Marketers are in the business of attracting attention. All of our tactics, our strategies, our goals boil down to: Did we get someone’s attention and inspire them to take action?

The key to modern marketing is that we have to earn that attention. There will always be someone on who is louder, funnier, more talented, or just less shameless than your brand is willing to be. The only way to truly capture and sustain someone’s focus is to earn the right to their time. 

How do you earn attention? By providing remarkable experiences. By showing you care about your audience, you know who they are, and that your brand is here to help and to entertain them. 

For our latest Break Free video, we talked to a marketer who is helping marketers offer more memorable experiences. Sruthi Kumar is the Senior Marketing Manager at Sendoso, a platform that coordinates direct mail and gifting campaigns for personalization at scale.

Sruthi and I sat down to talk about experiential marketing in all its forms: Event marketing, direct mail, content and beyond. We also dig deeper into the philosophy of marketing. Should marketers specialize in a certain aspect of marketing, or should we be taking a more holistic approach? Can left-brained content folks and right-brained strategy folks get along… and really, is it that simple of a divide? Sruthi has some inspiring thoughts on all of the above.

Oh, and along the way, Sruthi shares how she built a marketing department from the ground up, taking Sendoso from a small start-up to competing with the big brands.

 [bctt tweet="I think what we’re really trying to do is bridge that online and offline experience. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Highlights:

1:00: Direct mail plus digital marketing for unforgettable experiences

5:45: Marketing to delight your audience

7:40: Building a marketing department from the ground up

11:05: Tactics for earning attention at marketing events

18:15: Marketing requires creative and analytical thinking 

Josh:

So tell me a little bit about Sendoso. What is it? What do you do?

Sruthi:

We're a sending platform, so we really help our customers reach their customers and prospects in a meaningful way by sending company swag, direct mail, sweets and treats, handwritten notes, the whole nine yards, in order to make really human connections with their prospects and customers.

Josh: 

Do you feel like this going back to a more simpler form of marketing compared to digital marketing? Do you feel like that’s more effective as our world gets more digital?

Sruthi:

So I actually think they go hand in hand. What we're trying to do is really bridge that online and offline experience. So not to say that digital marketing does not work. I'm a marketer. I run our field marketing team, we use digital heavily, but it's just about bringing all the channels together to create that seamless experience for the end user, and that person that you want to book a meeting with or have a signed contract with or whatever else you need from them.

[bctt tweet="It’s about bringing all the channels together to create that seamless experience for the end user, that person who you want to book a meeting with or have a signed contract with. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

We are moving to an ABM approach when we are doing our events, because sometimes you get to large audiences and it's hard to really get in contact with anyone. The beautiful thing about our product is that anyone can use it in any vertical. It's direct mail: If you're selling, you can use it. If you're trying to reach an audience, you can use it. 

We do the double funnel approach at Sendoso. We do have demand gen tactics while we also have ABM tactics as well. 

I had an interview that was my first internship as a marketer. The CMO asked me, ‘Are you analytical? Or are you creative?’ And I was like, ‘I don't know, I feel like I'm a little bit of both.’ 

And she said, ‘You can't be both.’ And I just want to call her now, because you have to be both. I may not be the most analytical person on my team. But I get to work with this marketing ops manager. We built our team together, and she's very analytical. I get to learn from her and understand how would my MOPS person do this. And that's the cool stuff that you get to take with you. 

As a marketer, you should be well rounded — you're a content marketer, but you could put a demand gen campaign together.

Josh:

 We just love this binary of left brain versus right brain. But then you get this idea that oh, well, the creative types are just sitting up there in their beanbag chairs with the lava lamps going, ‘Oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this?’ And then on the other hand is a bunch of robots who are crunching numbers. For some people, those things are going to overlap into a circle and some are somewhere on the continuum, but you can’t be just one or the other. 

[bctt tweet="People ask, 'Are you analytical or are you creative?' But you have to be both... As a marketer, you should be well rounded: You're a #contentmarketer, but you could put a demand gen campaign together. You're not just writing. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Sruthi:

With all those marketing activities that we're supposed to do, some people are just doing the check-boxes. That's totally fine, but I think you should bring your personality into it. I think so many of us are so scared. Like having our corporate voice, but I think our personal voice should be in there too. 

I think the only reason why Sendoso did stand out in the early days is because we got to incorporate so many of our early founders’ and members’ own personalities into the brand. And even the way we pitch our product today is by the voices of our sales team and our marketing team, our co-founders and c-suite. So I think it's just about being okay with being yourself and incorporating that into your whole corporate brand.

[bctt tweet="I think the reason Sendoso did stand out in the early days is we got to incorporate so many of our early founders’ own personalities. It's about being okay with being yourself and incorporating that into your corporate brand. @sruthikkumar" username="toprank"]

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel and podcast for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Sruthi Kumar on Creating Memorable Experiences appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

While their importance pales in comparison to many other things taken away by our society’s ongoing lockdown, I do find myself missing sports. Going without them during a difficult time causes me to appreciate the comfortable routine and reliable distraction they provide all the more.

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that I’m longing for baseball especially — everything from strikeouts and singles to slides and steals. But there is no part of the game I miss more than home runs.

Home runs are among the most satisfying individual achievements in sports. When a batter goes deep, he takes care of everything, going from home plate to home plate and putting a run — or more — on the board single-handedly. It is the literal representation of “covering all your bases.”

via GIPHY

With baseball and many other cherished forms of entertainment amiss, content marketers can help fill the void by focusing on experiential content, which is characterized by its ability to pull in a user through immersive, interactive, impactful elements. These kinds of deeper digital experiences are also more valuable from an engagement and awareness standpoint, at a time where in-person events are off the table.

“Because people are figuring out how to thrive in an almost entirely online world, their expectations towards a brand's digital experience [are] also changing. It's no longer about clicks, downloads, and impressions,” writes Diginomica’s Barb Mosher Zinck in recapping Mark Bornstein’s chat from the Discover Martech Virtual Event last month. “It's about engagement. It's about experiential marketing.”

With this context in mind, how can marketers hit a home run with experiential content, covering all the bases for both their audience and their business?

Covering Every Base with Experiential Content

Reflecting the baseball diamond, I see four key aspects of knocking it out of the park with experiential content, at a time where doing so might be especially beneficial for marketers.

Base 1: Entertaining and Effective

The proverbial square one (or first base, in this case) is that experiential content needs to be compelling and engaging. If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.

Technology is always offering new ways to increase the allure of experiential content, including tools like virtual reality, augmented reality, feature integration, and interactive functionality. Small touches like the animations and clickable elements in TopRank Marketing’s Break Free of Boring B2B infographic, for example, can go a long way. The more you bring the user into the experience and make them feel like part of the story, the more successful your content will be.

It’s not just about the entertainment factor. That second word — effective — is equally important, if not more so. Your content should effect the person consuming it, be it emotionally or attitudinally. Ideally, the person consuming this experience will feel something, and come away thinking differently about its subject.

Once you accomplish this, you’re rounding first base and heading into second.

[bctt tweet="“If you aren’t getting someone’s attention and piquing their interest quickly with the content, you’re out before you’ve left the batter’s box.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Base 2: Educational and Informative

Most marketing content is designed to inform in some way, satisfying the curiosities of its audience while intertwining a distinct point of view. The experiential dynamic is particularly valuable for this purpose. As the old saying goes: “Show me and I’ll forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I’ll learn.”

AT&T is one example of a company that’s using emerging experiential technologies for employee training purposes, taking advantage of the heightened ability to make information stick. As you plan a content marketing initiative, think not just about ways to entertain your audience, but also ways to memorably imprint the messages and revelations you want them to take away.

By this point, you’re already halfway home.

Base 3: Collaborative and Orchestrated

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a solo home run. But the feat is far more exciting when there are runners on base to drive in. Teamwork comes into play in multiple ways when it comes to maximizing the value of experiential content.

via GIPHY

First and foremost, your efforts should be strategically orchestrated throughout the organization. While marketing drives the bus, plenty of others ought to be riding along. By nature, experiential content is intended to address a nonlinear customer journey in which B2B buyers average 17 meaningful interactions on the way to completing a purchase (per SiriusDecisions). How do all those interactions come together around your experience in a consistent, unified, personalized way? How will you ensure that every customer-facing function is aligned?

Secondly, there is the importance of collaboration within the marketing department itself. Generally speaking, a great piece of experiential content is shaped by many different talents and skills: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable, etc.

And finally, there is the influencer aspect. While not always a fit, influencers can usually power up experiential content in profound ways:

• Adding unique insight and perspective from their expert point of view
• Bringing built-in credibility and trust with their own established audiences
• Amplifying promotion of the content through their own networks

One example of interactive influencer content in action can be found in the self-guided experience around AI and finance that TopRank Marketing put together with Prophix. The asset beat engagement benchmarks by 642%.

[bctt tweet="“Great experiential content is shaped by many different talents: writers and strategists shaping the content, designers and artists bringing it to life visually, search and social specialists making it easily discoverable.” @NickNelsonMN" username="toprank"]

Bringing It Home: Impactful for the Business

The three components above all focus on making experiential content valuable to the audience. This is a worthy point of emphasis, since strengthening relationships and building trust are essential objectives for modern brands, especially in our current climate.

But of course, investing the time and resources into creating a high-caliber content experience also needs to be justified by bottom-line business impact. The good news is that bringing users into the experience lends itself to driving action; for example, statistics show that interactive content generates twice the conversions of passive content.

At all comes back to the overarching strategy. What specific business results are you hoping to achieve? How will you facilitate them in a user-friendly way that nurtures trust and builds momentum in the customer journey? Which other tactics will support these goals?

It’s important to think about setting up positive outcomes beyond the direct conversion. A person interacting with your content may not be inclined to fill out a form at that moment, but if they remember the experience, and the way it altered their thinking, and it brings them into your marketing funnel weeks or months later, that’s a win. This reinforces the value of getting it right with items one and two on this list — effect and educate.

Make Your Experiential Content Campaign a Round-Tripper

We may not have sports, but we still have sports metaphors. I’ll keep seeing to that. And the home run serves as a perfectly fitting allegory for experiential content, which can produce so much value for a brand on its own, with one swing of the proverbial bat.

When you combine immersive entertainment with memorable learnings, collaborative clout, and measurable business impact, you’ve got yourself a marketing moonshot. All that’s left at that point is the bat flip.

via GIPHY

For more practical tips and guidance on this subject, I encourage you to check out Joshua Nite’s recap of the B2B Marketer’s Journey To Experiential Content presentation from B2B Marketing Exchange in February.

The post How to Hit a Marketing Home Run with Experiential Content appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Author Stephenie Meyer thrilled fans of her best-selling "Twilight" novels by announcing she will release a prequel - but what can we expect from the new book?

Samantha Salinas never planned to give birth during a global pandemic, but Mother's Day 2020 may be when her baby finally arrives.

[S.l.] : PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2019.

[S.l.] : SPRINGER NATURE, 2019.

Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2019]

Cham, Switzerland : Springer, [2019]

Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, [2019]

Cham : Springer, c2019.

Cham : Springer International Publishing, [2017]

Berkeley, CA : Apress L. P., 2019.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

Cham : Palgrave Macmillan US, 2020.

Cham : Springer, 2020.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020.

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Barker Library - TA357.5.D37 A38 2014

Hayden Library - PN6790.J33 N243713 2017

Minneapolis, Minn. : Ross & Haines, 1959

Barker Library - TD179.I54 2018

Dewey Library - GE220.D57 2019

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Hayden Library - R133.G76 2019

Hayden Library - RA451.R36 2018

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Learn how North Kingdom built an immersive multimedia experience optimized for modern mobile browsers using Web RTC

One of the best parts of the Scratch community is the diversity of Scratch projects. Community members have used the Scratch programming language to create many different kinds of interactive applications, from full game engines to music sequencers. One genre is especially unique: Multiple Animator Projects, or MAPs. These Scratch projects compile animations from many […]

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Expert Appraisal Committee

Expert Group

Hayden Library - PN1997.2.S688 2015

Stapleton, Geoff

Interview with Judith K. Ockene, PhD, MEd, author of Symptom Experience After Discontinuing Use of Estrogen Plus Progestin, published in the July 13 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Summary Points: 1. Of the women who stopped E plus P, 21.2% had menopausal symptoms (hot flashes or night sweats) after stopping study medication compared to 4.8% of women who were on placebo. 2. Of the women who had menopausal symptoms when they started the study (about 12%) and were in the active hormone group, over 50% had a recurrence of symptoms after they stopped MHT compared to 21% of placebo users who had a recurrence of symptoms. 3. Women in the E plus P group reported higher rates of pain or stiffness (36.8%) after they stopped study medication compared to women who had been on placebo (22.2%). 4. Women who had symptoms after they stopped study medication reported using a wide range of strategies to manage symptoms and a large proportion found the strategies to be helpful.

WHO Expert Committee on Specifications for Pharmaceutical Preparations. Meeting (41st : 2006 : Geneva, Switzerland)

Berridge, Eric, author

Wright, Travis, author

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