Yesterday I saw a post on LinkedIn about the success of Barstool Sports, with 5 lessons for B2B marketers.
It raised some good points, which I’ll mention in a minute.
But before I get to that I want to mention a strange experience I had yesterday.
My site runs on WordPress, and some of my clients also use WordPress. Yesterday I was looking for a WordPress plugin that would read the content of an article and use Dall-E or Midjourney or something to generate an appropriate image for that article.
I found one that I thought would work, so I downloaded it and tried it, but it wasn’t what I wanted, so I uninstalled and deleted it. I’ve probably done that a hundred times.
What’s only happened once was this. Later in the day I got an email from the company that makes the plugin asking why I had uninstalled it so quickly. I explained.
That’s pretty smart of those guys. Feedback like that can make a lot of difference to a company. In this case, it might help them clarify exactly what their plugin does and does not do.
So here are the 5 recommendations from Barstool Sports.
1. Create a steady cadence of content releases
What that cadence is might differ from company to company, but make it steady.
2. Make your content memorable with micro-franchises
- Pardon My Take
- Spittin’ Chiclets
- Pizza Reviews
I don’t know any of these things because I don’t particularly care about sports, but the idea is to have a group of franchises and personalities under your main brand.
People like personalities and points of view.
3. Use internal spokespeople as brand ambassadors and advocates
I think that follows from #2.
The point is that buying is an emotional process, and part of that means relating to the face of the brand.
This doesn’t appeal to me, because I went to the Vulcan science academy as a lad, but for the rest of you ….
4. Recruit external influencers/creators to make content for your network
I’m not sure how that fits with the idea of having a personality behind a brand, but … okay.
5. Craft a sense of belonging within your community.
Barstool Sports has “stoolies.” Sometimes community-building initiatives are a little silly – Gainsight did a rap song about customer success – but the point is that people feel like they’re on the inside. People want to feel like they’re part of something.
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