When I joined The Juice a year ago one of the first things that I did was start listening to the conversation that was happening around B2B marketing on Twitter. At first, most of what I noticed were hot takes similar to what was polluting my LinkedIn feed, but that quickly changed when I found people like Jason Bradwell. I appreciate people who use their platform to try to educate, inform, and drive significant change in the areas that I operate in and Jason was a shining example of that. After learning a ton from him I decided to slide into his DMs and record an episode with him about making B2B less boring. He's the definition of a Modern Day Marketer and there aren't many people that I'd recommend following to learn from outside of Jason. Enjoy his piece and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thinking about your content marketing like filet mignon and managing up to your CEO

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Jason Bradwell

B2B Better

It starts with a direction from leadership (be that marketing or executive) that there is an appetite to shake things up; to loosen the chains around volume of content to see if there's a path to create more meaningful content for greater results.

You'll find it very hard to find success without this. Quality, by it's very nature, is linked to time.

Serve a filet mignon as soon as it leaves the pan and it will be tough and dry. But give it ten minutes to rest on a board and it melts like butter.

This same mindset must be applied to creating quality content and exploring new channels. Sure, you can get started quickly.

But judging success exclusively on the initial results will almost always kill a strategy before it has time to really find its feet.

Leaders have to appreciate there are no quick wins in modern-day B2B marketing, unless you're prepared to pay big bucks to acquire them - and even here brands are seeing diminishing returns.

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.

Set a realistic timeline, know what it is you want to achieve, and set realistic milestones that can be hit along the way.

Check in with your leadership regularly and offer suggestions for improvement on where things are missing the mark. Drop initiatives that clearly aren't working after 2-3 missed milestones. Your goal is to maintain credibility in the viability of your idea and expertise; obvious delusion will kill this.

Finally, build your business case. Speak in language your CEO (and importantly, CFO) will understand and back it up with numbers.

I've sat in countless meetings where marketers have presented 'gut feel' arguments to their executives for new initiatives and been left surprised to leave the room with no extra budget.

You must build a strong narrative around the long-term gains of your strategy.

Not just capturing short-term demand (often the primary goal for volume-based content strategies) but all the benefits around deep, meaningful brand building work - pricing power, category optionality, exit strength and more.

In doing this you not only stand a better chance on winning approval to move from a quantity-focused to quality-focused approach, but strengthen marketing's position more widely in the company as a function that understands how it can deliver real business growth.

And what CEO won't love that?

Want to read the full eBook? Check it out on the Juice. 🧃