"Does Your CXO Know?"

Credit: Gary Vaynerchuk, Inbound 2016

Gary Vaynerchuk gave a great keynote at Inbound 2016. The whole talk is worth watching, but here’s my favorite tactic he shared with the audience.

Start by picking a company or demographic you’re targeting. Next, make a piece of content for them where the creative starts with “Does your _______ know?” Fill in the blank with the title of the decision maker you’re trying to get in front of.

“Does your CEO know?”

“Does your CFO know?”

“Does your CTO know?”

Now, promote that content via email or social media to the broader company you’re targeting—not just the target him or herself.

Example: If you’re targeting CROs, record a video that starts with “Does your CRO know…?” and promote it to the whole sales organization at the company. If the video is good, you’ll have salespeople at all seniority levels sending it to the CRO.

Gary says: “You’re going to start the video or the picture with that statement [Does your CXO know?]. And I promise you, for hundreds of dollars that person is going to get 12 to 25 to 100 people forwarding them that piece of content, and that piece of content will be the gateway drug to your sales team to convert and close. It works every time.”

Here’s Gary explaining it in his own colorful way (see the 20-minute mark):

Now change it up: “Did YOU know…?”

On episode 482 of the DailyVee show, the head of an energy brokerage firm sat down with Gary and asked him for creative marketing advice.

Instead of telling him to use “Does Your CXO Know?”, Gary flipped the tactic so it’s from the perspective of the customer.

“Here’s what I would do,” Gary says. “I would run videos saying, ‘Did YOU know that you could go on a free trip to Orlando with your family?’ And the punchline is: ‘If you switch to this energy.’ Because then it would say in the bottom, ‘On average, a family saves $88 a month times twelve is $1,000. The average Disney trip for a family of four is…’

You see where I’m going? That shit kills.

A marketing campaign that tells people if they switch they save this much money. And with that saved money they can send their kid to private school. They can buy a boat. They can go on a Disney vacation. They can eat a better lunch once in a while.

Do you see where I’m going? Like, utilitarian. Like, ‘Hey, Dick. Don’t be stupid. Switch to this. It’s $113 a month. One-hundred-and-thirteen bucks a month times twelve? $1,400.’ And then find 19 things in culture that $1,400 buys you. And then run Instagram ads against people that are fans of Supremes and Nikes, and say, ‘Did you know you could have 12 more pairs of fly sneakers if you literally just swiped up and clicked this button?’”

At the start of the video, Gary admits that he knows nothing about energy—but it doesn’t matter. When it comes to creative, focus on the value you’re creating for someone and the tangible, meaningful impact it can have on their life, whether that’s through energy savings or insurance deals or grocery promos or whatever.

It’s great advice that can work for virtually any business in any vertical. Give it a whirl and see what happens.