Marketers are buried in the plumbing more than ever—building out demand generation platforms, picking up the pieces IT left out of the new marketing automation integration, and running like gerbils to keep lead nurture systems playing nice with Google's latest adjustments.
But there's one less-appreciated, but no less effective, way today's leading marketing organizations can avoid the rat race and leap over competition—and that's by being more accessible to media.
Accessibility to media, and how technology has changed what that looks like, is something many marketing organizations are not taking into account.
But for actual sales funnel development, a great article in the Wall Street Journal or a feature in a news network like AP still trumps even some of the most aggressive B2B lead nurture campaign successes.
Yet even forward-thinking organizations are still stuck in embedded traditional methods, such as press releases, quarterly reports, and bicoastal media tours. Not wrong in and of themselves, those no longer properly prepare executives for the modern media landscape—and they don't have the sales funnel impact they could.
Smart tools helps media find stories
The new media landscape is like a desert. Beautiful, arid, and with fewer and fewer authentic journalism oases.
There are fewer journalists than ever before, but a lot of marketers haven't processed the full impact of the fact that many media networks now use smart tools to mine the Internet for news, tips, and leads. I see a new social media news miner almost every week—and these things are getting good!
Top media organizations don't rely solely on people, producers, and relationships to build out the big stories; they rely increasingly on social media trend-spotting (automated) and source-scoring (also automated).
The value of being more visible and influential is greater than ever, so you want to pop up on these automated systems with your best material, and your best people.
Former Federal Reserve chair Allan Greenspan put it this way: "In today's world, where ideas are increasingly displacing the physical in the production of economic value, competition for reputation becomes a significant driving force, propelling our economy forward."
How do you do it?
Take advantage of new media methods
How can marketers take reliable advantage of these new media realities? One of the best options is to invest more in coaching your executive team on critical modern communication methods:
- Structure a blog or social post program to lift their exposure, building on LinkedIn as a base.
- Provide programs (such as access to publicists) or platforms that make it easy for executives to contribute (such BufferApp), paired with a powerful writing team.
- Budget for executive training and coaching; your public relations, communications, and social teams can help.
You don't have to hire 500 people to enhance the reputation of your executive team. In fact, one or two small-scale, authentic initiatives, such as an executive blog, might well suffice. And one or two writers or publicists drawn from agencies or even former media can make all the difference.
Here's a look at eight powerful ways to maximize the impact of the brain trust you already have on board:
|
The Method |
How long per week |
How long per year |
Impact |
|
Daily CEO tweet or LinkedIn Post |
7 minutes |
43 hours |
Hundreds of thousands of individual
perceptions. Try BufferApp to make it easy to post. |
|
Writing a book |
3 hours a week for 20 weeks |
60 hours |
5,000 readers per year, plus 100,000 annual
impressions on people who never read it—most of them journalists. Payoff! |
|
Monthly internal webcast |
1 hour per week |
52 hours |
All your employees, plus the people they
influence. Try one of the new video platforms such as Wistia
to get deep insights into viewer analytics. |
|
Twice-monthly blog post on CEO blog |
30 minutes per week being interviewed by a
writer, 15 minutes editing what they said you said, 15 minutes responding to
comments on the blog |
52 hours per year (almost 5 days) |
Potentially, millions–also great fodder for
social posts and truly being "in touch" with your people. |
|
Quarterly speaking engagement |
15 minutes approving list of possible
conferences |
4 days (48 hours) |
The association or group you are speaking to
will be moved to speak about you—thousands of impacts and much of it on
Twitter from your audience. |
|
Winning executive leadership awards |
15 minutes approving list of awards |
1 day |
5,000-10,000 impressions from substantial
awards, all among your target audience |
|
Media tour and desk-side briefings (e.g.,
Bloomberg) |
No executive time in setup except calendar
check |
2 days (one prep, one activation) |
Hundreds of thousands if not millions of
impressions based on how the journalists write about you in the future, after
having met you |
|
Article writing for publications such as
HBR, Fortune, WSJ, Bloomberg |
The same writer or publicist you're working
with on the blog is a natural resource |
1 day per article |
Millions of North American impressions from
other business leaders and influencers |
