“What Industry Dive has been good at is never putting all our eggs in one basket, especially for reaching people and growing our audience,” said Sondra Hadden, their senior director of audience growth marketing. “But how you do that feels very different these days than it did 10 years ago.” Hadden and editor in chief Davide Savenije will wax audience-centric on June 27 at our AMPLIFY event in Washington, D.C. Here’s a preview.
“The most effective way to reach your audience goals is to collaborate cross-functionally,” Savenije told my colleague Kathryn Deen recently. “One of the things I really like about Industry Dive is how we’ve set up the collaboration between audience and editorial to integrate the audience function into the newsroom workflow and vice versa, as opposed to being siloed, which is the case in a lot of B2B media companies.
“If you’re on your own, there’s a lot of missed opportunities in understanding your audience, where to meet them, and how to expose them to your brand and get them to convert, whatever your model may be.”
Savenije and Hadden will present a Main Stage session titled, The Fast-Evolving Guide to Audience Engagement, June 27 at AMPLIFY 2023—AM&P Network’s Content & Marketing Summit—at the National Housing Center here in Washington, D.C. (The event runs June 27-28. See the agenda here and registration information here.)
Industry Dive continues to hum along with a newsroom of about 140 journalists, many of them mid-career, putting out 30-plus business publications. Their latest new daily edition, Facilities Dive, focusing on building operations, will land in inboxes on June 5. It’s the fourth newsletter Industry Dive has launched in 2023, following Fashion Dive, Hotel Dive and Packaging Dive. (B2B giant Informa purchased Industry Dive last year for $530 million.)
“Audience engagement is always incredibly important, so understanding your audience—having that strong relationship with them and the content you produce—is key,” said Savenije, who has been with Industry Dive for 11 years, six of those as editor in chief. “One of the reasons to do this session now is that there’s so much changing in the world and the business and media landscape at a rapid rate. So you really have to stay on top of change and how you evolve and meet people where they are in the communities you’re trying to reach.”
Hadden, who has been with Industry Dive for two years—she previously worked at the American Chemical Society and the Biotechnology Industry Organization—leads a team of five that manages paid and organic media campaigns. “We work very closely with Davide, as well as design and product, so we’re a cross-departmental team,” she told Deen.
“My team supports all the publications, so we have to drive growth and retention across the board. It’s perfect to have an asset like the newsroom that can tell you so much about each audience they’re writing for. Then there’s the next step of how you get your readers to do something; that’s where the marketing expertise comes in. It’s the perfect relationship.”
Industry Dive was one of the first media organizations to use accessible dashboards to share insights company-wide—enabling editors and marketers to make informed decisions that drive growth. They also made sure to help editorial people how to interpret those dashboards.
“It is about how you position yourself, how you maintain that philosophy of understanding your audience, listening to your audience, meeting them where they are, bringing them into your ecosystem, and developing that relationship,” Savenije said. “We hope people can come out of this session with some helpful insights into defining your vision and strategy, and then fitting your tactics into that.”
Added Hadden: “It boils down to having the conversation between the teams: Who are you trying to reach? Has it changed? Why? How? It’s about getting all your stakeholders in the room and not thinking of these departments as separate. We’ll provide examples of what Industry Dive has done to accomplish this, but whether you’re a small association or a larger company, there will be pieces that you can pull into your own goals.”
AMPLIFY 2023 takes place June 27-28 at the National Housing Center in Washington, D.C. This is one event not to be missed!
