
We’re not calling them webinars. I don't think most people really want to sit through a traditional webinar anymore.
Whenever I hear webinar I think about staring at my screen while someone walks through a PowerPoint while not so obviously weaving in their pitch deck. Nobody wants that anymore…or ever.
Digital events are a rebrand for webinars, but the opportunity is so much more. If you create a compelling topic, curate a great group of presenters, and distribute it the right way the right people will show up…trust me, we are just coming off the heels of our most successful event ever.
I’m talking about almost 450 marketers signed up that have already led to sales conversations.
I wrote about how I used content distribution to drive an audience to a digital event that was worth seeing. The key is to be intentional with channel promotion. If you treat each channel the same then you likely won’t return great results. Also, your content distribution gets put on steroids once you are able to effectively empower your presenters to share in the message.
Events are great fuel for content distribution. If you do them consistently and do them right then you get invited to participate in other marketers events outside of your own like the SaaS Marketing Summit.
The Juice 🧃
You didn’t think you could make it out of this article without us plugging our own stuff, did you?
The Juice is home to over 8000+ B2B marketing and sales professionals who use our platform to grow professionally. The platform is designed to be a premium distribution channel for brands who create kick ass content and want to reach our audience.
We like to drink our own juice. Every time I distribute a new piece of content on The Juice it’s seen in moments by the nearly 1300+ followers of our brand page. Followers receive digest emails that include new content from all the brands that they follow. This is our way of helping enhance the member experience through curation while also giving brands access to quality placement.
The Juice offers the quality and accessibility that no other content distribution channel can match for B2B marketing and sales brands. That’s why we recently launched 2 separate packages for brands who make for great promotional partners and individuals looking to start distributing their content on The Juice today.
Want to learn more about how your brand can use The Juice for content distribution? Talk to Kate.
Are you an entrepreneur, freelancer, or small business looking to ramp up your content distribution efforts? Get started today.
Taking big swings takes confidence, research, and internal marketing to land the pitch. December is your time to rethink how you can use content to connect with your next customer.
No excuses.
Not a member yet? Join The Juice and start learning from creators and brands who are pushing B2B forward. 🧃
