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4 marketing takeaways from 2022 to help you conquer 2023

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4 marketing takeaways from 2022 to help you conquer 2023

‘Tis the season! The season for all things. For retailers, it’s absolute chaos. No time for strategizing. From here through the New Year, it’s execution all the time.

There is no “try” there is only “do,” as Yoda says. Launch things. Make money. Hit your year-end goals. 

As an email strategist, I got bored after the 15th of November, when my team locked down its holiday campaigns to the end of the year. My job was done. I did things to fill my time, but in the last six weeks of the year, nobody called on me for strategic thinking. Everybody was in execution mode.

Today, my agency’s retail clients are all heads down, launching campaigns. Our teams are helping them get things done. Everybody is in a mad push for the end of the year.

Teams in other verticals fall into one of two groups: 

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  • The ones for whom December is just the end of the year. You want to finish strong, and that’s great. 
  • The ones, especially B2B marketers, who are crushing it to close deals by December 31. 

Whatever vertical you find yourself in, take a few minutes to walk with me and look back over what we’ve done in the last 12 months.

4 marketing lessons learned in 2022

I suspect many of you are grabbing time to read this while you’re on your way to something else — your daily stand-up, a team meeting, commuting to or from work (don’t read and drive) or just kicking back and looking for something to do because you don’t feel like doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

Wherever you are in your daily life, thanks for joining me to review the year, look for things we can pat ourselves on the back for and remind ourselves that we made it through another challenging year.  

1. The advice I shared in 2022 can guide you through 2023

When I look back at all the columns I wrote this year for MarTech, one thing stands out: Most of them are designed to help you level up your email program. I frequently advise marketers to stop what they’re doing, clear their minds, look at their efforts and think of how to improve them.

That has been my goal with my MarTech columns since I began writing them — to help marketers do better.

I share real-world advice pulled from my own experiences because I have been where you are now:

  • The person pushing the “Send” button.
  • The one getting screamed at to “send another email.” 
  • The marketer who had to figure out how to fight for every scrap of budget to make the email program achieve its potential.

If you’re thinking about what to do in 2023 but not sure where to start, visit my article directory on MarTech and search for ideas. How to do email audits, review your tech stack and move to a new ESP. How to brag a little about your team and your results and help your company understand the power of email and why it deserves investment.

You’ll find a year’s worth — and more! — of strategic and tactical approaches that can make a real difference in your email program. Find one or two improvements that you could make happen, along with a reserve list of five or six, and then follow my guidance for how to make them happen.

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No, you don’t have to do it right now. Post a note on your cubicle wall or tape it to your computer monitor, and come back to it after the holidays. 

2. Brands are beginning to invest extra in email again

I’m noticing an encouraging trend — an increase in spend. We’ve seen significant investment in email by our clients in 2022. When I ask business owners why, they say they learned their lessons during the pandemic. They needed to invest in better platforms to take advantage of everything email could do for them.

We also saw people put their investments on hold to see what would happen in the economy and the labor force. But overwhelmingly, spending increases outpaced cutbacks or holds.

We also talked with front-line marketers. They told us they won their increases because they had effectively communicated the power, the upside and the opportunity of email in their organizations. 

They made a case for email. They educated their executives and pointed out where email could excel. They also highlighted instances outside of marketing where email could solve company problems that cropped up because of COVID-19.  

That’s the advice I shared a year ago in my forecast for 2022. Boast about your program a little. Talk about your email program with your executive team and point out what you’re doing and how you’re contributing to the company with email.

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This has been one of my consistent themes this year because I can see the increase in business, and I want other marketers to share that mentality if they can put together solid business and communication plans.

In other words, if you want the funding, you have to think like a business owner. Because you own a business unit within your company. Treat your marketing program like a business, an asset, and communicate that asset to your executives.

This approach results in increased spending at companies that value email. That comes from people who own it.

Dig deeper: 5 email marketing lessons learned in the pandemic

3. RFPs and ESP migrations are off the charts

This is another long-term result of changes forced under the pandemic. Many companies found their platforms weren’t good enough. They weren’t fast enough. They couldn’t handle the fast pivots and new demands from extreme digital transformation.

That left many marketers wondering, “Am I the problem? Or is it my platform?”

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In my 20 years of working with RFPs, migrating to new platforms and onboarding new clients, I saw people running RFPs because they didn’t understand what their present platforms could do. They hadn’t tried everything or taken ownership of the process to learn all the ins and outs.

Today, we are getting inquiries from people who have done that work and know that their platforms can’t take them where they want to go. They don’t have time to cope with sluggish systems, downtimes, workarounds or extra processes. These companies are driven to change and need platforms that can keep up with them.

You don’t have to be beholden to the platform — whether email, marketing automation, CRM or what have you — that you have been using. 

Digital transformation in its broadest sense can mean moving to a new platform that enables cross-channel and omnichannel marketing, that gets you to the Valhalla of real-time dynamic content, that draws a closer relationship between customer intent and product demand.

This rush to RFPs will continue in 2023. The frustration I hear from clients is tangible. This is a challenge to the existing ESP industry to do better. You can’t just say you “do email.” People want more than a pipe. They want functionality that goes beyond email and pushes email to do more.

Is an RFP in your future? Maybe. But before you start putting one together, be sure you’re using everything your current platforms offer. Audit your platform use to be sure you can accomplish everything you need to do now. 

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Dig deeper: 5 tips for successfully switching email service providers

4. Finding balance is a need, not just a want

COVID drove home the idea that people want balance between their work and home lives. As I wrote last year (“Marketers: Where will you be a year from now?“), finding that elusive work-life balance would become a priority in 2022. Burnout was real, and we could feel its effects as 2021 ticked over into 2022.

I wish Elon Musk had followed my advice.

After he acquired Twitter a couple of months back, he sent out a now-infamous memo telling people they had to work harder — nights and weekends — or quit. 

My reaction: Somebody wasn’t reading the room.

Whether Musk appreciates it or not, we have moved beyond demands like that. We have moved beyond the corporate dictate that work is the be-all and end-all. 

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Yes, some employees signed up for that 24/7 workday. That’s fine. That’s in their DNA. But many others looked at the choice between more work and more life and chose to have a life.

I hope this trend continues into 2023. Manage your work so you can take time for yourself. If you’re in ruins, so is your work.

In my 2021 column, I also advised marketers to keep their resumes updated and to take any interviews that come along. You could be happy as hell in the job you’re in, but keep an eye out for the next great opportunities.

Finally, continue to boast about your email program. Help others discover all the good work you do and get the respect you deserve. As some of my clients showed, it can pay off. 

Going into the new year prepared

As we go into 2023, let’s remember this — as hard as it was to work through the upheavals that COVID wrought in 2020 and 2021, we got to the other side. No, COVID is not over. We’re facing another winter with the triple threat of COVID, the flu and RSV, the respiratory virus that’s so dangerous for young children and the elderly.

And let’s not forget about the twin challenges of inflation and recession and whatever crisis is waiting for us. Can we meet it? Yes. Can we conquer it? Yes!

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Over the 20+ years I have been in this business, email marketers have always impressed me with their spirit, their grit and their ideation. 

We are a talented industry, and we need to take pride in what we do.

Over the next few days, disregard Elon Musk’s advice and take time for yourself. Watch SpongeBob SquarePants. Put your phone down. Turn off your notifications. 

Put some distance between yourself and your work to start 2023 with a fresh perspective. Give yourself the gift of balance because you deserve to take breaks. 

Know that I think everybody reading my words is an amazing person. 

Have a wonderful holiday, and I’ll see you on the other side. 

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

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About the author

Ryan PhelanRyan Phelan

As the co-founder of RPEOrigin.com, Ryan Phelan’s two decades of global marketing leadership has resulted in innovative strategies for high-growth SaaS and Fortune 250 companies. His experience and history in digital marketing have shaped his perspective on creating innovative orchestrations of data, technology and customer activation for Adestra, Acxiom, Responsys, Sears & Kmart, BlueHornet and infoUSA. Working with peers to advance digital marketing and mentoring young marketers and entrepreneurs are two of Ryan’s passions. Ryan is the Chairman Emeritus of the Email Experience Council Advisory Board and a member of numerous business community groups. He is also an in-demand keynote speaker and thought leader on digital marketing.

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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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