How many times do you find yourself thinking, “But we already created a resource for this! Why doesn’t anyone use it?”
You’re certainly not alone! This is a struggle marketing & communications (marcom) teams share across industries.
Your sales team may not be aware of all of the decks and PDFs your team created. Your team may not be using an application specifically designed for their needs. Whatever the case, the cost and time of unused resources are painful and preventable.
You can use a variety of communication methods and tools to help tackle this issue (there’s a whole sales enablement industry out there solving this problem), so we’ll just focus on one suggestion as to how you can change the dynamic in your company.
Try an Interview between Marketing and Your Intended Audience
Rather than simply write another announcement post to your company reminding everyone to go visit your resources again, here’s another approach you can try.
Once a month, have someone from Marketing sit down with your target audience: could be a sales team member, a fellow marketer, a customer support person… you get the idea. Who needs to be using your documentation or application? That’s the person you need.
The Interview
Do an interview on camera where you ask about the other person’s day-to-day work.
- What challenges are they facing?
- Are there resources they could use to help them in their conversations with customers?
In all likelihood, your team has already created something they could use to solve a specific issue.
Also, and this shouldn’t be overlooked, you have an immense opportunity to learn from your team members as to how you and your team can provide more resources or update key resources to solve a specific need. In a podcast episode from a few years ago, we talked about the need to show empathy as the opening to any conversation about how marketing and sales can help one another.
We’ve been through a significant change in customer expectations over the past few years, and those customer needs keep evolving.
Okay, back to the interview. As you’re talking, take time to either share your existing resource or learn how the resource needs to improve. The point here is that you’re getting a good sense of how and when your desired audience needs the resource in question. This gives you the perfect hook for the rest of your audience.
Compare the following headlines:
- Three Answers to the Most Common Client Objections
- A Reminder of the Sales Team Resources on Our Shared Drive
Focus on the problem your resource or app solves… not on dull reminders. Your audience is busy. Get to the point of why they should care.
This kind of content doesn’t have to be (and likely shouldn’t be) the only way you keep people updated. It’s a reactive approach based on what your interviewee highlights as a need, and that’s what makes it so valuable. Still, you’ll need to maintain proactive content, as well.
The Format
Okay, let’s get into the specifics here. How can you go about creating this piece?
I’ll share how our team here at Health Connective might do something like this using the tools at our disposal. You likely have similar tools to work with (Slack/Teams, Zoom/WebEx/Teams, etc.).
One of the big things to keep in mind as you’re creating content for any audience is that different folks like to consume media in different ways. A 2021 survey of marketers by SEMRush found video and blog posts as the most effective formats in content marketing, so you’ll want to tap into both video and the written word with your interview.
First step: Record the interview
We generally use Zoom for this kind of work, simply recording the conversation like it was any other business meeting that someone might need to review. If you’re going for a Q&A approach where you ask the question on camera and then your guest responds, Zoom is a great tool. If you’re wanting to only feature your guest, keep in mind that Zoom delays for a moment while switching from one speaker to another in Speaker view. The video switches over after the other speaker has started talking, so you may need a countdown before your guest answers.
Be sure you have good lighting and good sound for both of your speakers. You don’t have to have perfect framing, but it obviously helps!
Second step: Get a transcript and review
You’ll make your life a lot easier by using a service like Temi or Otter.ai. The cost is minimal, and the transcripts are good enough to help you be able to scan your content and pick out the most relevant components to feature in your final video and article.
Third step: Edit the video and include captions
I’ve used tools like iMovie and daVinci Resolve for video editing, but we’re now trying Adobe Premiere Rush, which works well if you already have to pay for the Adobe suite of products. All of these services will allow you to include captions, which is essential. Not everyone will want to listen to the audio of the video while they’re sitting at their desk. Just be sure to review your transcripts for accuracy before setting them up in your editor, even if you do use the more accurate services. Medtech terms can easily get transcribed incorrectly.
If you can, go ahead and get screen captures of your highlighted resources (the articles or applications you want your audience to know about) to be able to show during the video. You’ll also be able to use these same images in your article.
Fourth step: Write the article
Pretty self explanatory, right? Just make sure you’re linking to the relevant resources and including plenty of previews / images of what people can expect to see once they arrive.
Also, make sure your title is focused on the problem you’re solving. (Just mentioning it one more time.)
Fifth step: Embed your video and publish
Your post is all written. You’ve got the images. Now, make sure to get video on the article. This is where you ensure your audience sees someone from their team involved in the discussion.
Distribute Your Content
Once your interview is all set, it’s time to get the content out to your company.
Remember that your main goals here are to get your audience to see that a fellow colleague is involved and to point them to a solution for one of their pain points. It doesn’t matter whether that process happens via email, your company’s social media platform if you have one, on Teams or Slack, or whatever other way you can share content.
Don’t get so focused on clickthrough rates or easily reportable metrics that you miss your main objectives.
One effective way to get your content seen is to ask (before you publish) if a manager or leader within your desired audience would be willing to share the content once it’s released. Think of how much more likely a sales person is to see a video if it’s shared in email via the regular newsletter and the sales manager shares it in a group channel. You’re getting “influencer” marketing within your own company!
Coming Up Next
In our next article for marcom teams, we’re going to take a look at how you can further this concept of securing your audience’s involvement, particularly when it comes to custom applications. These tips will be based on interactions we’ve had with medtech companies that were able to establish pilot programs to help get buy-in and make their applications much more likely to succeed.
Michael spends a great deal of time with the healthcare industry both professionally and personally, which gives him the perspective of what stakeholders on either side of the care equation need.
He began coding in 2008 and subsequently shifted his attention entirely to online marketing. Michael completed his MBA in 2018, focusing on the intersection of healthcare and marketing.