Widewail’s Data-Backed Content Marketing Strategy // Local Marketing Insider #072

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If I were interviewing for a new marketing role, the first questions I’d ask would be:

1. What is the target market?
2. Do you have access to any proprietary data?

Why? Good data provides instant credibility. It’s the ultimate marketing slingshot.

Universally, given the right context, buyers want it. 

It solves two key marketing challenges. 

One, it can get and hold your buyer's attention without depending upon pre-existing authority as a brand or individual. 

Two, it’s a deep source of new content material, reducing content development time.

I’m convinced that data-backed marketing will be a cornerstone of my career. Smart money is on this strategy, so I'm sharing it with you.

Today’s LMI overviews the data-backed marketing playbook we employ at Widewail and how you can use it to guide your business’s next big data marketing project. 

Learning from the best.

In the B2B world, we follow the greats: Gong, Peersignal, and Carta. Widewail’s data marketing strategy pulls inspiration from these three (and others) applied to our audience.

We launched our strategy two months ago, first focusing on automotive.

Built on top of great data, we’ve created a “content ecosystem.” Today, I will detail how this ecosystem attracts readers with different preferences (newsletter vs. report) and feeds itself through cross-promotion (newsletter -> report).

Before marketing, start here.

Foundationally, you’ll need two things:

1. A buyer who cares about the data
2. Proprietary dataset

Of course, the data needs to be relevant and related to your product.

Creating a data-backed content ecosystem.

Widewail’s data-specific content ecosystem consists of three parts.

Public Dataset

A subset of the full dataset available to your audience online. 

Widewail’s version

For us, this is the Automotive Reputation Index. It’s reputation data for 16k dealers available in what is basically an online spreadsheet. To build this, we used Airtable.

Data Reports

The reports are where to flex your data analysis muscle. These are foundational thought leadership assets with proprietary research. Delivery is either a PDF download or a fancy website experience.

Widewail’s version

While the Index provides all raw reputation data but no sentiment data or analysis, Widewail’s data reports reveal the valuable information held within the sentiment analysis.

Magnet

A short, easy-to-consume, accessible entry point to the data and insights. While the dataset and the reports are dense and time-consuming, the magnet should be a slice of insight that the audience can get in passing with little time investment. Because of this, it will likely be the most effective of the three at growing your audience. Hence, “magnet.”

Magnet types (choose as many as you want):

• Newsletter
• Social video
• Podcast
• Webinar
• Blog

Widewail’s version

The REV newsletter is Widewail’s magnet. It’s a short, easy-to-read, highly visual way to access the information in the index and the reports. The reports are long. The Index is immensely powerful and customizable, but you need to know what you want or be willing to experiment until you find what you want. The Index is the type of thing you sit down at your desktop and explore, taking notes along the way. It’s a tool. In contrast, you can read the REV on the go. We deliver it to our audience. It includes three short observations, quickly making you informed headed into the day. 

I love this cross-promotion technique.

With the dataset, reports, and magnet(s) in place, you now have three entry points into the content ecosystem and opportunities for cross-promotion.

I’m currently doing this in a few ways.

• Within the data reports, we’re promoting both the Index dataset and the REV newsletter
• Most REV newsletters contain insights sourced from the dataset, with a link to the dataset and instructions for how to find that insight
• Surrounding report launches, the REV newsletters include insights sourced from the report, simplified for the REV

These are just a few examples. With some creativity, there are lots of cross-promotion opportunities.

Give it a try.

If you’re fortunate enough to work for a company with access to strong data, give this strategy a shot. 

We’ve seen great engagement. 

We launched the Voice of the Customer Report to the REV audience with a 34% open rate and 22% click-through rate. In my world, that’s an engaged audience, and they’re engaged because people LOVE data. 

Try the data-backed content ecosystem:

• Public Datasets
• Reports
• Magnets

Feed the ecosystem via traditional channels:

• PR
• Organic social
• Paid: LI, FB, GDN, Search
• Paid media: industry-specific media outlets
• Organic search
• Industry-specific communities

And finally, cross-promote.

Happy New Year, all. 

Time to get after 2024.

See you in 2 weeks - Jake, Marketing @Widewail

P.S. All of the examples in this article can be found here.