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4 steps to building a successful marketing organization

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4 steps to building a successful marketing organization

“When I came on board three and a half years ago, the ambition was to build a marketing organization and strategy to drive growth for the company. I think about growth as three ‘Rs.’ Growth for the brand, which is reputation; growth for our clients, which is relationships; and growth for our business, which is revenue.”

Teresa Barreira was outlining her vision before meticulously describing the steps on the way to achieving it. Barreira is SVP, Global Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at digital transformation consultancy Publicis Sapient, present in 17 countries and serving clients like Walmart, Nestlé and Audi.

4 steps to building a successful marketing organization
Publicis Sapient CMO Teresa Barreira

Starting with strategy

“I started by building a strategy that was agile, entrepreneurial and – most important of all – data-centric. I describe it as content-based, issues-driven and outcome-focused.” The overall success metric can indeed be defined as growth, but surely there are some more intermediate metrics by which you know whether the strategy is working?

“Everybody in the team has individual metrics,” she said, “but we all have collective outcomes which we collectively own. We win together or we lose together.” An example is pipeline. “We set a target for how much marketing-influenced pipeline we have to deliver. We own that as a group even though there are probably some people who are more accountable for it. That’s a major metric for us.”

Other metrics, however, can offer guidance on progress, especially if looked at year-over-year. “I like to look at how we’re progressing versus individual metrics,” she said. “We also look at journeys. I’ve moved away from doing campaigns. We moved from campaign creation to journey enablement, and what that means is something long-term and sustainable. Campaigns are like the fountains at the Bellagio: A lot of effort to go up, you’re up for five seconds, then you go down.”

The performance of the journey is constantly reviewed: “Then we optimize for performance, for efficency, for quality. The idea is to continually optimize and then you can see the growth.”

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One example of a journey from Publicis Sapient is the Digital Life Index, an extended and ongoing global research initiative focused on our new digital lives. It’s not transactional content, in the sense of an attempt simply to sell the consultancy’s services; it aspires to thought leadership. “That’s a very good example of journey,” she agreed. “The purpose of the Digital Life Index when we launched it was to have something we were going to build over time.” The purpose was to gather data on how people engage over time, for example, with purchases, with banks, with travel, with their health. “We’re in the third year with the study,” she said.

Hiring for diversity of thought, experience and background

Barreira was convinced that she needed a certain kind of team to enable that strategy. That meant looking for new talent. “We have around 150 people on the team today,” she said, “and I think 70% of them are new – they’ve been here for less than two years. I wanted to hire people who had the right skills, the right mindset and the right experience. I brought a lot of folks on who had never actually worked in marketing. My first hire had never had a job in marketing or even in a corporate environment. I was hiring for diversity of thought, diversity of experience and – really important – diversity of background. In my team today 80% are women and 60% come from a diverse background. It’s important to bring that into the product, into the service and into our thinking.”

Those statistics reflect a remarkable level of diversity by today’s corporate standards. How was it achieved? “It has to be intentional,” said Barreira. “I believe most companies have a positive intent. The problem sometimes is that it takes time. If you want 50% of your leadership team to be women, you have to make room. It’s not just hiring.”

She added, “I had two roles for which I wanted to hire Black women; you have to say, that’s who I’m going to hire – someone who is amazing in the role but also has that background. The candidates exist. You just have to look for them.”

Getting into the pod

Barreira’s organization is manifestly structured as an agile organization. Although she occasionally uses the term “agile,” she prefers to talk about the “pod model.” “The pod model was created to help accelerate agility but also to accelerate collaboration,” she said. She compared it to an operating room where surgeons, nurses and an anesthesiologist come together with the joint mission of saving the patient.

“A pod is the same thing – it’s a virtual pod where we have different skills. We have one pod for each industry (we got to market by industry) and we also have a brand pod and a social pod. Some people stay in a pod permanently – like a designer or a copywriter – but others come in and out of the pod and work in multiple pods – like a data scientist or someone who does journey management or website analytics. Those individuals come and go. These people come together into this construct of the pod and they ideate, solve and execute together.”

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A culture of celebration

“The last thing is to have a culture that celebrates experimentation and even failure – we call it learning,” she continued, “a culture that empowers people and allows them to innovate. We allow people to make decisions as if this was their company. You make decisions, but you’re also accountable for them, good or bad. I think that served us well, especially during the pandemic, allowing us to make fast decisions and to favor speed over perfection. If you don’t have that culture, none of this is going to work.”

One unusual element of culture at Publicis Sapient is the recently introduced option of working, not simply remotely but internationally. “It’s really exciting,” she said. “You get to work six weeks out of the year from any country you want. We can help you find housing and get a visa and we have a 24-hour hotline you can call if you have a problem. I think it’s an amazing experience for anybody. It’s good for existing employees and it’s also good to attract talent.”

It’s not four steps and done. Hiring, of course, is an unending process — but there’s more. “One of the things we constantly do is evolve. Our strategy is continuous; it’s a living document. You continue to iterate, you continue to add to it.”

About The Author

The holiday season is upon us
Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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