The Friday Concentrate #1: We’re Moving Our Newsletter to The Juice
Hello, I’m Brett and I lead marketing at The Juice. I joined the business almost 3 years ago. If you rewind the tape back to my first day you could find me consuming onboarding materials from my kitchen table in my tiny little house on a charming street in downtown Indianapolis during the pandemic. When I joined we didn’t have a product, we were a team of 3, and we weren’t even called The Juice yet. I placed a big bet and I left my comfortable job as a VP of Marketing building teams, content, and demand for a company that was established. I traded comfort for uncertainty. I gave up directing and driving traffic into standing right in the middle of it. I chose The Juice because I believed in the vision.
Consumer expectations are changing rapidly, but the content experiences brands are delivering to their audience remain the same. We have the power to stream almost any song that was ever created instantly, but we’re still asking people for their personal information to read our latest eBook. B2B content experiences are broken and is a big reason why many people think B2B marketing sucks. I wake up every morning with excitement to work on The Juice because there’s no better time to create a better content experience for the people we are trying to reach.
I’m proud of the work that we’re doing. If you’re reading this and you’re in a similar position you understand how challenging it can be to just take a step back and reflect. Here’s some things we’ve done over the past 3 years to work towards the vision of delivering better content experiences:
- We’ve developed a premium distribution channel that brands like Copy.ai, Hotjar, Brave, Jebbit, and many more use to get their best content in front of the right people at the right time
- Our member base has grown to 25,000+ go-to-market professionals who turn to content on The Juice instead of having to navigate through barriers that traditional search engines offer
- Our product is constantly evolving for both members and brands - Topic Pages is one of my favorite updates and a great way to shrink the content sea
- We’ve built a brand that our community wants be a part of - we’ve done things like host 260 podcast episodes, events, industry reports, and our using our data to power our content strategy
Recently, one of the biggest opportunities that we observed and the reason why I’m writing this note is that our audience following The Juice on The Juice has become our most premium audience. My biggest initiative moving into next year is to do a better job of taking a human-centric approach to communicating to our followers on The Juice. That’s why we’re transitioning our newsletter out of HubSpot, reframing it, and using The Juice to deliver it to you…it’s that whole “eat your own dog food” thing that people in tech love to say.
The Friday Concentrate will be delivered every Friday through the Daily Digest (for now). We’ll tell stories, curate content, and share data that will help any go-to-market professional regardless of your role.
A lot has changed in 3 years. Personally, we had to move out of that tiny little house on the charming street because our family expanded. We’ve got 2 daughters now (2 years and 6 weeks). It’s weird that working in a start-up is the least crazy part of my life right now, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Professionally, we’ve grown, overcome adversity, and feel like we’re hitting our stride. We’ll be using The Friday Concentrate to share more with you and hope to get your feedback along the way.
Take care,
Brett McGrath
VP of Marketing, The Juice 🧃
P.S. I share a lot of data from The Juice on LinkedIn, too. Feel free to connect with me.
People First GTM is the Way
The future of content marketing is all about access.
🧃It's ACCESS to real data about the topics that your future customers actually want to learn about
🧃It's ACCESS to the brands who aren't just visiting your website, but spending time consuming your articles, videos, podcasts, reports, etc
🧃It's ACCESS to AI and providing your reader with both long form and snack bite pieces of the content you're creating
People First GTM is one of the newest and fastest growing topics on The Juice and it was just created!
7% of our audience who follows topics follow People First GTM to learn from brands like TACK ⛵️ (Shout out Nick and Mark).
This number is growing and continues to validate that people want to learn from people. Content marketers should understand that People First GTM is more than a trend and better understand how to communicate its impact in their own content.
I wrote an article about my conviction around People-First GTM and how we’re using this strategy at The Juice. Check out The Power of the People First and Logos Later Mindset and make sure to Follow TACK for more amazing people-first content.
Modern Day Marketer: Personalization Has Ruined Marketing with Nick Zeckets of Air Traffic Control
There’s nothing better than asking a founder that one question that gets them to drop the mic BRabbit style from 8 Mile. It’s the type of response that makes it crystal clear to why they’re building what they’re building and attacking a specific problem they’re identifying.
“Personalization has ruined marketing”. I heard this remark from Nick Zeckets during a “get to know you” call. His bombastic statement had my attention. He blamed software stacks. He argued the personalization pitch has warped the minds of marketers to think that they can truly build connections with other people by simply clicking a button. He talked about the fallacy that we’ve fallen into by making people believe that they can actually build relationships at scale. His statements were jam packed full of conviction. That’s when I knew I needed to record an episode with him and we dropped it today.
What’s Catching My Attention on The Juice
9 Video Content Marketing Ideas To Increase Engagement Richard Lee Peeler and Lora Lynn Fanning with Compose.ly
We know we should be doing more video, but it can be a challenge to get over the hump and take action. I have a goal of creating more video content going into next year. That’s why I’ve been trying to have as many conversations as possible with smart people to ramp me up (check out my conversation with Janet Mesh at Aimtal). I was digging through The Juice and found this amazing article from Compose.ly. If you’re trying to use video to drive better engagement then look no further.
🧃Read: 9 Video Content Marketing Ideas To Increase Engagement
How to Launch a 400 Person Virtual Event in 32 Days from Anna Suslova with Goldcast
Virtual events have become a big part of the strategy for brands in the post-pandemic era of B2B marketing. Events transcend marketing and typically require great cross-function go-to-market collaboration. It’s about creating the right message, delivering excellent content, and working with sales on follow up. I love it when brands share exactly how they’re doing the things that they’re doing to make it happen. If you’re planning, running, or following up on events this should be required reading.
🧃Read: How to Launch a 400 Person Virtual Event in 32 Days
5 Ways to Prep Your Branded Podcast Guests Before an Interview from Tianna Marinucci with Quill
After nearly recording nearly 300 episodes of the Modern Day Marketer podcast I’ve learned that preparation is everything. We’re seeing podcast hosts pop up in almost every area of go-to-market these days. There’s hosts emerging in marketing, sales, and customer success. Many podcast hosts are doing it for the first time and always looking for inspiration from others. The team at Quill put together an excellent article to help get you and your next guest on the same page before you hit record.
🧃Read: 5 Ways to Prep Your Branded Podcast Guests Before an Interview
If you stumbled across this post on the Google machine make sure to follow The Juice on The Juice to get more content like this delivered to you.🧃
