I took a brain break last week. I’ve been hitting the ground running for the last 6 months and decided it was a good time to get away with my wife’s family. There were 12 of us, half of us were under 12, and we had a beach to escape to.
There was no agenda on this vacation. After the NBA Finals one evening we decided it was a good idea to watch Mighty Ducks 2 followed by Heavyweights...so much nostalgia, my kind of getaway. Because there was no specific agenda on this vacation I went on some long runs and started to think about work. My personality type doesn’t allow me to quite unplug, but I’ve made the statement that everyone does PTO differently. For me, time away allowed me to reflect on the last 6 months at The Juice and think about our current opportunity ahead.
When spending time away from work, but reflecting on the past 6 months I continued to come back to this theme of community. Community is made up of the people that I work with, connections I’ve made in the market, early customers of The Juice, and anyone who has taken the time to read, listen, or watch any piece of content that we’ve put out for the past 6 months. Making people a part of your story not only provides early social proof for what you are working on, but also helps create better messaging, exposure, and opportunity to develop new relationships.
When I returned back in the saddle this week there was so much positive momentum with my teammates and everything that they were working on. I feel like we are building a special internal and external community at The Juice.
First, The Juice is officially live and we have members consuming content and providing feedback. It’s been a remarkable effort from Eric and Tony on our Product team, Alaina with member growth, Kat managing our customers, Kate starting new conversations, and Jonathan helping steer the ship. I couldn’t be more proud of the team’s mission to make this the last marketing form that you fill out and to start building trust back in B2B marketing. If you haven’t already we’d love for you to not only join The Juice, but share feedback with us.
Next, I’ve always said that if we are a company that supports content marketers then we need to create kick ass content. I’ve talked with so many amazing B2B marketers over the past 6 months and can honestly say that we would not be able to get the traction that we’ve received today without these conversations. We launched the first episode in our podcast series, “Using Community to Launch a B2B MarTech Company”. This is our opportunity to share everything that we are thinking about and executing during our launch process.
Finally, we are launching our blog series “B2B Marketing Sucks: The stories of the people fixing it”. We will be publishing 2 new articles from REAL B2B marketers each week for the next 5 weeks. There are so many amazing ideas, opinions, and work being done in our industry to make it better. We are thrilled to be able to share these stories on our platform. These stories will make their way into The Juice and we hope will help inspire our members to think differently about how to approach their roles and focus on creating kick ass experiences for their audiences.
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It seems everywhere you turn these days everyone is trying to build a community for something. There are communities for almost every marketing role in B2B. Customer- centric companies like HubSpot create communities around their product and allow for their users to educate each other on what’s possible. The idea of creating a community is amazing, but the execution of community building is challenging and not often talked about.
We don’t have this thing completely figured out. I have been focused on building community every day that I’ve opened up my laptop and started working at The Juice. In this spirit of transparency, community building, and helping out my fellow marketers, I wanted to share some of what I have learned on community building over the past 6 months working at an early stage startup.
Using Community to Launch a B2B MarTech Company
Before I share more details I am going to ask you to go subscribe to the 3C Podcast. As mentioned before we just launched a series talking about community and we’ll be sharing more on community building over the next 5 weeks. I’d point you in the direction of those conversations if you are really looking to get into the weeds on this topic.
It’s a brick by brick thing - not an overnight thing
It took me a decade to figure this out, but consistency is king. This means consistency with your message, content, relationships, follow up, and the list just goes on. The discipline to be consistent and not obsess over that instant gratification that our minds desire is powerful.
Community building isn’t for the transactional mindset marketer. It’s for those who obsess over creating value for their audience and love to play the long game. This is a game for those who deeply understand the core tenants of building a damn brand.
My primary vehicle for community building has been the 3C Podcast. We don’t tie traditional KPIs like “leads generated” to the podcast. It’s much more than that. It’s our secret weapon for starting our community. We tie relationships to the podcast and partnership opportunities that go well beyond bringing a lead into the system and passing it over to the SDR team.
The 3C Podcast has allowed me to level up, meet some amazing marketers in the space, gain introductions, and align with others on the message that we are bringing to market. Keeping a habitual drumbeat of activities around promoting others is powerful and a great way to think about building your community.
Create a content suite were the hook is always adding value
Here’s a simplified snapshot into my typical week creating content at the Juice:
Monday:
- Promote and distribute new 3C Podcast Episode
- Write weekly blog content in the afternoon
- Coordinate with internal members on content support
Tuesday:
- Publish and promote blog
- Record internal podcast content
- Record external podcast content
Wednesday:
- Publish and promote blog
- Reach out to new podcast candidates
- Record external podcast content
Thursday:
- Publish and promote blog
- Record external podcast content
- Draft The Blend (weekly newsletter) and curate content
Friday:
- Promote and distribute new 3C Podcast episodes
- Send The Blend to audience
- Reach out to new podcast candidates
I understand that not everyone consumes content the same way. There are different mediums and platforms to get our message out and I see that as both a challenge and opportunity for The Juice. The more that I focus on sharing real tactics, ideas, and work from real marketers the more our audience grows. We want people to join The Juice because we feel like it’s a continuation of the content experience that we are delivering consistently.
The more that you can create a content suite to point content that adds value to your audience the more you can watch your audience grow.
Also, you receive amazing feedback from the market like these tweets from the last couple of weeks:
Make your contributors look like industry thought leaders and ask them for feedback
One of the biggest misses that I see in B2B “co-marketing” relationships is that it is treated as a transaction and not a relationship. Typically, it goes something like this:
Hey let’s do this webinar. After we are done with the webinar we will share lists.
We are both going to say this experience sucks because our SDRs don’t have any success and we will never work together again.
That’s not a winning mindset. Trust me. I’ve been there and guilty of all of this.
If people are taking the time to be on your show, contribute a guest post, or even speak at an event on your behalf then you need to do whatever you can to make them the next B2B Marketing Thought Leader.
I’m being serious here.
The more you prop up your guests and promote the shit out of them the better chance that you will have at building a long term relationship with them and even the company that they are working for.
This means access to their audience, their relationships, and even other members of their team. If you come from a place of abundance this might even end up in new customers for you. Never lose sight of this opportunity and always ask for feedback on your marketing, product, and message from your guests. This is what relationship building is all about. Never lose sight of what’s next with the people that you meet along the way.
If you enjoy what we are doing we’d love for you to do a couple things:
- Get early access and join The Juice - you’ll receive our weekly newsletter, too
- Subscribe to us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you consume fine audio content.
