I recorded an episode for Modern Day Marketer last week that I am still thinking about.
Once I closed out the Zoom window I took to my notepad. I started jotting down bullets about the harmonious alignment between content and growth. I began thinking about the experiments the guest talked about and how constant testing led to breakthroughs. He told me how he did it and each step he took along the way. I felt inspired nearly an hour later and it was a great reminder for me on why I love hosting this show so much.
The conversation was with Benyamin Elias, Head of Growth at Podia. He’s a modern day marketer for so many reasons, but most importantly because he shows his work. I’ve talked to a new marketer almost every week for the last 18 months. These conversations help inform the story that we are telling at The Juice, offer product feedback, and help streamline our content. There are many traits of the modern day marketer I wrote about in an article on, “The Traits of the Modern Day Marketer” that I dropped almost exactly a year ago and it still holds true. I share this piece regularly, go back to it as a reference point, and always do a gut check to make sure it’s still accurate.
My conversation with Benyamin was a reminder that this list can always evolve and will today. A new trait that I am going to add to the list is modern day marketers always show their work. The spotlight is never on the results. It’s always how we got there. The ability to consistently share your work with your audience through content helps you earn trust and elevate your brand.
Modern day marketers like Ross Simmonds, Nick Bennett, and Ali Schwanke, and many more have built their entire online reputations by sharing the “how” behind their work. They use channels like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and The Juice (Not a member? Sign up for free) to connect with their audience and trust is earned with each post.
Showing your work is becoming essential in a sea of commodity content.
Marketers' bullshit detectors are uncanny.
We are trained to sniff out the bad. Typically, we ignore it. If we bark back that means your stuff is really whack…and annoying. We can all gain momentum and separate ourselves by turning left when all of the other marketing universe is going right.
One of the most effective ways to do that is showing your damn work.
Momentum isn’t something you practice. It’s something you earn. We dropped an episode earlier in the week about how we are thinking about momentum at The Juice.
I’m not just the hype guy at The Juice. I use The Juice as one of my top distribution channels every time I publish a new piece. It’s becoming one of my most impactful channels because of the quality of the audience it’s reaching. The results have been phenomenal. All of the growth metrics that you would track are going up which is great…but does that really help you out?
Probably not. That’s why in the spirit of showing your work I am going to explain how smarter distribution through The Juice is helping me level up our brand.
How We Are Using The Juice at The Juice 🧃
Here’s a quick snapshot of what The Juice does for brands. I’ve been most excited about how our product has helped me level up audience growth, brand awareness, content distribution, and demand generation efforts.
The Juice equips brands with:
- Faster growth: Increase brand awareness, quality website traffic and the size of your audience
- Smarter distribution: It’s all about getting your content in front of the right audience. We’ll send your content to the right people at the right time
- Actionable Data: Access unique data that allows you to strengthen the quality and impact of your entire content program
Growth
So, let’s start with growth. Here are some important dates to note:
- We officially launched The Juice on August 17, 2021
- We launch the ability to follow brands on February 9, 2022
- Creator Pages were launched on March 2, 2022 with the ability to follow creators
We’ve been tracking audience growth for the past 6 months since the follow feature was added and the organic growth I’ve seen on The Juice has been outstanding. Typically, there’s so many hurdles that we have to overcome when testing new channels and trying to break through. Whether it’s been a Slack community, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other channel where marketers hang out it takes a lot of time and a ton of consistency. Even if we are doing all of the right things to cut through on a new channel we can still hit the gatekeeper of the algorithm.
I haven’t hit the wall from the moment I’ve started to manage our Brand Page and my Creator Page. In fact, the audience growth has steadily increased month over month. A big reason for this is the content that I am creating is designed for the quality of audience that The Juice is hosting. When I share my content on other channels I hope people see it who are a fit. When I share my content on The Juice I know the people who see it are the right fit (more on that later). That’s a big deal and the numbers back it up.
In the last 6 months The Juice’s page has grown to 797 followers.
My page has grown to 274 followers.
I’m not a mathematician and don’t play one on TV, but that’s a total following of 1,071 sales and marketing professionals following the content that I am creating every day. As the following increases I continue to gain confidence in The Juice being one of the most important channels for brands trying to reach sales and marketing professionals with your content.
Smarter Distribution
I’ve written more about content distribution than any other topic in the last 18 months. The biggest reason why is because it’s been the number one topic that has come up in conversations with other marketers. People know they should be investing more in energy distribution, but haven’t quite made the move yet. My biggest piece of feedback has been to stop investing in out of date, vanity metrics driven programs like content syndication and start researching the channels your customers go hang out to grow. A big reason why I believe our growth on The Juice has been so successful is because the audience is quality and have signed up because they want a better content experience. If you need any further guidance on why you should cut content syndication and focus more on distribution I’ve got plenty of content about it including this piece.
Smarter distribution with The Juice means you reach more of the right type of audience without any additional lift, we do all of the searching and sending for you. If you are more hands on you can distribute content manually, too.
Remember that 1,000+ follower number I mentioned earlier?
The benefit of smarter distribution through The Juice is that whenever you have a new piece to drop it gets put into a digest and hits everyone’s inbox who follows your brand. We allow followers to control how often they want to receive those messages to put the power in members' hands.
We’ve sent a total 14,000+ emails to our followers since turning on smarter distribution. That’s quality placement to a quality audience. I never worry about a piece of content going unseen and falling into internet purgatory anymore.
Compare that to the budget that you are lighting on fire with content syndication. You’re probably spending way too much and seeing little to no results. That’s because the third party vendor is sending your new eBook to a list of people who not only don’t know who you are, but likely aren’t a great fit either.
I’ve invested in syndication and now I’m a power user on The Juice.
It’s not like comparing apples to apples. It’s more like comparing apples to rotten bananas.
Actionable Data
When we say actionable data we really mean it. If you haven’t been following along, we launched Intent Signals last month.
Intent Signals to help modern day marketers like you:
- See what content is resonating with your ideal customers
- Gather snapshots of real-time engagement
- Access qualitative insights from the dream accounts your sales team is trying to reach
My favorite use case with Intent Signals so far is the ability for this data to put a stop to erosion of trust between marketing and sales teams. Intent signals help marketers identify new opportunities for connecting with the right audience, support growth and revenue teams.
I’m not reporting on vanity metrics with Intent Signals. I’m not trying to convince my sales team about why they should follow up on the CSV file that I got from my content syndication dealer. I know this seems obvious, but actionable data should actually produce action, right? Gaining access to Intent Signals data gives me a look at data from the account level that I always wished I had, but never had access to before Intent Signals.
Intent Signals aren’t leads. Intent Signals are data points that can help guide your behavior and used to create better experiences for the audience that you serve. We’ve had 3.500+ Intent Signals since their release and use this data to better inform our content strategy and how we communicate with the market.
We all want people to get excited about what we are working on. The best way that I’ve found to create connections through your content is to show your work.
Your audience will appreciate the authenticity and opportunity to learn from you.
You’ll continue to build momentum. Just watch. 🧃
Webinar alert: Join Chad Trabucco, Director of Revenue Enablement at Guru and Alex Zikakis, VP of Enablement at Sales Assembly for a conversation on how to build a culture of content with sales and ways to make access easier with Brett McGrath, VP of Marketing at The Juice. Register today! 🧃
