I thoroughly enjoyed writing this piece for Collage.co (and awesome HR web platform) because:
#1: It allowed me to showcase how Ali Popp, Senior Manager of Talent at Influitive has created an incredible remote culture.
#2: I got to reference this hilarious video of a professor’s cute toddlers crashing his BBC interview.
I scripted and directed the elaborate, entertaining “top of funnel” music video below to drive downloads of an eBook about incorporating customer advocates into your content marketing strategy.
It’s about the one mistake every marketer is guilty of making at some point in their career…
…Yep. We marketers can be preeeeetty vain. All we usually do is talk about how great our product/services are, without realizing that buyers don’t care about what we have to say about ourselves; they care about what others have to say about us.
If marketers took half the time they spend rejigging their websites or tweaking new value props, and then used it to have their advocates say it for them instead, they’d have powerful, authentic, messages that truly resonate with buyers. </end rant>
This was one of the most fun video projects I’ve worked on. (But, it unfortunately ruined my favourite Carly Simon song for me.) The best part is we had some of our customer advocates lip-syncing along! Their enthusiasm makes this video amazing.
Note: credit for the original parody idea goes to my brilliant mentors Jim Williams and Cassandra Jowett. I just wrote the lyrics and brought it to life.
Here’s something I believe in my bones: content marketers CAN’T work in a bubble; they NEED face-time with customer and employee advocates to create the best content possible.
Advocates give you insights and ideas you likely wouldn’t come up with on your own. Their voice also adds credibility to your marketing messages. They can even help your create content (or, at least, provide quotes), which makes the whole process faster and more cost-effective.
I had the pleasure of pulling together an eBook about how content marketers can leverage advocates in their marketing strategy. The truth is, real user-generated content will always hold more sway with buyers than cleverly crafted copy by your marketing team. This eBook explains how to inspire your advocates to help.
The coolest thing about this eBook has to be that 90% of it was created by Influitive’s passionate customer advocates. (I wrote the introduction, sourced quotes, and “ghost-edited” the main four chapters.)
I also scripted and directed a companion video meant to drive people to download the eBook.
While trying to drive inquiries for an eBook written on the *incredibly sexy* topic of sales pipeline management, I quickly realized after doing keyword research that it would be near impossible to rank given the competition, plus our current lack domain authority in the space.
I figured the best thing I could do to drive interest would be to stand out. So I wrote a funny piece that perfectly mixed lighthearted jokes with solid sales funnel advice:
While the piece didn’t win us the top rank, it did get more organic social engagement (read: praise and retweets) from brands that do sell/play in the sales pipeline management space than our regular marketing-related social posts receive.
Humour is the most overlooked way to gain credibility, engagement and appreciation from professional audiences.
Oh, and so is using your dating life as a metaphor for the traditional sales funnel. Works. Every. Time.
Our goal was rank #1 for B2B referral related keywords. Our growth marketer researched the terms, while I created several pieces of content for each.
Over a 6-month period, I created and/or updated 23 blogs, published 3 new static pages, and wrote two referral related eBooks to create conversion points.
After realizing I could only write so much about B2B referrals before I bored myself to death, I came up with an idea for a fun video series that would help us hit our keyword targets: Rachel, The Referral Relationship Expert.
She looks familiar…
Through a blog/video series, “Rachel” answered marketer’s questions about referral program—with a her signature, sassy style—in a format that mimicked the well-known “Dear Abby” newspaper column.
You can read all of the articles here, and all of the videos here. (Note I did not design the branding for the series.)
As a result of the work, we were quickly able to land the #1 spot on several referral SERPs.
