There’s never been a time when someone didn’t want to meet with the CEO. Getting a meeting with any C-Suite executive is hard and many would argue it’s near impossible. Unless it’s cost effective, landing a meeting can be tricky.
Consider an hourly wage perspective. According to Chief Executive Magazine, for “…private companies with at least $1 billion in revenue, the median CEO compensation package was just under $1.7 million…” Let’s assume a CEO works 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, totaling 2,080 hours a year. Dividing $1.7 million by 2,080 hours gives $817.31 per hour. Is your meeting with the CEO worth her spending $800 on you?
For William Harris, an entrepreneur and growth marketer, he managed to find a way to have C-Suite executives contact him. These executives from Magento, an ecommerce platform Ebay bought for $180 million in 2011, were compelled to contact William after reading his article was about how they moved their website from Magento to Shopify Plus.
William ended up meeting with the Chief Product Officer, the Head of Strategy, the Vice President of Product Management, and two other executives from Magento. He estimates the hour long meeting with five people cost them $2,500 or more, given their estimated salaries.
If you’re interested in learning how content marketing can land you meetings with top executives, follow the three steps below:
Do Something Worth Writing About
If you’re looking to peak the interest of top executives, you need to do something that they’d be interested in. This should be related to the industry you’re looking to tap into and shouldn’t be an everday occurrence.
As an example, my startup Sourcify, recently had calls with the Director of Sourcing at companies like Lowes, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Ann Taylor. We reached out taking an unusual approach. We wrote about how we had saved a client 65% of their unit costs and then reached out with a link to that article. 87% of the executives we reached out to responded.
Write About It
Not everyone is a writer and your article doesn’t have to be perfect to make an impact. Instead, focus on making your article informational, opinionated, and insightful. Your goal should be to showcase a unique perspective on what you did.
For William, he took a long form content approach diving deep into the reasons and process behind moving their ecommerce site from Magento to Shopify plus. This is what peaked the interest of Magento executives, as they wanted to get a firsthand perspective into the reasons why they were losing customers.
If you’re looking to write a great article, the following forms could work:
- How to do XYZ (ex. The Complete Guide to Using Sellbrite to Grow Your Multi-Channel eCommerce Store)
- Why you chose ABC Company over XYZ Company (ex. Mailchimp vs. dotMailer: Who’s the Better Email Company for Large Retailers?)
- How you migrated from ABC Company to XYZ Company (ex. How we Migrated from Google Analytics to Adobe Omniture)
Promote It
Writing on a blog with one follower won’t go anywhere. If you want to reach the eyes of the executive level, you’re going to have to create some buzz.
Good starting points to promote your article are Inbound.org and Growthhackers.com. These are sites that you can freely post on and get a lot of traffic from. After you do that, reach out to all the companies you have mentioned in the article, tweet it out to them, email it to them, and do whatever you think it takes to get them to share it. You can also email industry thought leaders who may send it out to their followers.
Reaching C-Level executives can be hard but by taking a unique approach through content marketing, chances are you’ll have a higher shot of landing a call. Now that you know to do something unique, write about it, and then promote it, you’re one step closer to landing that meeting through content marketing!