At Casted, we are passionate about enabling brands to provide better access to their content to reach a wider audience. So we made Access one of the three fundamental pillars of our amplified marketing strategy.
When using the old ways of content marketing, one of the biggest obstacles you run up against is ensuring that departments align strategically and that everyone in your company is working off and being informed by the same customer data. If you’re not able to do these things, engagement and conversions will suffer. It’s a harsh reality, but thankfully, one that is now avoidable.
We reveal some of our expert tips to do just that. Also, to show you how Casted and its amplified marketing approach can enable brands to provide better access to content, we’re sharing some examples from previous podcast episodes, where our guests reveal their insights and what is working for them.
When you talk about silos in marketing, it means that everything — and everyone on the team — is operating like actual silos, meaning that they are separate and do not interact. In content marketing, silos are bad news for business.
Why? There are so many reasons, but among the top — and most detrimental — is that silos limit access to information. This can cause ineffective communication and inefficient use of time and resources.
The remedy for this problem? Two simple words and one fantastic concept: Strategic alignment. Strategic alignment is the process of a company or team bringing together all of its units and getting on the same page by aligning their efforts in one seamless strategy, working together toward one ultimate focus and aim.
It has been proven that companies that incorporate strategic alignment operate far more efficiently and are more successful in reaching their goals. Logically, this makes sense because everyone is on the same page, heading in the same direction, and undivided on what it will take to get there.
Sounds great, right? But it’s not always easy. One example of a current Casted client seeing the importance of strategic alignment is Holly Enneking, the Vice President of Marketing and Alliances at Lev. We spoke with Holly on a recent podcast, and she shared with us that trying to find the middle ground between sales and marketing, in particular, can be challenging.
“There’s always competing ideas. Priorities can be different. What is important to sales one day may not be important to marketing another day. Trying to find that middle ground can be a challenge.” The ultimate goal, according to Holly, is that your entire team become “collaborators.”
In another podcast with the Refinery Ventures team, Director of Operations Abby Fittes explains how she realized the team was deeply interconnected.
“My work was impacting what everyone else’s workflow was. So when you have all these other partners that are helping you make this possible, you have to give them a final product for them to do something with in order to really amplify that episode. So just making sure that you’re scheduling time to get all these things done was really important for me. And that everyone understood what the workflow process was going to be like for each season.”
Strategic alignment will not only ensure better communication across your entire organization, but it will also help all workers focus energy in the right areas (and roles) and at the right times. It will maximize efficiency, eliminate conflicting priorities by providing structured and clear protocols and objectives, and much more.
But don’t just take our word for it. A few of our current Casted clients have also spoken on the subject regarding the transformative power of strategic alignment.
Tobe Agency’s Jared Sanders joined Casted on a podcast, where he shared how “defining your goals ahead of time is really important.” He also shared specific questions that can help you and your team align your strategy.
“What’s the goal of a specific campaign, or what’s the goal of a specific sales cycle that you might be running into or a marketing cycle? How do we attack that goal using this media? It’s not the other way around. Let’s create a bunch of media and figure out what the goal is.”
Carolyn Chapin, director of marketing at LogicGate, also shared her insights on the importance of collaborative teamwork. She highlighted the power of working together and being flexible and adaptive.
“I think one thing that I’m really proud of that the team, James and Megan, have done a great job at being flexible and adapting. None of us expected that the majority of 2020 was going to be spent in quarantine. And we weren’t going to be able to get face to face. And James hasn’t been able to use all of the equipment that we had in the office, our soundproof room with the soundboard. So being really flexible and ready to pivot, I think that’s true for anything, but that definitely proved true for our GRC news strategy this year.”
One winning way to aid strategic alignment is by creating internal content. A big fan of this tactic is Jay Acunzo, founder of Marketing Showrunners, where he spends his life teaching makers and marketers how to find and share their voice and make a difference through the shows they create.
“Externally, it’s industry content and community events and meetups. They have to participate. Internally, same deal. They have to be one of those folks that where we’re all back in the office post-pandemic, they’d be waltzing around like the mayor of the place. They just know everybody [and] know everything,” Jay explained on the podcast.
He expanded on why this matters so much. “If the internal corporate communications team doesn’t feel like they’re part of the community internally, if they’re lobbying out the show from on high from mothership corporate and they’re not actually part of the ground floor, they’re not actually part of the team that, ‘Who are these people? I don’t know. They’re in that office somewhere.’ If this is from some brand internally like an internal agency with a name on it, it’s not going to work.”
Scott Monty, Principal of Scott Monty Strategies, explained the benefits of strategic alignment in a recent podcast while also sharing how his company takes a three-pronged approach, focusing on informing, educating, and celebrating talent.
“You think about your employees and keeping them informed as to what’s going on in the company. Here’s what you missed; here’s all the things that are going on. Maybe here’s something that’s going on in the industry that you need to know about. Here’s a broader issue that we all need to take stock of. Here’s what’s coming up next, right? Get them queued up for what to expect coming up and how they can actually start to take action. Here’s how you can get involved, right? … Entertainment, pretty straightforward. And look, if you can create a show that not only informs, but entertains, that’s really something.
“Celebrate talent. What a great way to call out, not just your executive team; they always get called out. But what about the janitor who did something amazing or the part-time frontline worker who helped a customer. Tell their stories and let them tell their stories themselves because there’s no more powerful advocate for one’s own stories than oneself.”
If you’d like more guidance on amplifying content and upping your Access ante, then check out our Amplified Marketing Playbook today!