sdr

‘This Will Take You to a Whole Other Level’; BIMS Speakers Lay Out the Strategies

by Media

“Company A Acquires Company B.” “Great, I read the same thing in Google,” Jim Sinkinson of Fired Up! Marketing once told us about a headline he received. “Your content should not be about the industry per se, it should be about the reader. There are important developments afoot in that acquisition that are going to affect me.”

Do you always have the reader in mind and the value you are conveying to her or him?

According to Sinkinson—who led The Ultimate Copywriting Bootcamp: Emails and Landing Pages at BIMS 2020—you should. “Company A Acquired Company B, and This Is How It Will Affect You,” he rejiggered the headline. “There’s a lesson here and we need to be prepared for the next lesson that looks like this. That will take your editorial to a whole other level.”

It was Matt Bailey who told me in September that “the landing page is the critical part that a lot of people forget about in this type of lead marketing or content marketing or even dealing with the [sales] funnel.” So Sinkinson’s bootcamp is must-see TV.

Here are five more strategies from BIMS 2020 speakers:

1. Customers want something to change. They spend money and expect something to happen, Sinkinson has said, perhaps even more so this year. “People do not buy your content because it is content. They are not buying facts from you.” They want benefits. “Learning is not a benefit, updates are not a benefit. Knowledge is sufficient but it is not enough. It doesn’t take you anywhere. You have to tell people what to do with it.”

2. Let your subscribers/audience tell stories. MedLearn Media depends on their Monitor Mondays podcast to bring a big audience in. When COVID-19 began, they “invited more healthcare professionals to the podcast to share and tell their stories of what they have been experiencing and seeing each week,” said executive director Angela Kornegor. “The response on the new format was astonishing. Our live attendance to our podcasts increased by 50% which not only gave us great insight and feedback into what our customers were looking for and craving, but gave us intel on topics we could produce webcast topics around.”

3. Build data products. “None of us spend as much time as we need to envisioning data products that solve specific problems,” BVR CEO David Foster has said. “Meanwhile, so many new market entrants have figured out ways to process results in real time and then build services around that information. Hearing these stories, with all their buzzwords, can scare niche information companies into inaction… The field remains wide open to provide value by creative analysis by market-knowledgeable experts. It’s what we’ve always done. We best add value to data in the same ways we’ve always thrived—with superior product plans for content extraction, refinement and delivery.”

4. Lead customers to the next level. “What’s the last question that you want to leave your client with so they’re going to move forward?” asked Leslie Laredo, president Laredo Group and the Academy of Digital Media. “It’s really interesting how many people haven’t prepared enough to know that question.” Laredo said you need to have your “ask” ready. “How are you going to advance the conversation?”

5. Develop a clear 2021 marketing strategy. “You need a full calendar that builds social media posts around what’s important to your readers,” Charity Huff, CEO of January Spring, once told me. “You can take the editorial you do and use it in so many different ways. We are helping publishers reach new readers, drive them to their site, and then monetizing them to advertisers and sponsors. Without a strategy, you end up chasing stuff that doesn’t matter or turn into revenue.

xc

5 Lessons learned in pivoting to a virtual party

by COVID 19

5 Lessons learned in pivoting to a virtual party

Jenny Baranowski, Awards Director, SIIA

Shelter in place orders started rolling out across the United States in mid-March. At the time, a cruise ship was being held off the California coastline because passengers had tested positive for COVID-19. It felt like a wave was coming. 

Meanwhile, the CODiE Awards were in the final week of the first-round judging, and we were deep into preparations for the winner announcement party, scheduled in San Francisco in May. 

When California began to shelter in place on March 19, it was unclear if cities would be open to visitors again by May, but we knew that we needed to plan for a virtual celebration, and we only had a few weeks to plan, prepare and launch a virtual event if wasn’t safe to travel. We knew we has some big decisions to make, and that we needed to act fast. Here are some lessons learned from that experience:

 

  • Get educated. Seek out at least five vendors, explain what you are trying to do, and see how each vendor would approach the event, and what the cost would be. This gives you a much better sense of what your virtual event could look like, and how much time it will take to develop and be successful. It’s best if the same person vets all the vendors to provide a true assessment. At the same time, make sure you also understand your existing contracts, and what options you have for changes. Reach out to your audience to see how they are feeling.
  • Communicate! It is so important to share these changes with your community as quickly as possible. It helps build trust and helps them plan. They too are experiencing major changes to their work and lives. We checked in more often leading up to the virtual event via email and social media and provided many of the elements they have come to know and appreciate from the in-person event. For example, we included a schedule at a glance so people could follow along and know when their category would be presented. 
  • Do not assume everything will go as planned. As with in person events, hiccups to your well devised plan will arise. A presenter misses a meeting, spotty internet, a web cam on the fritz, no computer speaker, bad lighting, kids and cohabitants sucking up bandwidth, persistent pets, we have now seen it all. Make sure you add in extra time to your schedule to accommodate. There will be unforeseen issues.
  • Bring in the glitter. It is hard to add personality to an online format. Invite dynamic people to help present and ask them to let their personalities shine. Invite them to share ideas for adding something unexpected to the format – before you scheduled a time to meet with them. Turn up the volume on social media by asking the audience to engage throughout the ceremony and incentivize by adding a contest! We also created a mix your own beverage recipe to enjoy during the ceremony.