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Marketing: Wielding your megaphone wisely

The digital age has revolutionized marketing.

It used to be that people found out about companies through magazine articles, brochures or presentations at conferences. Today companies self-publish online, and people find out about them through what they are saying digitally – as if through their own megaphone.

The result has been a complete change to the workflow that companies use to market themselves. This new marketing methodology consists of three phases: evangelism, interaction and repurposing.

In essence, companies create content (evangelism) in one place and replicate it across other places. The more replication and the more discussion (interaction) it generates the better, because all of this interlinked activity is tracked by search engine algorithms leading to higher rankings when someone does a Google search. Even more importantly, increased interaction with your posts leads to more people learning about your company and, eventually, more business.

As an example, let’s say your company has decided to host a webinar. Webinars are ideal for helping to establish your company as a thought leader and industry expert. They are also great marketing opportunities and ideal candidates for the evangelism, interaction and repurposing workflow. The biggest mistake companies make today is to treat a webinar like a talk at a conference where only those who were there in person can see it. If you’ve done the work to put together a webinar of this type, don’t let it go to waste.

With the digital process it’s under your control to make the content more approachable and shareable. A video copy of the webinar can be made available on your website. The webinar could be reformatted to be an audio podcast. Other posts can be made on social media platforms like LinkedIn: “5 takeaways from Friday’s seminar.” The webinar can be used to create blog content; maybe a series of short blog posts from the presenter reducing the seminar to snippets? Each of these repurposed items can again be evangelized (that is, announced on social media), which creates opportunities for engagement (interaction).

Each step of the digital marketing workflow is equally significant. Evangelism is important, because you want your posts to be seen and your events to be well advertised and attended. But interaction is just as important. Each comment or question to a post needs to be followed up with a response. Otherwise, it’s like not returning a phone call and it can turn potential business away. And repurposing allows you to create more content so you can easily keep the cycle going.

You can’t opt out of the digital changeover – it’s happening regardless, especially now that COVID-19 has reduced face-to-face interactions. More than ever companies must include digital marketing as a cornerstone of their sales and marketing plans. And it needs to be done well: it’s better to do nothing than to do it badly. So, dedicate the time and resources and do it well.

Finding the right digital marketing approach is an ongoing process and can be adjusted as you learn what works best for you. Choose which digital marketing tools are best suited to your company’s business goals and tailor how you use the marketing workflow to achieve those goals.

In this article we’ve focused on the marketing process for wielding your digital megaphone. In the next article we’ll look at the tools you can use to carry it out.

Dave Mercer, P. Geo, spent over a decade managing ground water instrumentation projects around the world. Today he operates Underground Communications, offering specialized business development and marketing services in geology-related industries. Dave is also currently general manager of the British Columbia Ground Water Association. He can be reached at Dave@undergroundcommunications.ca.