Finny Friday: How YouEarnedIt Maximized Its Channels And Messaging To Boost Awareness

Published: September 9, 2016

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In today’s B2B marketplace, creativity and contextual information through the right channels — at the right time — are what keep brands top of mind within their target audiences. This can be tough when you have a limited budget or a small marketing team. However, these challenges won’t stop the most creative marketing teams from getting their message heard; the efforts of YouEarnedIt are proof of that.

The employee engagement platform provider created a variety of content assets and an SXSW panel discussion to build awareness, position the company as a thought leader and drive qualified leads for the sales team. YouEarnedIt promoted each piece of content within a blog and landing page, as well as through the company website, social media channels, outbound emails and more.

The campaign was successful, resulting in an 18% view-to-contact conversion rate and an 11% contact-to-SQL conversion rate. The campaign also generated more than 14,000 views and more than 2,500 new contacts. You can get an in-depth look at the campaign in an upcoming webinar on Sept. 15 at 2pm ET.

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In an interview with Demand Gen Report, YouEarnedIt’s VP of Marketing Tim Ryan discussed his strategy for formulating this creative marketing campaign on a budget through the help of a key industry event, effective content messaging and a customer-centric approach.

Demand Gen Report: What were your goals for developing the content/campaign?

Tim Ryan: We were looking for a way to stand out from the crowd at SXSW. The first step was to create a compelling session topic that appeals to our target audience. We then wanted to drive people to the session and offer a helpful takeaway loaded with best practices, ideas and real-world examples. Moreover, we wanted to generate organic buzz around the overall topic related to attracting and retaining superstar talent.

The goals were to sell out our session, build thought leadership on the topic and capture new leads who found the content helpful.

DGR: How did you select your content formats and the overall execution approach?

Ryan: Session presentations and webinars are ideal ways for us to tell a live version of our story. We try to apply for a variety of speaking engagements in often nontraditional venues. For example, SXSW is an interactive conference and not necessarily where HR professionals hang out; yet, a bunch of super innovative companies and early adopter employees attend. These are the types of folks that love our software and bring back their learnings to their business leaders.

E-books are a great way for us to show off some of the great things our customers are doing for their employees. We also like to produce guides, lists and easily digestible content — the kind of stuff busy professionals can read over lunch and walk away with at least one helpful and actionable bit of advice, whether they use our product or not.

DGR: How did you establish your content promotion and amplification method and what channels were included?

Ryan: We promoted our content through the SXSW portal. We also reached out to clients and their employees to help spread the word about the session. We distribute all of our content through our blog, website, social media and PR channels when it makes sense.

For the E-book and related content, we created an easily shareable link for folks to both share and download.

Social, blogs and emails are all part of the overall mix to support any initiative or content we want to share with the world.

What’s great too about sharing stories from customers is that they too like to help distribute the content.

DGR: What was the most challenging part about creating this Killer Content?

Ryan: Most conferences want sponsors and paid booth sales. Getting selected to serve on a panel or any session requires way more effort. So, it’s vital that we have a compelling story to share. And, we never want our content to be focused on us trying to “sell” something. We’ll do that on occasion with case studies, but we try to put way more emphasis on offering helpful advice that can be applied with or without our software.  So, we spend most of our time thinking about what challenges people have around creating the best company culture. What can we do to help people build a company where people want to work and where existing employees want to stay. That’s takes time and effort to hone really in on top needs. Pulling together all the information for E-books also takes a bunch of time in research, writing, graphics, edits and distribution. We tend to pick examples and best practices from both customers and non-customers. The logistics behind this are time-consuming. We also like to allow content participants a chance to review anything we publish before going live so that can add to the overall timeline.

DGR: What surprised you most about the process or outcome?

Ryan: How enthusiastic our customers were to contribute. And, that our SXSW session was packed and standing room only. We also continue to see downloads of the E-book today.

We now have customers asking us to be part of our content. I believe this is because we share all the cool things they do for their employees that help them with their employer branding.

DGR: What are some key lessons learned from this process that you’d like other marketers to take with them for future campaigns?

Ryan: People are busy so if you want to include customers in your content, it’s best to build in time for reviews (sometimes from legal departments) into the process. After they work with you one piece, future pieces become easier.

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