In a recent episode of The Inspectations Podcast, CEO of The Aebli Group, Justin Starbird, sat down with Ken Gray, Vice President of Business Development for current TAG client RISE™Robotics, to discuss the importance and benefits of a strong content strategy.
RISE™Robotics was founded at MIT over 11 years ago by three graduates and a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who were originally thinking about human performance amplification exoskeletons, mostly just for fun. Eventually, a solution to a problem they had with their exoskeletons, finding a lightweight, fluid-free way of delivering the power they needed, led to what they now call the RISE™Cylinder and a pivot in their business to more of an industrial application.
Ken joined the RISE™ team on the business development end with the goal of connecting RISE™Robotics with industrial partners and potential clients to help them improve the products they were delivering to their customers. Ken notes, "My overriding thought was that if everyone knew about this, this would be a giant business! If everyone knew how effective this technology was at solving their problems, then RISE™Robotics would be a huge success.”
What was missing? Awareness in the marketplace.
His priority, in the beginning, was to get the RISE™ story out there, to let others know what they were doing, and why it mattered. The question was, how was he going to get their message out there and engage with the people they truly believed they could help? The TAG team, alongside Ken, worked to develop and execute a winning content strategy which helped them to achieve these goals.
RISE™’s content strategy roadmap began with crafting the right messaging on an updated website and then starting to add content purposefully, like delivering the RISE™Inside Podcast, where they would talk with the founders, investors, early customers, and early adopters. From there, blog content and videos were added, finally expanding to social media in an attempt to generate interest, enough so that people would reach out.
Once the RISE™ story was established and they were on people’s radars, it was time to elevate their customer relationship management from a passive tool to a pro-active tool that would help track and engage the right prospects, in a personal way, to generate responses that would translate into deals and collaborative arrangements.
To do so, TAG’s project management team helped to craft a crisp business development package of material that was easy to maintain, track, map, and work with. With that, a disciplined process was put in place for how potential clients were engaged. RISE™ was now able to communicate with prospects personally in a manner consistent with their interest. Ken explains, “We're not hitting them with some kind of a bot. I'm personally engaged in communicating and so is the TAG team, with people that are interested in what we're doing, in a very personal way and that has generated responses that have translated into deals.”
At the end of the day, a great content strategy is an all-encompassing approach to creating content that drives your key business objectives. And, while there's no one-size-fits-all solution, identifying and including the three key elements—brand focus, user experience, and content distribution—will help develop a plan for success.
Ken describes their success with TAG and strong content strategy, "There's a commercial right now, an auto insurance commercial, that says, 'This is going to get tens and tens of views!' Literally, RISE™'s website was getting tens of views per month 15 months ago. Today we're getting thousands of views per month. I'm almost ready to say we're getting tens of thousands of views per month, and I'm close to that. For a company of 25 that is not a public company, that is a remarkable improvement! That's three orders of magnitude of improvement in visibility, just measured by how many people are visiting a website. That's been a remarkable advancement in just the 12 months we've been doing this together."
A successful content strategy goes beyond just the numbers, though. The best-laid plans will allow you the freedom of confidence and time, they will allow you to take your mind off problems with business development, sales, marketing, and promotion, and allow you to focus your attention on the more enjoyable aspects of the business.
"Maybe that's why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day," Ken says, "He didn't want to worry about that stuff. 'I'm just going to wear the same clothes every single day, because I'm going to spend my time working and focusing, thinking about the things that I want to work on.’ "
To learn more about the amazing things that RISE™Robotics is doing and the ways in which content strategy has helped them get off the ground, listen to "Podcast & Importance of Content Strategy" on The Inspectations Podcast, live now!
The Inspectations Podcast brings together business leaders from all industries to talk about best practices, innovation, leadership, and business development. The concept was born from an internal conversation within the TAG team, which resulted in the realization that processes and systems could be improved.
Make sure to inspect what you expect!