Off the Page with Alex Onion
David McCarthy
In her Off the Page interview, Alex Onion, content marketing manager at Jellyvision, gets real about why human connections and customer insights should be at the center of content marketing.
Meet Alex Onion
Proudly Chicago-based Alex Onion has worked in marketing for over eight years, and her career has been stocked with resume-building projects already — from developing a campaign that ended in ringing the NASDAQ bell to doubling one company's blog traffic in just six months.
An always-in-demand T-shaped marketer, Alex specializes in a range of essential tactics and strategies, from email automation and brand partnership development to event production and sales enablement.
But her greatest passion has always been leveraging marketing to create human connections, which is why she now spend most of her waking hours as a content marketer for Jellyvision, the company behind ALEX — the world's most human benefits counselor.
Tell me about a recent piece of content that made you jealous.
ActiveCampaign's "At Home For the Holidays" Campaign absolutely nailed it.
A-list marketing influencers (Hi Ann Handley), great graphics and video, and an incredible value for the end-user. 40+ recipes and a ton of marketing resources? Yes please! Plus, they released one course per week, so they kept me coming back for more.
So many B2B campaigns like this overdo it on the "fun" component, to the point where I'm not sure what the actual product does or what value the brand will deliver. This one hits the sweet spot of providing real business value—while also turning a bummer (staying home for the holidays, thanks COVID) into a fun, memorable moment.
What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?
Flexibility! I still can't do the splits, but if this year's taught us anything, it's that we always have to be ready for the next big change.
We've been talking about "agile transformation" for years, and 2020 gave it to us in a very real way. I'm a triple threat: a content marketer, a type A personality, and a Capricorn...so my natural instinct is to plan months, if not quarters, in advance.
This year has come with more than its fair share of challenges, but I'm grateful for the reminder that nothing is set in stone. In order to survive this current moment and come out stronger on the other side, we have to stay alert, listen to our customers, keep an eye out for new trends, and adjust our strategy as we go.
Which other brand’s content do you admire most?
I've been a huge fan of The Financial Diet lately. They have a great Youtube and Instagram presence, and their messaging is a whole new way of addressing financial health.
Thinking about your personal finances can be such a chore, and there are so many negative messages associated with managing your money—you haven't saved enough, your credit score is too low, you haven't paid off your student loans yet. The Financial Diet turns that on its head by focusing on empowerment, not guilt.
Their main goal is to show women how to "live better with what you have." Yes, you could always have more money, and yes there will be pitfalls where your credit could use a boost. But there are ways to feel positively about your finances right now, versus waiting for that magical day when everything falls into place. An excellent example of how to turn a challenging topic into an exciting one!
If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?
Andy Crestodina's Content Chemistry was my entry point to content marketing, and helped me build a foundation of knowledge for this field. It breaks down complicated concepts in a way that anyone could understand them (If you can imagine, I literally had never heard of SEO until I read this book, and came out feeling like an expert).
Part guide, part workbook, it's also an excellent example of content marketing itself...an interactive resource that I continue to reference again and again!
Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?
Vote Save America. Mission-driven work, amazing content.
What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?
The ROI.
So many times I hear, "Yeah, it's nice to have, but how much revenue are we really getting from a blog post?" No one gets to the bottom of the funnel without entering at the top...it's what we're here for. And we're doing a lot more measuring than you might think.
What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?
Finding good freelancer writers. It's so hard to find the right fit, and it takes up so much time.
What do you consider the most underrated type of content?
Customer insights! We talk so much about user-generated content as marketers, but I don't think we've fully "gotten there" yet. We can learn so much from what our customers are saying on social, in emails, on sales calls...and I think we still aren't pay enough attention.
We talk so much about user-generated content as marketers, but I don't think we've fully "gotten there" yet. We can learn so much from what our customers are saying on social, in emails, on sales calls...and I think we still aren't pay enough attention.
Our marketing messages would be so much more meaningful if we took a step back, listened to what our customers need, and share their success stories more often. (I'm also spoiled because we have the best customer insights team on the planet at Jellyvision.)
What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?
Webinars. It'll never happen, they really are an effective demand gen tool...but the Zoom fatigue is real, and I never want to watch another webinar again.
Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?
I'm always looking for my next Excel hack. "How to do a VLookup" is Googled an average of 10,000 times per month and at least 5,000 of those are me.
What is your most treasured content marketing tool?
We used MarketMuse at a previous company, and it streamlined our entire content marketing process — from topic ideation and SEO research to ongoing audits and optimization.
What do you most value in your teammates?
Partnership. I'm very fortunate that both my boss and teammates are incredibly sharp, think critically, innovate frequently, and collaborate well. They feel like strategic partners, and we're all experts in our own fields.
When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?
Resourceful.
About the Off the Page series
Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.
Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.
Who else should Off the Page Feature?
Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.
