Harness The Value Of Having Real Conversations With Customers
Inessa Lurye, Product Leader at Amplitude, nailed it with this piece about why your entire company should talk with customers weekly. Get ready to settle in and study this one because it’s not a fluff piece.
Inessa gets very detailed about how her team at Yesware launched a “Voice of the Customer” initiative and provides both compelling examples of how well it worked for them and detailed instructions for doing this with your team.
Note: Getting a reply to your email newsletter saying “great job!” is not the same as intentionally booking a call to talk face to face (on Zoom or in person) to build a relationship and understand how you can better serve them.
What Your Marketing Newsletter Should Do
Joe Lazauskas at Contently has some strong thoughts about using marketing newsletters as a trust-building tactic.
“Damn near every marketer uses email as a marketing channel. But a surprising amount of marketers I speak with aren’t investing in a newsletter as a core part of their content strategy. Sure, they send campaign blasts to their database, but they’re not developing a consistent newsletter with a clear value prop.”
One of the nonnegotiable requirements he lists for marketers to use in their newsletters is to provide “unique information and perspective that your audience can’t get anywhere else.”
Sounds like good narrative design to me 😉.
The Product Marketing Podcast (And Course) You Didn’t Know You Needed
If you’ve been an Opt In Weekly subscriber since last fall you may remember a particularly powerful article I linked to about narrative design by Marcus Andrews. In short, he made the case for creating a brand story that reframes reality in such a way that your product is the only viable solution to the buyer’s problem.
I follow Marcus on LinkedIn and recently discovered his podcast The Product Marketing Experts, which I might have binged. The conversations are crazy insightful. It’s the kind of content you hear and then find yourself overflowing with ideas.
I’m not even going to recommend one specific episode, because it’s probably best if you find a speaker or topic that interests you and then just “goooooo!”
Psst: Marcus also recently launched a Narrative Design course that I have no doubt is amazing and may enroll in soon.
Social Media 2020: The Infographic
When you study 22 million business posts on social media from 2020, creating an infographic to deliver the key insights seem fitting. Looks like Instagram performed best for brands, image posts are popular, and politicians, education, and airline brands are getting the most engagement. Click through to understand what I summarized here in a more visual way... because that’s what infographics are for, right?
Do You Subscribe To These Marketing Newsletters?
Hal Koss offers marketers a list of 19 newsletters they should consider subscribing to. I see a few favorites, but one I really love, theCLIKK, is missing. Maybe he’ll publish a followup list at some point?
If you’re not sure if a curated niche industry newsletter is right for your brand, consider the fact that HubSpot, the brand that made Inbound a staple content strategy for teams worldwide, just bought The Hustle.
Here’s their reasoning:
“‘For many customers, their first introduction to HubSpot is through our educational blog, Academy, and YouTube content, not our software. More recently, our customers have started to seek out news and trends-based content across new forms of media like podcasts, newsletters, and research,’ said Kieran Flanagan, SVP of marketing at HubSpot. ‘By acquiring The Hustle, we’ll be able to better meet the needs of these scaling companies by delivering educational, business, and tech trend content in their preferred formats. Sam and his team have a proven ability to create content that entrepreneurs, startups, and scaling companies are deeply passionate about, and I’m excited to bring them on board to take that work to the next level.’”
Editorial content (and teams) are paving the path forward.
The journalist in me is cheering right now.
In this Really Good Emails article, Kelly Lamano reminds us that while automated emails can be powerful, they’re not just a set-it-and-forget-it solution. It’s important to stay on top of the email sequences certain actions might trigger. She breaks down the different types of workflows you may be running and what you should do to keep things up to date.
Note: One thing in particular that I love about email newsletters is that there is very little automation involved. People expect something fresh at an established cadence. Yes, the pressure is on to perform, but that performance, if done well, feels really genuine and human. What automations do you use in addition to your newsletter?
Which Video Marketing Trends Are You Trying This Year?
Dana Kachan rounds up the video trends that she thinks we’ll be seeing more of in 2021, starting with WFH (work from home) and raw content. She’s not the first person I’ve heard praise these less polished formats and I’m excited to see more companies embracing publishing over perfection.
Why? Maybe it makes my own little series seem less imposter-esque? Or, more likely, I just love that putting helpful information into the world the moment it can help is becoming more important than doing it with the delay that perfect production quality demands.
I can share from experience that just recording, a little editing, and publishing to YouTube has increased visibility for the brands I market.
Related: Listen to Nextiva’s Director of Growth Marketing Gaetano DiNardi’s advice on demand generation and video SEO in this podcast. The discussion turns to video right around minute 13 (wear your earbuds if the kiddos are around). In short, his strategy includes attempting to have a video that accompanies every blog post.
Do You Adapt Your Marketing Messaging In Real Time?
Ashley Brucker - Stepien, VP of Marketing at Webflow, posted this helpful article on real time marketing that I think we newsletter creators can benefit from reading.
What’s real time marketing?
“Real time marketing is the process of monitoring consumer responses to marketing messaging and materials (such as blogs, web pages, and social ads) and then adapting in real time. Real time marketing means being able to make changes on the fly based on how your clients or users are engaging with your marketing campaigns.”
This sounds a bit like agile marketing, right?
Speaking of which...
Related: Check out 5 Agile Marketing Values To Sharpen Your Content Process.
Also Related: You’ll also like 4 Questions to Help Vet Your Content Ideas.
2021 Social Media Trend Predictions
This short and sweet round up includes some expected (and some refreshing) trends to watch for this year. My favorite?
Social Media Is Part of Everyone’s Job
“Social media has been a core part of business for more than a decade. Long gone are the days where ‘playing on that Facebook thing’ was only supposed to happen on lunch breaks. In the age of coronavirus, social media has become more important than ever to business survival and success.
Your employees are your greatest social media assets. In fact, 45% of consumers are more likely to research a product or service when a brand’s employees post about that product or service.” —Jenny Magic, Digital Marketing Strategist
I have an additional take on that for marketing teams: curating content for your marketing newsletter covering your target audience’s industry should also be part of everyone’s job. 😉
Related: Find out What to Do When Your Facebook Ads Fail.
Also Related: Twitter shared a Planning Guide for your 2021 Tweet Strategy.
