About This Episode

Your huge annual conference was scheduled in early April.

Well, all those opportunities got scratched. (Don’t forget, they were scratched for your competitors, too.)

How do you recreate a conference-grade level of opportunity using only digital channels?

I had a blast talking with Randy Frisch, CMO at Uberflip, about how to adapt your digital channels for our unprecedented times.

“Marketing for me has always been in my DNA. It’s always been what’s driven me,” Randy said.

He co-founded Uberflip during an economic downturn, but the COVID-19 pandemic of the last few weeks has been the craziest roller coaster nearly everyone in the world has been on.

Like all of us, Randy has been forced to adapt. Read on to learn about his techniques for creating a digital experience.

What now?

“How do we do marketing now? We’ve got to be relevant to what’s going on out there more than ever,” Randy said.

The need to ramp up different channels and adapt our current plans is certainly making this an interesting time to be in marketing or sales.

In other words, it’s a sink or swim situation — and swimmers are going to get creative with their strategy.

As salespeople and marketers, we count on face-to-face channels very heavily. “I mean, there’s nothing stronger than a handshake and getting in front of someone,” Randy said.

Not a possibility anymore.

Those in-person channels really allowed us to create a one-on-one experience. But within that, we spent time thinking about what we were going to tee up for those people next.

“When you go to an event, you go to a track that’s geared to you,” Randy said. “If you love it, you stay in that track and you wait for what’s going to come next. You don’t want to leave your seat.”

What you need to do in this new environment is apply what was successful about events to the digital channels that you have.

Don’t send an email peppered with links. Send one CTA that leads to one destination that is so relevant that the prospect will stay in that thread.

“There’s an opportunity right now for us to learn from the things that we know we’re going to miss, but to replicate those better in a digital environment,” Randy said.

Creating digital destinations

You get someone to land on your website, and then…

It literally ends. There’s no next step.

“We need to think of how we can direct someone to something that creates an experience,” Randy said.

1. Environment

Think about Netflix, Spotify, Amazon — masters of the consumer experience.

They make the environment look visually appealing.

They also make it clear how to navigate through the digital site.

In a sense, the environment creates so much trust that the customer will hand over the reins and let the site navigate them through the whole experience.

2. Structure

“As much as environment is important, the way we structure our content is really important, too,” Randy said.

Even though there are thousands of things available on Netflix, you’re presented with only about 20 pieces of content.

To people selling in a B2B space: “You’ve got to think about who you’re selling to and what they want to see next,” Randy said.

These masters of experience organize content around genre or holiday or things you’ve already said you like.

3. Engagement

Finally, how do you get someone to engage?

You plan the next event.

If a prospect has clicked through the link and found a dead end, they’ll go back to their inbox and find something else.

Or if your link sends them to YouTube, they’ll see something on the sidebar and decide to watch that next.

Engagement strategy is based on audience, of course. “You need to look at the structure and what you engage them with next very differently from one persona to the next,” Randy said.

Remember that the next engagement could be another piece of content or a call to action, like scheduling a meeting or a call.

Also keep in mind that engagement is like a good conversation that builds off of the last time you spoke — meaning that you should take a holistic approach.

At Uberflip, Randy maps out the buyer journey for the average consumer to help him visualize each touch point.

“If you can align those touch points so that they’re more logical, then the whole journey for the buyer is going to feel more genuine, more personalized,” Randy said.

That’ll take sales and marketing collaboration — and a deep understanding of who the buyer is.

It’ll also take forced adaptation.

“It’s those companies that have adapted quickly in these times that are going to definitely make it through stronger than ever,” Randy said.

For more engaging sales conversations, subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or on our website.

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