February 13, 2019 Mark Bornstein
One of the favorite pastimes of marketers is to talk about how marketing is broken. It’s usually the opening slide of any new marketing technology’s pitch deck. I probably do it a lot too. But marketing is never truly broken, it’s just a constantly evolving field that often moves faster than our ability to keep up with the changes.
In many cases, the real issue with marketing is not our ability to adopt new technologies or concepts; it’s been our inability to break out of old thinking. We constantly apply new technologies to old structures. This is particularly true when it comes to the siloed approaches of inbound, outbound and now account-based marketing. Each of these areas is treated as a distinct field of expertise and technology. Some teams are literally built to support each unique function, in isolation, without any connection to the others.
Why Digital Is Different
The problem with this thinking is that it doesn’t account for the evolution of how content is delivered digitally. The idea of building a piece of content exclusively for an outbound email campaign is far too limiting. An inbound strategy built around luring people to your website, or towards unique CTAs, while still valuable, is one small part of what needs to be a much broader process.
Today, we are building digital experiences that can be leveraged across all marketing functions. Modern content delivery will often have a live phase (outbound), an “always on” or on-demand component (inbound) and will often be used to fuel ABM campaigns as well. Webinars are a perfect example of this concept. You may have a live webinar as part of your outbound strategy, then once the live date is over, that webinar becomes a valuable piece of on-demand content that can be accessed on websites and in Netflix-style content hubs to drive inbound touches. That on-demand webinar may also be used in nurture campaigns or as the CTA in paid advertising, so now we are back to outbound again. In some cases, the webinar may also be repackaged for ABM programs. The possibilities are endless.
Unite Around Webinar Reuse
This concept leaves you a choice: you can either pass these assets around for each team to use in a vacuum, or you can start to think of content delivery as a single campaign both leveraging and merging inbound, outbound and ABM programs. The benefit of doing the latter is that it forces your teams to start collaborating much more closely or dare I say, working as one team. Content creation and execution need to be cross-functional from the planning stages, not after a piece of content is created and used for a single purpose. What better way to merge the goals of editorial calendars, campaign plans and demand gen channels?
The benefits of this new way of thinking are many; by merging these sacred pillars of marketing, we get the opportunity to do campaign building that can be executed more broadly, more quickly and more effectively. And there is nothing broken about that.
To learn more about using webinars to drive cross-functional marketing watch “Webinar Marketing Predictions for 2019” here.
