How to broadcast new ideas at scale

Joseph Kerschbaum
SVP, Search & Growth Labs

Length

5 min read

Date

7 March 2022

Innovation does not occur in a vacuum. Innovation champions have to cultivate a culture that embraces new ideas and adopts new strategies. Providing a mountain of supporting data is great, but teams need context, insights, results, and a clear strategy that are all born from this wealth of data. This is why you need awesome writers and communicators who can convey new ideas in an exciting and persuasive way.

In the first part of this series, we mentioned the importance of communication when driving change and innovation – we’re going to go more in-depth on this topic in this article. Innovation champions must be proactive and consistent when broadcasting new strategies. With team members so focused on driving success in their typical day-to-day activities, you need to deliver content and reiterate messages in multiple formats and various venues.

Create collateral for new ideas, new products, and any other innovation initiatives

Clear, concise documentation will aid in getting the word out about experiment results, new strategies, and new products. The collateral material you create must be engaging, persuasive, and of course, informative.

One of the most important elements that you need to get right is laying out the WHY of any change or new strategy. WHY is this better for teams? WHY is this better for clients? WHY will this change make a positive impact? Change is difficult and takes time and effort, and any innovation champion has to clearly state why any innovation is the right path forward.

Once you’ve laid out WHY a change is the right path, then you should clearly lay out WHAT is changing. How is the path forward different from what folks have been doing previously? If you have test results to support your proposal, this is a great place to show this content! State what is changing and what other teams have seen (hopefully positive) thus far.

Then you can discuss HOW to enact this change. This new idea may require approaching media in a new manner, or implementing a new strategy, or expanding into a new channel or service. Provide clear instructions and resources for implementation. And those support resources should include you! If you are proposing a change, then you should make yourself available for support.

Host training on new ideas to show results, explore concepts and implementation

Robust collateral will serve as a great resource for teams. Another awesome resource is presenting in team meetings. As an innovation champion, you should make regular appearances at ongoing team meetings. This will help maintain an innovation dialog and broadcast new ideas when they are ready to be adopted.

The information you present at any team meeting needs to be polished and ready for public consumption. Any presentation materials should be as clear and concise as any written content. Teams will likely have questions or concerns about new strategies and you need to anticipate those ahead of time. Your objective should be to explain the WHY, WHAT, and HOW of a new strategy and be ready for an open discussion!

You can also provide 1-on-1 training for individuals or teams when it comes time for the implementation of new ideas. Team meetings are great to broadcast on a wide scale, but you should allow time to talk with team members who will be doing the hands-on work.

Create a review program for opportunities and best practices

One of the many benefits of being in the digital marketing industry is that you can build dashboards and reports to understand the adoption of new ideas across accounts.

For example, we followed this process for a new strategy focused on Responsive Search Ads (RSA) in Google. After we completed our broadcast process (collateral material, training, team meetings), we then moved into the implementation phase. We could monitor our Google Ads accounts to see which accounts had adopted this new methodology. We could follow up with teams that needed help with implementation. For any change or innovation, adoption can be one of the most challenging phases. Keep this in mind, and be ready for the long haul when creating change in large organizations.

Gather additional results as teams adopt new ideas and strategies

The adoption process across the organization can take a while. As you make progress, don’t forget to gather additional information and results! This data and information collected during the rollout can influence and improve future iterations of your new idea. The way you approach implementation could change slightly based on results, or you could change your POV as teams provide feedback.

Remember to gather data as you progress and gather team feedback. Practitioners may have found a better way to implement your new strategy, and you should certainly take this into account!

Conclusion

Maintaining a robust experiment program, and then providing influential and information content, and then working closely with teams for change will help cultivate the culture of innovation that so few companies can truly achieve. This is not an easy process – but it will be worth the effort!