What’s the key to developing more long-form content, faster?
Small squads and lone writers, I see you.
Spotlight your SMEs and sales teams, so their expertise can be seen, heard, and encored. Package the small stuff as a premium, curated collection. Then give yourself permission to break it up into teasers, summaries, and individual pieces for different channels and platforms. Put any well-received (or especially well-executed and relevant) content into evergreen rotation. And if design capacity is the blocker? Three words: DALL-E or Midjourney.
Backstory
As one of just three marketing team members and the only copywriter on staff, I needed to make our startup look like a big, trusted heritage brand and a fresh voice in the complex risk management industry. (A shocking scenario, I know.)
100 brokers in a dozen practice verticals in three countries were all turning to our tiny brand team for GTM support, including content strategy and execution, event planning and promotion, and ABM support.
Rather than slip leads into a general, higher-level newsletter drip that wouldn’t have been relevant for these buyers or our business goals, I pitched an old-school magazine concept that converted SQLs to opportunities via 1:1 ABM email communication.
Approach
We branded the magazine for the Healthcare audience, calling it RiskRX. Then I worked with SMEs/brokers to build a quarterly editorial calendar. We partnered to create and crowdsource hot takes, thought leadership, and key industry updates that the brokers and their leads consistently engaged with.
How we pulled it off
Give prestige-motivated SMEs and brokers bylines.
Spend 80% of the time on story curation, headlines, and art direction.
Copy edit for readability and clarity — subheaders are your friend.
Deliverables: Branding, content strategy, ghostwriting, copyediting, QA
Graphic design and creative direction: Justin VanAlstyne
Results
Sometimes political results are as valuable, if not more valuable, than quantifiable attribution. And that’s how this played out: Every practice leader wanted their own quarterly magazine tailored to their ICPs and industries. And while we couldn’t execute on that for them (remember: 3 marketers for the entire company), we gave them a playbook with simple style guide standards and templates so they could produce their own internal practice resources. We also made ourselves available for brainstorming sessions, creative reviews, headline options, and QA.
About Integro
Founded in 200by former bigwigs at ACE, AIG, and Marsh & McLellan, Integro was the largest privately funded global and complex risk management firm ever. EPIC Holdings acquired Integro’s USA operations in 2019.