We overhauled our strategy to focus on one high-impact piece of content each week — and saw better conversions across the board. Here’s how your team can do the same.
Marketing automation
The surround sound strategy that transformed our marketing
Last updated
June 10, 2025
Read time
9 min
Written by
Lindsay Elswick
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Introduction
It’s easy for marketing to become fragmented.
One part of the team launches a webinar. Another runs a promo. Someone’s writing this week’s newsletter, while the social posts highlight a totally different initiative.
And when you step back, the big picture doesn’t quite add up.
That’s the reality for most teams today: Only 14% of organizations say they’re running coordinated campaigns across every channel. But there’s no question that they should be: 95% of marketers say multichannel strategies are important for reaching the right audience, and 86% of senior marketers agree that a connected customer experience across all touchpoints is critical.
Coordinated campaigns aren’t just nice to have — they’re what builds brand awareness. When your message shows up across channels with strategic repetition, it earns attention and builds memory.
But in practice, hitting on enough of those touchpoints is harder than it sounds. It typically takes 5 to 12 touchpoints to close a warm lead. For cold leads, that number jumps to 20, 30 — even 50. Piecemeal campaigns and one-off emails just aren’t built to hit those numbers — at least, not in any predictable or scalable way.
We know this from our own experience. As a team, we used to juggle a dozen campaigns at once. We’d promote case studies in one channel, product comparisons in other ways, plus webinars, special offers and entertainment-focused social videos — each with their own messaging and timelines.
The result was a ton of output, but no unified direction. And no clear way to know which efforts were actually moving the needle.
So we made a shift.
Instead of spreading our energy across scattered campaigns, we started focusing on one high-impact piece of content each week — and promoting it everywhere. We call this a “surround sound” campaign. It’s one message, perfectly aligned across all our channels: Email, organic and boosted social, our online community, and ads on every platform.
That shift gave us measurable momentum.
In this article, we’ll show you what that strategy looks like and how it simplified our workload, strengthened our lead nurture efforts and improved results — and how your team can use it to do the same.
A breakdown of the “surround sound” strategy
A breakdown of the “surround sound” strategy
Our shift to “surround sound” marketing wasn’t something we stumbled into — it’s a tried-and-true approach we built alongside Ryan Allis, founder of iContact and SaaSRise and expert on helping brands scale through strategic outbound and lead nurturing.
His philosophy on lead nurture is simple: If you're delivering value, your best leads won't mind seeing you everywhere — they’ll welcome it. He believes in showing up consistently across owned and paid channels, building trust and familiarity with every touchpoint. When customers say, “I saw you everywhere,” that’s not a complaint — it’s proof the strategy worked.
Here’s how we put the strategy into practice.
His philosophy on lead nurture is simple: If you're delivering value, your best leads won't mind seeing you everywhere — they’ll welcome it. He believes in showing up consistently across owned and paid channels, building trust and familiarity with every touchpoint. When customers say, “I saw you everywhere,” that’s not a complaint — it’s proof the strategy worked.
Here’s how we put the strategy into practice.
Step 1: Plan your weekly content topics
Step 1: Plan your weekly content topics
Each weekly surround sound campaign starts with a single, foundational asset — what we call our primary content.
It’s not just any piece of content: It’s got to be so valuable, your audience would pay to get it. It should offer insights they can’t find anywhere else — something they genuinely want to consume, share and come back to. That’s the kind of content that builds authority and makes your brand worth following.
The primary content on on our monthly calendar alternates between:
- PDF reports – Research-backed insights or original findings packaged for download
- Articles – Long-form blog post or guide designed to educate, inspire or persuade
- Case studies – Customer stories that highlight real results
- Webinar recordings – Replays of a live event, interview or training session
- Video podcasts – Conversational, value-driven videos tailored for YouTube and social
- Other – For example, a promotional spotlight on a specific use case or campaign initiative
Each week’s primary topic is chosen deliberately — in addition to being on-trend or highly relevant and valuable to our audience, it must align with a broader business goal, support a specific audience, or tie into another planned campaign.
We map out topics two months ahead, making sure we rotate formats and themes to create a well-rounded content library. This also gives every team — copywriters, designers, ad managers, marketing tech builders — the lead time they need to execute. We call this planning and execution process the “content machine.”
Here’s what that planning looks like 👇
We map out topics two months ahead, making sure we rotate formats and themes to create a well-rounded content library. This also gives every team — copywriters, designers, ad managers, marketing tech builders — the lead time they need to execute. We call this planning and execution process the “content machine.”
Here’s what that planning looks like 👇
We use a simple spreadsheet — which you can copy and customize for your own team — to plan and track every weekly message.
➡️ Click to make a copy of our “content machine” spreadsheet to use with your team
This planning step is what makes the rest of the strategy work. It gives us a strong foundation and ensures every piece of content has a clear place in our broader strategy.
➡️ Click to make a copy of our “content machine” spreadsheet to use with your team
This planning step is what makes the rest of the strategy work. It gives us a strong foundation and ensures every piece of content has a clear place in our broader strategy.
Step 2: Write your primary content
Step 2: Write your primary content
Once your topic and format are locked in, it’s time to create the piece that powers your whole campaign: your primary content.
This 1,500-2,000-word piece will be the focus of your marketing for the week — so the goal is to create something insightful and aligned with your audience.
We follow a repeatable structure to make this step easier and ensure every piece is pulling its weight.
Our primary content template includes space to clarify:
- The intended publish week
- The type and topic of the content
- The unique value or angle we’re offering
- Who the content is for (which persona or ICP)
- A full draft of the copy or script
We use this same template whether we’re creating a case study, PDF, webinar, article or video podcast. It ensures we’re thinking through the strategy before we start writing and helps keep the copy on track as we write.
📄 Click to make a copy of our “primary content” template to use with your team
We aim to create content about a month ahead of when it goes live (it doesn’t always work out that way, but the earlier we can start the smoother the process.)
Step 3: Write your supporting content
Step 3: Write your supporting content
Once your primary content is complete, the next step is expanding it into a full campaign — by writing the copy for the ads, emails and social posts that will promote it. We call this your supporting content: all the platform-specific messaging that amplifies your core idea and drives traffic to your primary piece.
The goal is to translate your message into formats that perform best in each channel: scroll-stopping posts for LinkedIn, concise retargeting ads, and email subject lines and intros that pull readers in. Every piece should feel native to its environment while reinforcing the same central idea.
We use our supporting content template to guide this process and keep everything organized for the week. It includes the following assets:
- Email newsletter — segmented by leads and customers
- LinkedIn newsletter — repurposed from the email version
- 2–3 LinkedIn posts — including one “From the founder” style post for our CEO’s account
- Boosted posts — using LinkedIn Thought Leadership Ads
- Retargeting ads — on Meta, LinkedIn, Google, and AdRoll
- Facebook Community post — adapted from the most relevant LinkedIn post for active users
📄 Click to make a copy of our “supporting content” template to use with your team
Just like our primary content, we aim to write supporting copy about a month before it goes live — giving our design, martech, QA, and media teams enough runway to do their part. That buffer also helps us stay flexible when timelines shift or priorities change.
Once the copy is finalized, we use JIRA tickets to move it through our production flow: Copy → Design → Build → Media.
To keep everything organized, our project manager creates a new epic for each new month of content machine work. That way, our entire team can see what’s in motion and what’s ready to launch — without chasing updates across Slack, spreadsheets or scattered one-off tickets.
It’s this structure — with clear workflows, reusable templates and one centralized project view — that keeps our message consistent, our channels in sync and our team moving efficiently from draft to publish.
Just like our primary content, we aim to write supporting copy about a month before it goes live — giving our design, martech, QA, and media teams enough runway to do their part. That buffer also helps us stay flexible when timelines shift or priorities change.
Once the copy is finalized, we use JIRA tickets to move it through our production flow: Copy → Design → Build → Media.
To keep everything organized, our project manager creates a new epic for each new month of content machine work. That way, our entire team can see what’s in motion and what’s ready to launch — without chasing updates across Slack, spreadsheets or scattered one-off tickets.
It’s this structure — with clear workflows, reusable templates and one centralized project view — that keeps our message consistent, our channels in sync and our team moving efficiently from draft to publish.
Step 4: Launch and distribute
Step 4: Launch and distribute
Once your content is written, approved and ready to go, it’s time to share it with your audience across every relevant channel.
We set most of our campaign assets to go live on Tuesdays to create a strong initial push, while additional posts roll out later in the week to maintain momentum and avoid overwhelming any single channel.
Here’s what a typical distribution week looks like:
- Tuesday: Email newsletter to leads and customers, LinkedIn company post, and first iteration of ads go live
- Wednesday or Thursday: “From the founder” post published on our CEO’s LinkedIn account
- Later in the week: Additional LinkedIn posts and Facebook Community message for active customers
- Ongoing: Retargeting ads run across Meta, Google, LinkedIn and AdRoll
This cadence gives our audience multiple opportunities to engage with the content, while reinforcing the same theme and message across every touchpoint. It also helps us identify what content and formats are resonating — if a specific LinkedIn post gets more traction than another, for example, we know to explore that angle again in future messaging.
lightbulb_2Pro tip
If you’re just getting started, focus on the channels you already have set up and scale up by one channel per week.
By the end of the week, your content has had the chance to create real momentum and a steady rhythm — not just a single spike in engagement.
And that leads us to the final step: measuring what worked.
And that leads us to the final step: measuring what worked.
Step 5: Measure and refine
Step 5: Measure and refine
Every Tuesday, our team meets to review the previous week’s campaign performance. Because our surround sound campaigns run Tuesday to Monday, that timing gives us a complete set of results — and a consistent pace for improving over time.
We track performance in a few ways. For campaign-level metrics, we use Cometly and a spreadsheet to monitor the most important ad conversion and engagement data, such as:
- Ad spend
- Impressions, clicks, CPC, CTR, CPM
- Post-click leads and total leads
- Visitor-to-lead %
- CPL (cost per lead)
- Post-click customers and total ad customers
- Ad CAC, overall CAC
- CAC payback months
For non-ad content, we primarily look at engagement — especially impressions — to monitor momentum. Our impressions tracking includes:
- Email opens (to monitor trends, not get exact numbers)
- LinkedIn impressions
- Total website views
- Total video views
- Total content impressions
- Sales and marketing total spend
- Effective CPM
Since launching this strategy, we’ve seen a steady increase in weekly impressions across all our channels, a strong signal that our content is reaching more people and staying consistently visible. While impressions alone don’t confirm impact, they indicate that we’re growing awareness at the top of our funnel.
Because we promote each piece of content in the same way across every channel, we’re also able to make direct comparisons between formats and topics. That lets us clearly see what’s resonating and what’s not so we can refine our future content and creative.
We also track broader business metrics monthly and quarterly to spot macro trends and validate that our strategy is working long-term. This helps us understand how individual campaigns are influencing overall growth.
The results speak for themselves: Our sales team is reporting a steady increase in qualified, right-match leads booking calls and moving through the pipeline — a direct outcome of showing up consistently with valuable, aligned content.
Because we promote each piece of content in the same way across every channel, we’re also able to make direct comparisons between formats and topics. That lets us clearly see what’s resonating and what’s not so we can refine our future content and creative.
We also track broader business metrics monthly and quarterly to spot macro trends and validate that our strategy is working long-term. This helps us understand how individual campaigns are influencing overall growth.
The results speak for themselves: Our sales team is reporting a steady increase in qualified, right-match leads booking calls and moving through the pipeline — a direct outcome of showing up consistently with valuable, aligned content.
Final thoughts: Multiply your impact, not your workload
Final thoughts: Multiply your impact, not your workload
A single, well-chosen topic can do a lot of heavy lifting — if you turn it into a surround sound campaign. By aligning your content across channels and showing up with the same core message everywhere your audience spends time, you don’t just get more reach. You get more clarity for your future marketing, more momentum, and better results.
This strategy has helped our team systemize our workload and scale our output without burning out. Start small by focusing on creating one great piece of content per week. Then turn up the volume — and let your message do the work.
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