This key business driver is already influencing your success, whether you know it or not.
What if the key to growing your business wasn’t about getting more customers, but about building deeper connections with fewer of them? Creating a personal brand can sometimes feel like showing up to a party in a costume when everyone else is in business casual. But once you realize others admire your uniqueness, you start to embrace it.
No matter where you are in your journey, intentional personal branding completely shifts the way you’re seen and sets you apart, and my friend AJ Vaden happens to be an expert on it. As co-founder of consultancy Brand Builders Group, a recent Inc. 5000 honouree, she and I discuss why building your personal brand isn’t optional–it’s essential. Here’s why it matters and how you can get started.
Start with who, not why
You’ve probably heard Simon Sinek’s famous advice to start with why. But Vaden suggests flipping the script–she says start with who. Who exactly are the people you are serving?
“It’s not about trying to appeal to the masses. It’s about finding your smallest viable audience,” Vaden says.
Your personal brand isn’t just about you–it’s also about those you’re serving and how well you understand them. The companies that are killing it right now aren’t trying to be everything to everyone. They’re laser-focused on serving a specific, highly engaged audience.
For example, the dating app Bumble gained early success by designing the platform primarily for women who prioritize safety and empowerment. They differentiated themselves by allowing only women to initiate conversations with matched male users.
Similarly, Marie Kondo built her personal brand around “KonMari,” a philosophy that emphasizes not just physical organization, but emotional well-being through tidiness. She serves individuals who feel overwhelmed by clutter in their homes and lives.
Branding success begins by creating value for the right people, not by having the most followers.
Personal branding isn’t a nice-to-have anymore–it’s the future of marketing
The days when branding was all about logos and catchy slogans are over. In the digital world, personal branding is how people connect, trust, and do business. A national study from Brand Builders Group found that 74 percent of Americans are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand, and that number shoots up to 85 percent for Millennials.
“Personal branding is a trust accelerator,” says Vaden. For Millennials and Gen-Z, personal branding isn’t about vanity–it’s how they decide whom to buy from, hire, and follow.
I find myself nodding along vigorously. In my keynotes with leaders and sales teams, I often discuss the idea that we’re living in a modern trust crisis. Customers are increasingly sceptical of corporate promises and more likely to trust people over businesses, which makes personal brands even more powerful. Vaden’s research shows that 82 percent of Americans believe companies are more influential when their leaders have personal brands they follow and trust.
Your brand is already being built–so take control of it
Here’s the kicker: Whether you’re working on your personal brand or not, it’s already being built. You already have a personal brand. It’s just a matter of whether you’re building it intentionally or letting the internet do it for you.
Your personal brand is more than what you post online. It’s how people perceive you, from your social media presence to the things people say about you. If you’re not actively shaping that narrative, someone else might.
You don’t need to be famous or omnipresent–just known and trusted by the folks who matter most to your business.
Personal branding makes you money
According to Brand Builders Group research, 67 percent of Americans are willing to spend more money on products or services from companies whose founders have a personal brand that aligns with their values. That’s a pretty clear link between a strong personal brand and business success.
As Vaden points out, personal branding isn’t about looking cool online–it’s about building trust and relationships that turn into dollars and cents.
Overcoming the awkwardness of personal branding
Let’s name the remaining elephant in the room: Building a personal brand can feel awkward as heck. Putting yourself out there and showcasing your expertise might feel self-serving, but it’s essential for standing out in today’s competitive market. The good news? You don’t need to showboat, and you definitely don’t have to be perfect. You just need to be authentic.
One of the best strategies to embrace this awkwardness is to focus on providing value. Instead of thinking about how to look good or be impressive, shift your mindset to how you can help others. What problems can you solve for your audience? How can you make their lives easier? When you focus on being helpful, you naturally build trust and credibility, which ultimately makes the branding process feel less about selling yourself and more about serving your audience.
Ultimately, your personal brand is something that will morph with you over time. It isn’t just a reflection of who you are today–it’s the key to unlocking everything you can become tomorrow.
One of the best tools in a marketer’s tool bag is evergreen content.
Because this type of content can be used again and again, year after year, it helps keep marketers from stressing about filling their content calendar, and it also allows them to focus on creating high-quality topical or time-sensitive content more regularly.
However, when used too often or for too many years, evergreen content can start to become stale, and your audience may notice you’re recycling content without any relevant value. Thankfully, keeping evergreen content fresh doesn’t need to take up much time. Below, 13 members of Forbes Communications Council each share one effective way to ensure any evergreen content you reuse in your marketing or communications stays fresh and valuable for your audience.
1. Adapt It To Your Audience’s Most Current Pain Points
Evergreen content thrives on empathy. Check the pulse of your audience’s pain points through continuous evaluation. It’s about deeply understanding your audience and adapting your content to reflect their most pressing issues. How they articulate their challenges evolves, so your content must too. Speak to their current emotions and aspirations, and your message will always resonate. – Sahil Sethi, Freshworks
2. Encourage Engagement And Interactive Experiences
Incorporate quizzes or polls to refresh evergreen content. This strategy revitalizes material and invites active participation, transforming static info into a dynamic experience. Engaging users directly creates memorable, personalized interactions, boosting interest and retention. This keeps your audience invested and eager to engage repeatedly. – Resha Chheda, Safe Security
3. Align It To The Company’s Latest Offerings
To keep evergreen content fresh and relevant, we align it with the company’s latest offerings. This ensures it stays up to date while directly supporting our business goals. This approach works well because it makes the content more engaging for our audience and creates a seamless connection between valuable information and our current strategy. – Jessica Wong, Valux Digital
4. Collaborate With Industry Experts And Influencers
Collaborating with industry experts or influencers to periodically update or comment on evergreen content adds new perspectives and relevance. This enriches the material with fresh insights and enhances its appeal, leveraging the experts’ credibility to keep the content engaging and aligned with current trends. – Cade Collister, Metova
5. Update It With Current Trends And Insights
One way I ensure evergreen content stays fresh for its audience is by regularly updating and contextualizing it with current trends and insights. Evergreen content is valuable because it’s timeless, but to keep it relevant, I revisit it periodically to add new data, examples or perspectives that resonate with today’s happenings. I call it falling forward. – Shanita Akintonde, ShanitaSpeaks, LLC
6. Embed Practical Use Cases
We ensure evergreen content stays relevant by embedding a practical use case, like a course, calculator, matchmaker or checklist so clients can consistently return to it for value. This approach works because it’s timeless and addresses ongoing problems everyone faces. This way, we ensure the content remains valuable and always worth revisiting. – Alaattin Kilic, Visa Franchise
7. Run An Annual Case Study Or Consumer Survey
Run an annual case study or consumer survey with consistent data points or questions; it will pay off big. This allows you to structure content to be updated in a new annual report each year. It will also allow you to link back to the prior year’s report to show changes over the course of time. Make it part of your annual content calendar to ensure consistency in the timing of annual reports. – Esther Bonardi, Yardi Systems
8. Focus On Deep, Authoritative Coverage Of Topics
We ensure evergreen content stays fresh by focusing on deep, authoritative coverage of topics. Rather than chasing trends, we minimize the use of easily outdated statistics, placing time-sensitive data in just a few sections. This approach keeps content relevant longer, requiring only minor updates, and allows us to maintain its value and longevity without constant revisions. – Kurt Uhlir, Ethereal Innovations, Inc.
9. Transform It Into New Formats
Most brands possess a wealth of content that remains accurate and valuable for driving company goals and revenue. Refresh this legacy content by repurposing it into different formats. Video content is particularly versatile and easily adaptable to various lengths and channels. AI tools can further enhance this by efficiently and effectively creating new clips from multiple sources, including text. – Kerry Curran, Revenue Based Marketing Advisors
10. Conduct Quarterly Content Audits
Content teams often get caught up in creating new content to meet the needs of the latest campaigns. However, an important part of content governance is to conduct quarterly content audits. Regularly evaluating the most popular content to decide whether it should be deprecated, updated or retained ensures that evergreen content remains fresh and relevant. – Rekha Thomas, Path Forward Marketing LLC
11. Take Cues From Your Core ‘Why’
Your evergreen content comes straight from your core “why.” It’s the reason that got you started, the one that will always be valuable. But it’s not about repetition. Generate a sentiment people will recognize, in a space where you are the undiscussed authority, and they will see that your brand is always on, always listening, always relevant. They will thank you for it. – Matteo Atti, Vista
12. Integrate Content Lifecycle Management
Integrate content lifecycle management into your broader strategy with a roadmap that includes scheduling updates, repurposing content and optimizing for SEO and performance metrics. Track performance, identify trends, incorporate user-generated content and automate updates for a proactive, data-driven approach that maximizes reach, engagement and ROI while keeping content fresh and relevant. – Mark Rainey, inQUEST Consulting
13. Focus On Stories That Reflect Your Brand Values
Evergreen content enables deeper audience engagement by focusing on stories that reflect your brand values, not just fleeting trends. This content showcases your unique position to target audiences and can be reused across various channels, from blogs to social media. By linking it to new topics, you conserve resources while maintaining strong audience resonance. – Alyssa Kopelman, Otsuka Precision Health
By now, you’ve probably heard about the fractional CMO—a marketing leader contracted to work a limited number of hours a week instead of as a full-time executive.
The fractional CMO is a solution to a problem, and it can be a good one. Companies get CMO-level expertise at a reduced rate, and CMOs get better work-life balance. It begs the question: Could clients and agencies do the same thing? What if there was a “fractional agency” model?
A fractional agency approach would provide a small, dedicated team of experts who can scale their support based on the client’s evolving needs. It’s not a retainer or a traditional project-based model; there’s an assumption that you’ll always be working on something for the client, just not at the same scale month to month. You end up with a flexible work solution that benefits both parties.
Addressing the naysayers
A fractional agency approach is admittedly less of a distinct third offering than a more traditional approach, but I think of it more as the best of both worlds. A successful fractional agency that sells will contribute a lot more to stability than a retainer-based approach with no buyers.
If we could, of course we would all go back to the retainers of yesteryear. They offered the most stability for the agency, which in turn gave clients the kind of creative, strategic partnerships only time can build. And for some clients, a retainer model is still going to get them the best value for their spend.
But many clients can’t work like that. Just look at the numbers: Marketing budgets are a shadow of their former selves, having decreased almost 19% since 2022. And even if a client can afford a retainer model, sometimes their stakeholders refuse on principle to engage in retainer relationships because they’ve been burned in the past by disreputable partners. Those clients often opt for project-based models, which could lead to onboarding many agencies in the same length of time as the traditional retainer.
What we’re doing isn’t working
Project-based models allow clients to engage with agencies on only their most pressing needs, but their drawback is that they lack the strategic depth that an agency can bring over time. Even retainer models have their downsides—if there isn’t consistent work, the ability to appropriately plan, and opportunity for an agency to provide value, the entire relationship could be at risk. And both retainer and project-based models can become mired in scope creep, which requires tedious contract adjustments on both sides.
A fractional agency approach addresses all these downsides: By combining the flexibility of the project-based model along with the stability and long-term relationships of the retainer model, clients get agencies that will provide adaptable, ongoing support and a consistent focus on the client’s overall business health and strategy.
There are a few situations where a fractional agency approach works best.
You work in a volatile industry
Some industries and companies are almost guaranteed to work in boom-and-bust cycles. If you’re a startup or your sector often faces fast-changing conditions, having a flexible partner who can provide expert guidance, strategic insights, and quick pivots is invaluable.
You have a complicated business
Especially in B2B, some industries have highly complex regulatory conditions or customer journeys. These kinds of clients might want a project-based partner, but the onboarding process and lack of consistent strategic communication between agency and client can wipe out any savings they might have had by not engaging on a retainer basis.
Complicated industries, like health care or finance, need long-term strategic partners that understand their business and the players within. A fractional agency gives them that support without locking them in.
You need consistent support that can scale
People often look to agencies for big ideas. But sometimes, hiring a fractional agency to do your team’s day-to-day can free up your marketers to engage in more of that big-picture thinking.
For example, websites require constant maintenance and UX/UI improvements, especially in competitive industries like consumer electronics and finance. A fractional agency can continuously update and optimize your site, ensuring it remains a powerful tool for attracting and retaining customers. Its people handle everything from content updates to technical tweaks, and they know your platform and workflow inside and out, saving you time and money in the long run.
Content creation is another area where fractional agencies work really well. You can engage experts who know your brand to create engaging, relevant content without stretching your internal resources too thin. If you need to scale up content before an event or push out a lot of content to take advantage of a market opportunity, you have the built-in support to do so without burning out your in-house teams or hiring additional full-time employees.
A better way to do business
Clients today need to show ROI, often with smaller budgets and faster market changes. Agencies, on the other hand, struggle to achieve stability and profitability from traditional project-based work and scope creep.
Adopting a fractional model gives clients and agencies a solution that works better for everyone: Continuous involvement allows for better alignment with your overall business strategy instead of isolated campaigns; you can adjust the level of support as your needs change, avoiding the pitfalls of being locked into long-term commitments; the pay-as-you-go model ensures you’re only investing in the support you need when you need it, maximizing the return on your marketing spend.
At the end of the day, good partnerships are still those that are mutually beneficial and built on reciprocated respect. A fractional agency approach honours the qualities that make long-term agency–client relationships successful—consistency and understanding—and reimagines it for the current business environment.
Google faces a second antitrust trial in less than a year.
Just one month after Google (GOOGL) lost an antitrust trial over its monopoly in the online search market, the tech giant is facing a second major competition case surrounding its search dominance. A trial starting this week (Sept. 9) will see Judge Leonie Brinkema, a federal judge in Virginia, determine whether the company is illegally monopolizing the digital advertising industry.
Google is no stranger to antitrust scrutiny—in August, another federal judge ruled it had built up an unfair position in the online search market. The company has previously faced a bevy of antitrust probes over issues like its app store operations and the Android mobile operating system.
This time, Google is being investigated for its outsized position in digital advertising. The ongoing trial stems from a federal antitrust suit last year that claimed the company unfairly controlled both the supply and demand of online advertising through its monopoly of the “ad tech stack” used by digital publishers and advertisers—in part as a result of its acquisitions of other ad tech companies.
Losing the case could see Google’s ad tech business broken up, which would lead to wide-ranging ramifications across the tech and ad market. Google has been a major player in online advertising for decades. Its advertising revenue reached over $200 billion last year, accounting for more than two-thirds of the company’s total revenue.
Here’s a look at the timeline of events leading up to Google’s ad tech case:
2008: Google acquires DoubleClick
Google’s purchase of DoubleClick, a publisher ad server, constitutes one of the most significant aspects of the ongoing antitrust trial. The $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 “vaulted Google into a commanding position over the tools publishers use to sell advertising opportunities” and “set the stage for Google’s later exclusionary conduct across the ad tech industry,” according to the antitrust suit filed more than a decade later. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated Google’s acquisition at the time and ultimately allowed the tech company to proceed with its purchase.
2009-2011: Ad tech purchases proliferate
Google didn’t stop at DoubleClick. It built an ad tech empire over the following years, making a series of acquisitions to bolster its intermediary position between advertisers and publishers. In 2009, it purchased AdMob, a system allowing publishers of mobile apps to sell ads, for $750 million. The following year, it took over Invite Media, a bidding exchange for display advertising, for $81 million. And in 2011, Google bought the yield manager AdMeld for $400 million.
2016: Google begins combining user data
At the time of Google’s 2008 DoubleClick acquisition, its privacy policies prevented Google from combining user data from external websites with those from Google properties. This changed in 2016, according to the antitrust suit. Google allegedly amended its policy and began combining user data, a decision that helped it target advertising to users “in ways no one else in the industry could absent the acquisition of monopoly—or at least dominant—positions in adjacent markets such as Search,” according to the suit.
2023: The Justice Department files an antitrust action
In January 2023, Google’s ad tech dominance finally came to a head. The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states filed an antitrust suit in a federal district court in Virginia, accusing Google of unfairly dominating the online advertising market. Through its “longstanding monopolies in digital advertising technologies,” the company, on average, pockets more than 30 percent of ad dollars from its various ad tech products, according to the suit.
2024: Google fights for a bench trial
The government initially intended for its antitrust lawsuit to be heard by a jury this fall, as the suit included a damages claim. In July, Google managed to avoid a jury trial by handing over a $2.3 million check covering requested damages and interest, therefore ensuring the case would be heard by a judge instead. The case, which started this week, is expected to run for several weeks.
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) – A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company’s then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to “crush” rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan’s antitrust trial on Wednesday.
The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice’s claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle.
On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company’s products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market.
“We’ll be able to crush the other networks and that’s our goal,” David Rosenblatt, Google’s former president of display advertising, said of the company’s strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court.
Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies.
Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market.
“We’re both Goldman and NYSE,” he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world’s biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers.
“Google has created what’s comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we’ll do to display what Google did to search,” Rosenblatt said.
By owning publisher ad servers, the advertiser ad network would have a “first look” at available spots for ads, he said according to the notes. He also said it was a “nightmare” for publishers to switch platforms.
“It takes an act of God to do it,” he said, according to the notes.
Rosenblatt, now CEO of online luxury marketplace 1stDibs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brad Bender, another former DoubleClick executive, who worked at Google until 2022, testified at trial that he forwarded the notes to his team, calling them a “worthwhile read” at the time.
Google has said it is not the only company to offer an integrated suite of products for advertisers and publishers, and that Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms have similar offerings.
If U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema finds that Google broke the law, she would consider prosecutors’ request to make Google at least sell off Google Ad Manager, a platform that includes the company’s publisher ad server and its ad exchange.
Feature Image Credit: Reuters
By Jody Godoy
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in Alexandria, Virginia; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Rufus, Amazon’s recently launched, shopping-focused chatbot, is getting ads soon.
That’s according to a changelog published by Amazon this week (first spotted by AdWeek), which states that sponsored ads could soon start appearing in placements for Rufus users in the U.S. Ads will be shown based on Amazon search and conversational context, Amazon says, and Rufus may generate text to accompany existing ad copy in certain cases.
Image Credits:Amazon
“We continue to make enhancements to the Rufus experience, including improving brand and product discovery by introducing relevant sponsored ads that help customers discover selections related to their conversation with Rufus,” a spokesperson said.
The ads in Rufus test recalls Microsoft’s experiments inserting ads into Copilot, the chatbot in Bing and the company’s other properties, including Windows. AI being the costly endeavour that it is, it’s not exactly surprising that companies are looking for tried-and-true methods to generate a return on investment — or at least break even.
Advertising has been constant for years even when it shows up in different media. But are people becoming more conscious of ads (especially with efforts to not target kids) or has the integration of ads into social media and influencer marketing made them harder to spot?
For a long time, when my kids were little, their wish lists for toys and ‘stuff’ usually came from 30-second commercials tucked in between their favourite cartoons. It was no different than when I was a kid, watching Saturday morning cartoons and seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures and pizza truck that looked cool or the new My Little Pony set.
Eventually, as they got older, even their commercial consumption changed. It was no longer about television cartoons, because their on-air television consumption reduced in favour of online videos and streaming services. There were (are) still YouTube ads that would play before they watched their favourite gamer do a walk-through.
Then, as teens, with their phones in hand, more commercials and sponsored posts showed up on Pinterest and Instagram – sometimes clearly marked as an ad, other times, integrated into a campaign that made it less clear.
Adults and kids are constantly being marketed too. The house hippo offered a conversation about truth in advertising when we were little (and continues today) but navigating a world that is always pitching, always trying to sell, and always telling us that our lives would be better somehow if we had just one more thing, is hard to overcome.
And yet, I feel as though younger generations are more aware of their shopping habits and attempts from companies to advertise to them. Sure, you can look at the popularity of the Stanley Cup water bottles or the Sephora Tweens conversation to absolutely destroy my theory quickly, but all around there’s something that isn’t quite the same as when we were teens and we all insisted on buying name brand clothing only, or were driven heavily by what we saw on television.
Younger people are thrifting, are more aware of how consumption affects the environment and are questioning what materials something is made from or who made it. They have ad blockers on their computers and click on “Skip” at the first possible moment when YouTube pushes an ad to them. Is this a sign that they want less advertising?
And what role does influencer marketing play? Maybe younger people aren’t as convinced by an ad, but if their favourite celebrity is creating a product, are they more likely to buy it? Are you or I?
We know that advertising works. I can point to items in my house or that I’m wearing that were from an ad I saw online. However, the more aware we are, is it easier for us and our kids to make smarter purchasing decisions? To not feel the same drive? Start these conversations with your kids and hear what they think!
Everyone wants to scale their business but hardly any make it a success.
Only 22% of new businesses launched in the past decade have pulled it off. 70% of startups struggle to scale, and half of small businesses don’t make it past year five. The odds don’t look good.
It’s an important phase and the rewards are there if you can crack the code. Join the 22% with 7 ChatGPT prompts to help you scale.
Scale your business with ChatGPT: prompts for ideation, planning and success
Know when to make your move
“Adopt the role of a business analyst. What are the key indicators that suggest my business is ready to scale? Help me assess whether now is the right time to expand in [describe your industry/niche].”
Timing is everything. Don’t jump too soon, but don’t miss your window. Use this prompt to get it right. If you decide it is time to scale, move on to this next prompt.
“Guide me through developing a scaling strategy that aligns with my current business model and market conditions. What steps should I take to prepare for growth? Ask 5 questions, one by one, about my business plan before providing a draft strategy [Include your business model and business plan]”
A solid plan is your roadmap to success. Without it, you’re just wandering. ChatGPT can suggest areas to explore that you may have missed.
Spot your scaling opportunities
“Acting as a growth advisor, help me identify potential scaling opportunities, such as new markets, products, or services. How can I evaluate and prioritize these options in line with the scaling strategy outlined. Here’s what we have tried so far: [describe that here]”
The right opportunity can skyrocket your growth. Get a list of ideas, discount those that won’t work, then choose a few and double down.
Prepare for the pitfalls
“What are some common challenges businesses like mine face when scaling, and how can I mitigate them? [Add more specific business details if required] Provide specific strategies for navigating potential pitfalls.”
70% of scale-ups fall short in at least one critical area, identified by McKinsey as being product & strategy, go to market, technology, people, operations, capital and governance. Cover all your bases.
Build your dream team
“Help me create a plan for scaling my team as my business grows, especially as I explore [specify the strategy you want to explore]. What roles should I prioritize hiring for, and how can I maintain a strong company culture? Here’s information about my team right now: [include that here]”
Your team can make or break your scaling efforts. Get a second opinion on the people you have in place, and build up with the best new hires.
Get your finances in order
“What financial considerations should I keep in mind when scaling my business as planned? Guide me through managing cash flow, securing funding, and planning for financial sustainability. First, ask me questions about my current finances so you have a deeper understanding of my situation.”
Successful scale-ups raise 250% more investment than anticipated. If you’re going for funding, be prepared for a windfall when you get this right.
Streamline your operations
“Assist me in refining my operations to support scaling. What changes should I consider in processes, technology, or partnerships to handle increased demand? First, ask me questions about my current operational setup and point out any areas of concern. Then move onto adaptations required for scaling.”
Efficiency is key. Make sure your operations can handle the growth, then throw everything at the top of the funnel. Without this step, your business could buckle under the strain of even your first efforts at scaling.
Scale smart, scale fast: ChatGPT prompts for insane business growth
Use these prompts to start your scaling journey with ChatGPT. Tailor them to your business for personalized advice and keep refining your plan until you’re confident in your scaling strategy. Get better as you get better.
You’ll know you’re ready to scale when the stats motivate you, not scare you off trying. Join the elite set of startups that successfully scale. Your scaling journey starts now. Make it count.
Founder of Coachvox AI – create an AI version of you. Forbes 30 under 30 class of 2017. Post-exit entrepreneur and author of Ten Year Career. Competitive powerlifter and digital nomad.
Welcome to the digital jungle. Hear that noise? It’s the sound of content saturation, which seems the only possible outcome in a world that generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. To hold all that data, we’d need 50 billion four-drawer filing cabinets—each day.
Understandably, it’s incredibly difficult for any one piece of your marketing content to stand out. Content saturation is why your carefully crafted posts, videos, and ebooks feel like whispers in a hurricane. But what if you could turn those whispers into roars?
Enter bold, strategic content marketing. This approach is about creating content that turns heads and drops jaws by challenging conventions and offering unique value. It’s content backed by a strategy that takes informed risks, pushes creative boundaries, and maps every piece of content back to broader business goals.
As important as it is, I’m not just talking about the content itself. I’m talking about how you conceive, create, and distribute it—the underlying strategy. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One showed that content strategy plus well-written content that serves readers leads to higher content marketing effectiveness.
In other words, the difference between content created without strategy and content based on strategy is like the difference between content that adds to the noise and content that makes your audience hold its breath.
Now that’s power. Let’s dig into how you can unlock it yourself.
Crafting content that commands attention
When your content challenges the status quo and dares to be bold, your message will break through. getty
So, what’s the secret sauce of bold content? It’s simple enough: Dare to be different. Take a stand. Challenge the status quo. Tell stories others are too afraid to touch. Remember the last viral video that left you speechless? Or that blog post that flipped your world upside down? That’s what I’m talking about. It’s content that shows up in your feed—owns your feed—dominating it for days.
Old as it is, take Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, for example. It dared to show women of all shapes, sizes, and ages in its ads. Bold move? You bet. Dove challenged beauty industry norms. Its campaign went viral and sparked conversations about beauty standards, positioning Dove as a brand that stands for something more than just selling products.
Or how about Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign? In a bold move contradicting basic marketing principles, the company asked customers to think twice about their purchases, showing that it cares more about the planet than profits. Talk about walking the talk.
Bold creativity, meet razor-sharp strategy
Strategy is where this magic happens. It’s the pre-brief brainstorming, planning, and intention that backs your boldness with purpose. Every piece of content, from the basic three-times-a-week LinkedIn post to the daring video exposé, comes to life through a clear vision mapped to specific business objectives. It’s bold creativity with a game plan.
Think Netflix. Its content strategy goes beyond promoting shows to creating experiences. Memes, behind-the-scenes content, witty social media banter—it all adds up to keep you binging—and subscribing.
The impact? It’s like turning on a megaphone in a library. You build authority, drive engagement, and turn attention into action. In a world of copycats, originals win big.
Dollar Shave Club is another example. People went bonkers when the company dropped its bold, hilarious “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” campaign, which went viral and disrupted an entire industry. Within 48 hours of the video’s release, 12,000 new customers signed up.
That’s the power of bold.
Case study: A go-big or go-home approach to bold content marketing
Vishal and Sejal Jain, founders of Sunshy Digital Media Agency and Thoughtful PR. Vishal Jain and Sejal Joshi
Digital marketing experts Vishal and Sejal Jain cracked the code to bold, strategic content. As the brains behind Sunshy Digital Media Agency and Thoughtful PR, this power couple has been shaking things up for clients and themselves.
Their approach? It’s all about strategic alignment, constant analysis, and data-driven decisions. And their approach is seasoned with boldness—boldly going where no internet marketer has gone before. Their boldness sets them apart.
Shifting to video-first content
Vishal and Sejal’s bold approach began in-house before fanning out to client work. “We saw the rise in video consumption and knew we had to adapt,” Sejal says. “By reallocating resources to produce high-quality video content, we saw a 500% increase in audience engagement,” she says. It was a bold move that paid off.
The finance influencer campaign: A 400% increase in revenue
Picture this: 50 social accounts, 10,000 videos, and one finance influencer. Sounds almost impossible—precisely what Vishal and Sejal thought. But they also knew this: In today’s content-saturated market, sometimes the impossible is exactly what you need.
“Go big or go home,” Vishal says. “We knew we had to do something unprecedented to help our client hit their goals.” And they did, generating 100 million monthly views and a 400% revenue increase.
That’s bold content marketing on steroids—data-driven, strategically aligned, and dominating the digital space.
Why go so bold?
Vishal explains. “We pursued this bold strategy because a campaign of this scale was unheard of in the finance industry,” he says. “Creating 50 accounts across platforms and producing over 10,000 short-form videos was a massive, unconventional approach. Who does 50 accounts and 10,000-plus videos? We do.”
Mitigating risk with meticulous planning
Don’t mistake bold for reckless, though. Sejal is quick to point to their meticulous approach. “We crunched the numbers hard,” she says. “To calculate the risk versus reward, we analysed the influencer’s current engagement metrics and projected potential growth based on a significant increase in content output. We estimated the resource investment against the potential reach and revenue uplift. Yes, the risk was high due to the scale of the operation. But the potential reward was off the charts.”
The payoff
The flooding of feeds as a bold content marketing strategy. getty
The payoff was even bigger than they dreamed. “We didn’t just capture attention,” Vishal says. “We owned the conversation and completely disrupted the finance content space.”
The numbers confirmed it. “The actual results confirmed that the calculated risk we took was well worth the reward,” says Sejal. “It led to 100 million monthly views and a four-times revenue increase, surpassing our initial estimates.”
The kicker is that their flooding of feeds was a form of strategic saturation. Every video mapped to the client’s goals. Ultimately, content marketing magic happened because they combined audacious ideas with thoughtful strategy. They were loud, but not for the sake of it. They were also intelligent, intentional, goal-oriented, and unafraid to push boundaries.
Expanding globally and even more bold strategies
As Vishal and Sejal’s companies expand globally, they face new content marketing challenges. “Cultural differences, language barriers, and varying content consumption habits all came into play,” says Vishal. “But these challenges also present opportunities.”
Their approach to global content marketing is, characteristically, bold. Rather than simply translating existing content, they create culturally specific content for each market. “We’re leveraging local influencers, using regional platforms, and tailoring our content to local preferences,” Sejal says. “It’s a more complex approach, but it allows us to build deeper connections in each market.”
Overcoming challenges
Bold content marketing isn’t without its challenges. Vishal and Sejal have faced everything from resource constraints to negative feedback on particularly daring campaigns. “Not every bold move pays off immediately,” Vishal says. “But we’ve learned that the biggest risks often lead to the biggest rewards.”
One particular challenge they’ve faced is maintaining consistency across bold campaigns. “It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a big, bold idea,” Sejal says. “But we always have to remember to tie it back to our overall strategy and brand identity.”
Their approach to overcoming these challenges? “Data, data, data,” Vishal says. “We’re constantly analyzing our results, learning from our mistakes, and refining our approach. Bold doesn’t mean blind—every risk we take is calculated and informed by data.”
The power of personalization
Content personalization goes hand-in-hand with bold content strategy. getty
While mass content creation was the goal of their finance influencer campaign, Vishal and Sejal also understand the importance of personalization. “In today’s market, one-size-fits-all content just doesn’t cut it,” Vishal says. “We use data analytics to understand audience segments and tailor our content accordingly.”
Sejal believes personalization is about striking a balance between reach and relevance. “Our bold strategies get attention, but the personalized touch keeps the audience engaged,” she says, noting that their approach involves creating content variations that speak directly to different audience segments. “Whether we’re tweaking headlines or developing entirely different content pieces for different demographics, we want to make sure our bold content resonates,” she says.
Embracing emerging platforms
Staying ahead in the content game means being willing to experiment with new platforms and formats. “We’re always looking for the next big thing,” Vishal says. “When we see potential in a new platform, we’re not afraid to jump in and test the waters.”
This willingness to embrace new technologies has been crucial to their success. “By being early adopters, we’ve been able to establish our clients as leaders in their spaces before the platforms become oversaturated,” Sejal says. “We’re bold enough to venture into uncharted territory.”
They thoroughly research emerging platforms, test content strategies, and quickly scale up successful approaches. This agility allows Vishal and Sejal to capitalize on new opportunities before competitors catch on.
The art of storytelling in bold content
Powerful storytelling is at the heart of Vishal and Sejal’s bold content strategy. “Even the most daring content falls flat if it doesn’t tell a compelling story,” Sejal says. “We focus on creating narratives that resonate with our audience’s aspirations and pain points.”
Their storytelling approach involves conducting deep audience research, identifying emotional triggers, and creating stories that match brand values while pushing boundaries. This combination of empathy and audacity in storytelling has been key to their content’s ability to cut through the noise.
“Being bold doesn’t just mean being loud or shocking, though” Vishal says. “It can also mean telling stories that others are afraid to tell and approaching familiar topics from entirely new angles.”
Success beyond vanity metrics
The best content metrics go beyond vanity. getty
As content marketers, it’s easy to get caught up in likes, shares, and views. However, Vishal and Sejal focus on metrics that truly matter to their clients’ bottom lines. “Vanity metrics are just that—vanity,” Vishal says. “We focus on lead quality, conversion rates, and ultimately, revenue generated.”
Sejal says their goal is to connect content performance to actual business outcomes. “We’ve developed custom dashboards that show our clients exactly how our bold content strategies are affecting their key performance indicators,” she says. This focus on tangible results has helped them prove the ROI of their bold strategies, making it easier for clients to buy into more daring approaches.
Continuous learning and adaptation
Another key element of Vishal and Sejal’s success is their commitment to continuous learning. “We never stop educating ourselves,” Vishal says. “Whether attending conferences, taking online courses, or simply experimenting, we always seek to expand our knowledge and skills.”
This mindset of perpetual learning allows them to stay ahead of trends and continue delivering cutting-edge strategies for their clients. “Our industry moves fast,” says Sejal. “What worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Our boldness extends to how quickly we’re willing to adapt and try new things.”
Looking to the future
As they continue to push the boundaries of content, Vishal and Sejal are excited about the future. “We’re seeing a shift towards more authentic, purpose-driven content,” Sejal says. “Brands that can tell genuine stories and connect with their audiences on a deeper level will win in the long run.”
With their innovative approach and strategic mindset, Vishal and Sejal are leading the charge into the next era of content marketing. Their story is an inspiration and a roadmap for marketers looking to break through the noise.
Best practices for bold content creation
Best practices for bold content marketing. getty
Ready to make some bold waves yourself? Here’s your playbook.
1. Start with a strong foundation
Know your brand, your audience, your goals. As Sejal says, “You can’t break the rules until you know them inside out,” a knowing that includes a deep understanding of your audience. What are their pain points? What makes them tick? What kind of content do they crave? Once you have that foundation, you can start thinking about pushing boundaries.
Reita Hackaj, founder of Senstylable, a global fashion and style platform, echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the importance of vision and understanding the nuances of your chosen platform. “I had the visionary idea to start the Senstylable channel on Instagram, a platform entirely based on short-form video content that revolved around women and their stories,” she says. “This approach, which placed women at the centre of their narratives long before it became mainstream, demonstrates how bold, visionary content can set new industry standards.”
2. Let data be your guide
Use analytics to spot opportunities and measure success. The numbers don’t lie. Collect data and then interpret and act on it. Look for patterns in your most successful content. What topics get the most engagement? What formats perform best? Use those insights to inform your bold content ideas. And don’t forget to keep measuring as you go. Set clear KPIs for your bold initiatives and be ready to pivot if the data suggests a change in direction.
3. Align boldness with strategy
Every wild idea should tie back to your business goals. No exceptions. It’s easy to get carried away with creative concepts, but always ask yourself: How does this idea serve our larger objectives? Perhaps your goal is to increase brand awareness, drive more leads, or establish thought leadership. Whatever it is, make sure your bold content ideas are strategically aligned. Don’t play it safe but do be intentional about your boldness.
4. Quality meets quantity
Go big, but never compromise on value. Every piece of content should pack a punch. And be consistent, but don’t churn out mediocre content just to meet a quota. Strike a balance between regularity and quality. Whether creating daily social media posts or monthly in-depth articles, make sure each piece adds value to you and your audience. Remember, one piece of bold, high-quality content can rock the world in ways that dozens of forgettable posts cannot.
That said, consistency is also crucial, as Adnan Jaloudi, co-founder of Jaloudi Consulting, points out. “Consistently making good content you’re passionate about has a compounding effect,” he says. For content creators, Jaloudi recommends repurposing content across multiple platforms. “If you’re a content creator with a YouTube channel, you may find it most effective to have a lot of accounts repurpose and post short-form clips to TikTok, IG reels, YouTube shorts, and Twitter,” he says.
5. Stay true to your brand
Bold doesn’t mean becoming someone else. It means being more you than ever. When you’re pushing boundaries, it may be tempting to reinvent yourself completely. However, the most successful bold content is authentic to your brand voice and values. Think about how you can amplify your existing brand personality in unexpected ways. If you’re known for your expertise, how can you share that knowledge in a bold, attention-grabbing format? If humour is part of your brand, how can you take it to the next level?
6. Iterate, iterate, iterate
Be ready to tweak and refine. Some of the best campaigns start as good ideas that become great. Bold content often requires trial and error. Don’t be afraid to launch a bold initiative, gather feedback, and make improvements. Pay attention to how your audience responds and be willing to adjust your approach. This iterative process improves your content and shows your audience that you’re responsive and always striving to give them the best experiences.
What’s next? It’s your turn to roar
Go ahead! Now it’s time to go forth and create bold, strategic content!. getty
In the content kingdom, the crown goes to the strategic and bold. But it’s not about shouting the loudest—it’s about saying something worth hearing.
We’ve seen how several trailblazers are changing the game—taking risks, pushing boundaries, and reaping rewards. Now it’s your turn to make some noise.
Consider:
Brainstorming boldly—set aside time to brainstorm at least one audacious content idea that aligns with your brand and goals. Don’t hold back. Let your creativity run wild!
Audit your content—conduct a thorough content audit to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for bolder initiatives.
Analyse your data—dive deep into your analytics to understand what’s working and what’s not. Use those insights to inform your future content strategy.
Experiment and iterate—try new things and step outside your comfort zone. The most successful bold content often comes from experimentation and refinement.
Seek inspiration—look for examples of bold content marketing in your industry and beyond. What can you learn from their successes and failures?
Bottom line? Your audience is out there, holding their breath. What bold move will you make to captivate them? Don’t just add to the noise—break through it. Take a page from the experts, embrace the power of bold, strategic content marketing, and start creating content that leaves a lasting impression.
Since 2002, Renae Gregoire has been helping B2B companies and thought leaders get their big, bold ideas out into the world, influencing and selling for them. Across hundreds of clients,….read more
Branding goes beyond designing a simple logo and slapping your creation on all of your product packages or employee uniforms. It goes to the root of your business personality and how your business projects it to the public.
Every business values its brand, and building a reputable brand that people trust takes time. Thankfully, the rise of AI and its potential have made it an effective tool to help businesses supercharge their branding, alongside human creatives.
Although graphic designers may see the generative aspect of artificial intelligence as a source of conflict for their own artistic processes, GenAI can offer a more collaborative outlook when it comes to content ideation and brainstorming. This paves the way for greater productivity and originality without losing that all-important human touch in content marketing.
Many leading creatives are using AI already and it’s possible for you to use affordable tools to boost your startup or SME and supercharge your existing branding processes.
What to do before picking an AI tool for your branding
Besides considering costs, you need a quick roadmap before you jump on the AI trend. These are steps you should consider as you aim to improve your small business’s brand:
Identify what areas you want AI to work on: will that be simply designing your branding?
Investigate available tools
Pick what best fits your business and your budget
Train your staff
Scale up gradually
Artificial intelligence tools can level up your branding and build recognition among multiple audience segments. How? Let’s take a deeper look at how AI can spark marketing innovation for businesses and marketers:
How can AI level-up your SME branding?
There are many ways in which artificial intelligence can level up small business branding, and some key emerging use cases include:
01. Next-Generation brand design
Your brand design will be the first point of contact between your business and your audience. With this in mind, it’s vital to adapt your branding to appeal directly to your customer profile, their expectations, and their values.
For many SMEs, branding can be a resource-heavy and time consuming process. However, generative AI tools have helped to remove the common pain points for brands and empower businesses to assist with rapidly building engaging multimedia and text-based content that resonates well with leads and provides concepts for designers to run with.
ChatGPT has quickly emerged as a leading resource for budget-friendly marketing materials, and large-language models (LLMs) are capable of performing a number of tasks based on a simple series of user prompts.
From detailed ads to blog content and even brainstorming sessions for new slogans and catchphrases, generative AI offers SMEs and graphic designers the chance to tap into a smart marketing assistant on a smaller budget.
Platforms like Midjourney are also resources for improving business logos and other areas of brand design.
(Image credit: MR.Cole_Photographer via Getty Images)
As we’ve already touched on, ChatGPT is a good example of an LLM that’s capable of understanding user queries on a natural and contextual basis.
This makes generative AI chatbots one of the cheapest yet most effective brand development tools for small businesses.
AI chatbots use machine learning (ML) algorithms to be trained to understand more common and easily solved queries while diverting more complex issues to your existing customer service units.
This brand move helps your business stay helpful to customers while maintaining that all-important laser-focus on marketing innovation among creative employees.
You can use these tools to maintain a consistent brand image by harmonising your brand voice across all of your marketing channels. Artificial intelligence can help SMEs adopt a more omnichannel approach to marketing, helping to convert blog posts, announcements, and new campaigns into blog posts, newsletters, and press releases accordingly.
For graphic designers, this can help to provide a collaborative environment where your designs can be automatically cropped, adapted, and optimised for each channel.
Furthermore, with AI’s ability to analyse data, you can gather actionable insights from your customers. This helps your business customise marketing to fit individual customers and boost your brand image.
Generative AI is even capable of providing a level of personalisation that’s previously been impossible for human marketers to undertake. In using ML to accurately segment customers based on their likes, purchasing behaviour, and even demographics that could change their content delivery expectations.
This can pave the way for generative AI marketing tools to create content on pages that’s fully customised to appeal directly to specific audience segments, helping to maximize engagement opportunities.
04. Website optimisation
(Image credit: Klaus Vedfelt on Getty Images)
Your website is usually where most of your customers will transact with you. AI tools can help you build a website from scratch and optimize it.
Having a stable website that performs well and ranks well is essential if you are starting an online business in the current scenario. It is best for your brand if your website loads fast and has an optimal design and message that is uniform with other media forms you use, and AI can help you with this (as can some of the best website builders for small business).
There are AI tools that can help your website rank better, load faster, and make the entire web process easy for your customers. Generative AI website builders can even pre-populate your pages and automatically add your branding to make it easier than ever to build an engaging online presence.
This can help your content travel further, providing translations on-the-fly and adaptations that match the right segmented audience and their expectations.
05. Social Media management
(Image credit: Alexey Yakovenko via Getty Images)
Social media management is a place where brands are made or marred. Having a great social media presence will benefit your brand.
With simple AI tools, you can take care of part of the social media hassle, such as scheduling posts or generating content ideas. This frees you up to create content and meet your customers expectations.
While this level of automation can be excellent for optimising repetitive tasks, AI will form a more collaborative bond with content creators, who can use the tools to polish raw ideas and conceptualise new campaigns based on customer insights.
Today, social media networks are becoming heavily characterised by their demographics, with different customer segments using platforms like TikTok compared to X or LinkedIn, for instance. This calls for artificial intelligence solutions to strategize content and schedule different posts optimized for their host platforms. Generative tools can understand these intricacies and draft diversified posts for maximum engagement.
06. Incisive social listening
Social media is important, and while you are crafting great content for your brand image, you should also be aware that your brand is being talked about.
You cannot always keep track of every mention or @, but with AI tools, you can listen and gather information on how your brand is perceived by customers and strangers. This can be helpful in decision-making for your small business.
This is another excellent example of how designers and creatives can achieve synergy with artificial intelligence. The tool can provide far greater levels of information about the type of content customers want to aid the creation process in a more resounding manner.
Social listening has become an important means of understanding sentiment towards your brand. Although reviews and mentions from high-reputation accounts are essential to brands, they rarely tell the full story of how your SME is viewed by your target audience as a whole.
There are plenty of AI social listening tools available, and they can work wonders in uncovering sentiment towards your brand throughout your channels. This can pave the way for insights into how you can optimise your strategy for specific social networks, understanding common customer pain points, and understanding any areas that consistently confuse your target audience.
Embracing the AI revolution
Small businesses and marketing creatives should not shy away from using AI tools to their advantage, especially for projecting a strong brand and building a niche for themselves in competitive markets.
There is so much to gain with the available AI tools, and they can transform your SME in various areas, from things like automating payouts and running payrolls to social media management and online marketing. Through actionable insights, accurate customer segmentation, and a deeper level of personalisation, AI can transform your customer experience on a comprehensive level.
While designers and creatives may hold justifiable concerns about the threat of AI and automation technology in marketing, the most effective use of the technology will be more collaborative, helping to form ideas and shape the design process.
The AI revolution is already underway, and by moving decisively, it’s possible for your brand to outmanoeuvre your competitors and win a stronger market share sooner rather than later.
Dmytro is the CEO at the SEO, copywriting and content marketing agency in Solvid and the founder of the web analytics startup Pridicto. His work has been published in Shopify, Zapier, Make Use Of, VentureBeat, Mention, WordStream, BuzzSumo, and Campaign Monitor.
