Build the Foundation Before You Build the House

By: Obaid Durrani

There are a lot of benefits to establishing a media engine:

• Educate your market on your product

• Establish credibility through your influencers' shared audiences

• Associate your brand with certain outcomes

• Build a community of supporters and admirers around your company

• Drive a higher volume of qualified inbound leads

Heck, you might even skyrocket your brand into stardom.

And me and the team at AudiencePlus are convinced that this is the B2B marketing playbook of the present and the future.

But there's still one important question we need to tackle:

What pieces do you need to have in place before you can successfully venture into building a media engine for your company?

In other words, how do you know if your team is ready? What are the "must-haves" you should have in place?

Sure, something like The Easy Mode Framework lays out the steps for you to build a media engine, but there are things you need to do before you can even consider carrying out those steps.

So, let's talk about the essentials.

In-House Creator(s)

One of the main things you'll need is an in-house marketer, or a team of in-house marketers.

If you have a team of in-house marketers, then you more than likely have a perfect candidate for a Creator Manager, the person who will be managing and leading the charge.

This in-house creator needs to have a few important traits:

• They need to have a solid content/copy writing foundation

• They need to have some experience with video content, or if not, genuinely be comfortable with the idea of creating video content and showing up on-camera

• They need to have the ability to coach other team members

If you're a bigger company with a bigger in-house marketing team, odds are you have a great candidate for this type of leader.

If you're a smaller company, and don't have any in-house marketers yet, hire one, and make sure they meet the criteria above.

If you don't have at least one in-house creator with these traits, it will be very difficult to make the owned media approach work.

Leadership Participation

One of the best things that a leader could do for their company's growth, is put themselves and their wisdom out there.

We're all aware that a strong media engine is built by (a) accomplishing different purposes, (b) through different forms of content, (c) through multiple personalities.

The leaders on your team will have a massive impact on this, since one of those different forms of content is straightforward and insightful content (i.e. not everything will be conceptual), and because the faces of your brand need to be a blend of personalities (i.e. not everything will be entertaining).

For these reasons, you need to have at least one senior leader on your team who is (a) willing to put in the effort required to create written, audio, and video content, and (b) doesn't mind putting themselves out there and building a following.

An Existing Following

If no one knows who you are, no one will care about what you have to say.

You could have the strongest substance delivered through the best content, but if no one knows who you are, no one will care about what you have to say.

The easiest way to solve this is through familiarity (people know who you are) and credibility (you've given them no reason to distrust you).

This is why many B2B SaaS companies venture into building an organic presence on LinkedIn.

And even if you have a small presence there, or on YouTube, or TikTok, or whatever, it will be extremely helpful.

But unlike the other two essentials I mentioned (in-house creators and leaders willing to participate), this isn't a mandatory requirement.

You can still build a successful media engine if you have in-house creators and leaders willing to participate, but no existing following.

However, if you have none of these, you'll need to make changes within your company and make it to where you have at least two of these three things.

You need to build your foundation before you can build your castle.