There are a lot of things you can do in two minutes, communicating effectively may or may not be your strength. Welcome to "3"…three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker. Today's guest is Emily Hopkins, the director of Integrated Marketing at CDI, a technology integrator. Emily, as an event-driven company, the pandemic really changed things up, didn't it?
mily Hopkins: Yeah, we ended up moving a lot of our in-person events strategy online to Zoom. And, that really impacted what we were able to do and really required us to do a lot of training for our sales reps to put them in the position to win regarding simple things you wouldn't think of like what to wear, what's in the background, how to record videos and embed them in emails, and really give them that digital-first strategy they needed from their own homes to empower them to close those deals.
Drew: The pandemic also changed how companies delivered their content. How did you adapt?
Emily: Yeah, so I have this two-minute rule, which is what this segment is about. I call it the two-minute rule because I think all content really needs to be digestible in two minutes; otherwise, you lose people. So we worked on making our content more engaging and really quick hitting - like one-pagers and glossies, which you wouldn't think in a digital-first world would be a big hit, but just grabbing a link and being able to go to an asset and read things is really empowering.
Drew: I agree that content needs to be engaging, and I like that two-minute rule for obvious reasons, but that seems like a tricky combination to pull off. Can you give me an example?
Emily: You get a long email, a lot of people drop off on that. One way we did that is we sectioned off our content into categories, really giving people an idea and a regular place where they can go and find what they're looking for information-wise. So we did that with our one-pagers and we had an advantage section, which basically talked about how we were the best integrated for that service and how we compete, and then basic pillars on what the service offered, and usually some kind of dynamic visual section that gave the user something to look at and really digest that way, because everyone kind of consumes content in a different way. So when you're thinking about something you're putting out there, you have to make sure that you are giving people and different learning types an opportunity to digest the information and take something from it, so we made sure there was a section on all of that as well as about CDI.
Drew: That's great. I love the two-minute rule, and I think that everyone who tries that will benefit from it. "3" is a production of MarketingAccelerator.com and just one of the resources we provide to accelerate marketing leaders. I'm Drew Dinkelacker.