What can a career in PR teach you about event marketing?
Rebecca Miller believes that it builds the foundation for how to frame a story, a necessary skill for any content marketer.
Rebecca uses her background in PR to inform how she approaches content creation as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Splash, an event marketing SaaS company.
She talked to me about the importance of treating all content as integrated content, and how to operate as a lean team while adapting to a changing digital landscape.
1. Approach all content as integrated content
For Rebecca, every piece of content works better when you treat it as integrated content, whether it’s a blog article, social media post, product marketing materials, or something else.
Look at your different content channels as a holistic marketing plan so your brand can build a more cohesive message across every customer touchpoint.
“When we are launching a product, we don’t think about it just as the product launch,” Rebecca said. “We think about it from the top of funnel theme — what challenges are our audiences looking at, what are they facing, and then tackling it from the top, getting them in the funnel, and then exploring how can our products help support them and get them through these challenges that they’re facing.”
By finding more ways to connect the dots between every step of the customer journey through the content you produce, you can naturally create more integrated content.
2. Balance technical product marketing with creative content
Product marketing and content marketing can work together to move customers through your funnels.
“If we have a virtual solution launching April first,” Rebecca said, “we will literally sit down as an entire marketing organization and have a kickoff meeting where whoever is owning the project from the highest level has already created a narrative. They’ve already started thinking about the messaging, the goals we want to achieve.”
Using product marketing content in your overall content strategy is a great way to bridge the gap between the more technical elements of your product and the rest of your content. It also streamlines the content production process and keeps everything on-brand.
“We have an integrated marketing lead on my team,” Rebecca said. “She is fantastic and owns all of that from the highest level. It really helps us have that one person own it because then nothing’s slipping through the cracks. Everything has that cohesive message. Nothing’s getting lost in translation.”
Communicating the same way to your customers regardless of the content channel is better both for your brand and your customers.
“I think historically product and product marketing teams that I’ve worked with tend to be more technical,” Rebecca said. “That’s not the case at Splash. I think we have a really healthy balance of technical and creative in all of our marketing functions.”
Align your product marketers and content marketers for a seamless customer experience.
3. Integrate everything, even data
Measuring content performance with user-friendly metrics enables you to enhance the quality of content you produce.
Software integrations help support your integrated marketing efforts.
“From a data perspective, everything is connected,” said Rebecca. “Another cool thing that Splash does is integrate with other existing technologies that a company might have, things like Salesforce, Marketo, other CRMs and map platforms to make sure that all the data is connected.”
Being able to visualize performance across campaigns and quantify your content’s effectiveness is integral to identifying areas of opportunity.
When your data is connected to your content, high-performing content becomes the norm.
4. Make hybrid events an experience for everyone
The newly popular hybrid event type opens doors for both virtual and in-person attendees to connect with your brand.
“When COVID first started, the virtual events were just webinars,” Rebecca said. “But then COVID kept happening and kept happening and wasn’t going away. And event marketers were like, this is fine, but what can we do better?”
The changing global landscape during the pandemic led event marketers to shift their focus from in-person gatherings to virtual and hybrid events that could still engage attendees.
“You have to make it an experience, not just talking at people,” Rebecca said. “I think that’s what helped marketers realize that if you’re going to do a hybrid experience, it can’t just be live streaming an event to your virtual audience. They need to have an experience too.”
With this exciting new format, marketers need to adapt to make hybrid events inclusive and engaging for a mix of digital, hybrid and in-person audiences.
5. Get the right people in the room, not the most people
Stay focused on marketing to and converting your ideal audience through smaller events with lower headcounts.
“The smaller events are more targeted,” Rebecca said. “You can reach the right people.”
After all, an event marketing is about reaching the right people at the right time with the right content.
“People moving into 2022 are going to be more focused on getting the right people in the room, not the most people in the room. I feel like again, not groundbreaking, but an interesting thing to think about as people are going to be looking at smaller, more intimate events going into next year to get that in-person experience, but also keep things more targeted, more ROI-driven and just safer in general.”
These smaller audiences at your brand’s events let you build deeper relationships and see greater conversions while keeping your attendees safe during an ever-changing global pandemic.
6. Build a brand voice to create cohesive content
Documenting a baseline for your brand’s voice and tone helps every writer deliver consistent messaging and further establishes your brand in the market.
“I believe that having a brand voice and those guidelines defined is super important,” Rebecca said. “I think for a few reasons, but the biggest is that when you’re working on a team of 20 or so marketers, you’re not the only person creating marketing materials and comms for the company.”
When everyone on your team can reference a shared set of brand guidelines, everything your company produces will stay on brand and be easily recognizable across touchpoints.
“I think one of the biggest things with having that defined is everything can be more consistent. People can recognize your brand voice, and they’re not seeing or hearing something different with every piece of content or comms that they’re reading.”
That’s important when it comes to brand recognition and increasing brand awareness.
7. Be human, but make it branded
Creating marketing content as part of a team inevitably brings up issues of varying tone and voice. Though everyone can reference the shared brand guidelines, they’re bound to produce different styles based on their own unique personalities.
“If we’re looking at the Splash blog, we have multiple writers for the blog,” Rebecca said. “Everyone writes how they speak, and that’s something that I really believe in.”
Allowing marketers the freedom to express themselves within the greater brand voice lets the audience relate to each writer as a human.
“I think that’s the ultimate goal of having a brand voice and guidelines to support it is really making sure that we sound like Splash, or any company sounds like their company, but everyone can have their own voice.”
Ultimately, that builds stronger relationships between your marketing team and your readership, leading to a more engaged audience and easier conversions.
