5 Steps to Start Building an Audience
I went on Marketecture earlier this year to talk with co-hosts Ari Paparo and Eric Franchi about adtech marketing. I outlined three mistakes I think most adtech companies make with marketing:
Marketing isn’t aligned with a business objective. For example, a lot of CEOs and founders tell me, “We want to get the word out.” That’s a good impulse, but it’s too vague to drive a tailored marketing program with meaningful results. Some better options would be: “We want to increase top-of-funnel awareness. Not enough people know about us.” Or “People know about us, but we have a differentiation problem. We’re losing too many deals to competitors.” Marketing problems usually fall into one of three buckets: awareness, differentiation, or urgency. If solved, any of these problems will drive a business objective by generating more pipeline and shortening sales cycles (which is ultimately what you want).
The message isn’t differentiated or urgent. How many adtech messages are essentially, “We help publishers make more money” or “We help advertisers increase performance”? There’s nothing wrong with that; you should say that if that’s what you do. But you also need to describe how you do it differently from competitors and why customers should pay attention to you now if they historically haven’t (or why you’re suddenly urgent). For example, being an SSP that helps make publishers more money is fine, but there are many of them. Being the SSP that generates unique demand through one-of-a-kind ad formats is better.
Distribution is too limited. A lot of adtech companies are running a distribution playbook that would’ve been appropriate 20 years ago. Usually, that means they’re too dependent on the press to amplify their message (with some webinars thrown in). Media relations and webinars are still great. But you should also be taking advantage of the first-party communications channels where you can reach your audience every day: social, email, and audio.
Let’s dive deeper into number three: distribution and, specifically, building a social audience. Here are five steps to start building an audience.
Get clear on expected results. Many people are unclear on what they’ll get out of Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social channels. Why have adtech investors, CEOs, and GTM leaders such as Ari, Eric, Matt Barash, Dave Morgan, Terry Kawaja, and Paul Gubbins built large social followings through years of creating content? (Hint: They’re onto something.) Social channels are excellent channels to do what I view as the core job of high-value, high-consideration B2B marketing: building awareness, credibility, and trust to foster relationships and close more deals. Some will object that Twitter, for example, has a lot of adtech people but not so many brand, agency, and publisher professionals. There’s some truth to this, but first, there are many lurkers (my tweet this year that drove the highest growth in follower count was about Publicis), and second, the adtech influencers hanging out on social channels are only one or two steps removed from the publishers, agencies, and brands you want to reach. You reach someone like Ari or Eric on Twitter, and you meet customers through them (either because you’re showing up as a commenter on their own content or, better yet, because you build a genuine relationship with them and become a part of their community). This is how public relations has always worked. You build a relationship with the content creator (who used to be a journalist in almost all cases), and they get you in front of their/your audience.
Figure out key topics and POVs. Figure out your messaging on two levels. First, determine the primary issue or topic with which you want to be associated as well as what people get wrong about that issue. For example, if you want to be associated with performance, you should have a POV on what the industry is missing about performance, why it matters now more than it ever has, and how your customers and others should be thinking about it instead. You will constantly come back to this, tying the content of the day to your overarching crusade. Second, determine the 3-5 topics you’re keen to expound on as well as points of view on those topics. Combined, these tiers of messaging will ensure you’re never at a loss for what to talk about.
Make a list of industry influencers, and comment on their posts. The best place to start building an audience isn’t actually in your own feed, which is good news for people feeling shy about writing posts from scratch. Instead, start by commenting on posts by people in your industry who have the audience you want (e.g. other adtech people, agencies, brands, or publishers). Over time, if your comments are engaging and educational, the people who follow those influencers will start to follow you.
Create your own posts. If you comment on other people’s posts regularly, you’ll start to get a sense for what topics interest your community. You’ll also develop a style and be able to analyze which of your own comments are gaining traction. At this point, you can take your audience to another level by creating your own content — ideally a few times per week or even daily. (I write multiple posts per day. I just write them as they come to me.) Your house POVs doc is your guide here. But the best way of all is to get in the habit of sharing insights as they arise. Notice something interesting about adtech in the course of your day job? Fire off a tweet. I’d bet this is how 90% of the most effective creators do it, though you can be a weirdo and create content in batches if you prefer.
Analyze what works, double down, and be consistent. Why do most attempts at audience growth fail? A lack of consistency. People don’t see results in a month and disengage. Personally, it took me about 5-6 months of creating daily content to see a sizable number of leads and other business opportunities from Twitter and LinkedIn. But I’m just getting started, especially on Twitter. The people in our industry who really crush it at these platforms have typically been active for a decade. As adtech sales expert Cory Davis once told me, audience building is like planting a tree. The best time to start was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
