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Actionable Marketing Podcast

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Now displaying: 2019
Jun 18, 2019

Who’s on your short list of marketing influencers for thought leadership and mentorship? Which company brands do you gravitate toward because of their unique value propositions and authentic connection with customers?

Today, my guest is Ken Moskowitz, founder and CEO of Ad Zombies. Ken shares insights on brand creation and challenges marketers to bring entertainment, humor, and storytelling into their content.

 Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Passion for Production: From creating commercials as a child and dreaming of being the best disc jockey to turning into a zombie
  • Conversions and Reconstruction: Ad Zombies came to life by accident after discovering need to rewrite ad copy to connect with specific customers
  • Origin and Evolution: Ad Zombies’ brand positioning of world’s best flat-fee ad copywriting service changes to writing words that sell anything
  • More than 103,000 Ad Zombies followers on Facebook attributed to mix of wordsmithing skills and engaging audience to evoke emotional responses
  • Missing mark to make memorable ads: Stories and visual noise connect and convert consumers through brand awareness
  • Where to start: Consistent messaging peppered through channels; view consumer’s perspective, and take the plunge to try something new

Links:

Jun 11, 2019

The success of your company depends on the marketing you do, how you choose to present the benefits of a product or service, and which audience to target. How you position a product or service can make or break your company. Stop right there. Forget everything you thought you knew about product positioning. Connecting your product or service with buyers is not a matter of following trends, selling harder, or trying to attract the widest customer base.

Today, my guest is April Dunford, who has launched more than a dozen products and shares some of the biggest mistakes that startups, marketers, and entrepreneurs make with product positioning. Also, she’s the author of Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning So Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It. April’s book describes her point of view on positioning and offers a step-by-step process to perfectly position your product or service.

 Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Career Change: Fake it till you figure it out. How hard can it be?
  • Do it right, and the company grows quickly, gets acquired; you get bored and do another startup
  • Definition of Positioning: How to win at doing something that a well-defined market cares about
  • Perfect marketing execution won’t save you from weak positioning; marketing execution and results are only as good as positioning that feeds into them
  • Who should decide the positioning for your product? Everybody
  • Siebel Story: Too small to buy out beyond a billion dollars
  • Positioning Pitfalls: People don’t do positioning deliberately; and when they try to fix it, they don’t follow a process but wing it or write a “Positioning Statement”
  • Positioning Statement Components:
    • Who’s your competitive alternatives?
    • What are the unique capabilities or features that your product has?
    • What’s the value that those features can enable for customers?
    • Who’s my target customer?
    • Is this a market that I’m going to win?
  • Signs of weak positioning include:
    • How a customer reacts to your product/service
    • They compare you to a non-competitor; not in the right market
    • Customer knows what you do, but not the value or why they should care

Links:

Jun 4, 2019

What does “strategic ambiguity” mean? Marketers, politicians, and others use it all the time. It’s the art of making a claim using language that avoids specifics. So, you can be purposefully vague to derive personal organizational benefit. On the other hand, it creates an environment at companies where employees try to avoid blame.

Today, my guest is Karen Martin, president of TKMG and author of Clarity First. She describes how a pervasive lack of clarity strangles business performance and leadership on marketing teams.  

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Definition of Clarity: State of something being easily and accurately understood; similar to transparency, but different from certainty
  • Conveying and receiving information can cause ambiguity or clarity for employees and customers
  • Primary reasons for lack of clarity all come down to fear
  • Ramifications of lack of clarity: Takes time, builds frustration, and creates inefficiencies
  • Five Ps for clarity:
    • Purpose
    • Priorities
    • Process
    • Performance
    • Problem-solving
  • Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Visual of the marketing team’s health
  • Profit is not your purpose; profit is the outcome of delivering high value to customers, and purpose is to solve a customer’s problem
  • Are you a clarity avoider, pursuer, or blind? Take Karen’s Clarity First Quiz
  • Where to start to focus on clarity: What do you do? What do you really do? Why does that product, and not something else, to solve a problem?
  • Fearless Workplace: Multiple perspectives, but not a single understanding; feel comfortable having difficult conversations

Links:

 

May 28, 2019

Marketers try to map and meticulously outline their customer’s journey to convert a lead into a paying customer. Instead, maybe they should focus on behavioral data to deliver the right message on the right channel at the right time.  

Today, my guest is Judd Marcello, executive vice president of global marketing at Cheetah Digital. He believes the customer journey doesn’t exist. Instead, figure out why data is important and how to leverage it between brands and customers.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Judd’s Career Journey: B2C to B2B martech firms; it’s all about your contacts and who you know
  • As the number of channels increase, buyers jump around brands on their journey
  • Fallacy of falling into trap of using phrases that become commonplace
  • Consumers, not marketers now predict the path they take from researching to buying a product
  • Marketers can still be proactive by using data to drive smart insights and technology from an AI perspective to provide a great customer experience
  • Customers are going to do whatever they want to do; marketers should:
    1. Create unique, compelling, and consistent brand experience
    2. Deliver the right messaging
    3. Hyper personalize efforts  
    4. Create connection between your brand and customer
  • Deliver personal and custom experience through data management
  • Cheetah Digital’s Website revised to reflect how prospects look for information
  • Indicators of Success: Team members, content, client summit; digital evolution
  • What’s working and what’s not; prioritize performance to identify gaps

Links:

 

 

May 21, 2019

What kind of experience does your brand create for customers? Is it simple and seamless enough to keep them coming back for more? Or, do they find their experience with your brand frustrating, cumbersome, and time-consuming?  

Today, my guest is Roger Dooley, author of Friction, which describes things that prevent customers from having a great experience with companies and their brands. Each year, about $4.6 trillion of merchandise is left abandoned in eCommerce shopping carts. Also, internal friction (i.e., organizational drag) is responsible for $3 trillion in lost productivity.  

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Most important element in behavior change process: Friction
  • How to eliminate, minimize, or use friction to your advantage
  • Reasons why people leave things in their shopping carts
  • All routers are the same; awful experience for “normal” people
  • Reviews and Rankings: In a market dominated by giants, address pain point that other companies aren’t to be successful
  • Worst advice can be best practices
  • Friction Goggles: People tend to accept things and don’t see where friction exists
  • Actively Disengaged: Effort isn’t productive, serving greater purpose
  • Don’t shift the load; find ways to improve processes, and stop wasting time
  • Software and tools help eliminate friction
  • Acceptance of Fake Rules: This is the way things are done, or it has to be done
  • Difference between friction and motivation; operate in opposition due to choices  

Links:

 

May 14, 2019

Technology is supposed to help, not frustrate or overwhelm us. Do you struggle with using, choosing, or consolidating marketing technology tools? Marketers tend to love or hate specific tools. Is your favorite on Chiefmartec’s 2019 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic? If not, there are more than 7,000 tools to consider. Which should you use? What to look for? Who should make the decision?

Today, my guest is Scott Brinker, vice president of Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot and editor at Chiefmartec.com. He suggests various strategies for selecting tools, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Purpose: Persuade marketing executives to pay attention to intermingling of  personalities and passions between marketers and technologists
  • Categories Covered: Advertising & Promotion, Content & Experience, Social & Relationships, Commerce & Sales, Data, and Management
  • Where to begin? Get clear on foundational systems (CRM, email, content management system, etc.)
  • Significant investment in time and learning; identify gaps to intentionally augment foundation with more specialized tools
  • Ecosystems developed around major platforms can help narrow your choices
  • Makeshift Marketing: Is it good enough?
  • Pieces of the Puzzle: Focus on the capabilities you need
  • Marketing department should identify point person/people to be responsible for operational infrastructure and technology of marketing
  • Ecosystem Mission: Evolution of product, partners, and programs

Links:

May 7, 2019

How long is your commute to work? Maybe 15 minutes or more, depending on traffic, weather, and other factors? Some marketers get to just roll out of bed and go to their home office. According to Upwork, 63% of companies now have remote workers and almost 50% use freelancers. How does remote working affect productivity, collaboration, and organization of marketing teams and businesses?

Today, my guest is Nathan Hirsch, FreeeUp founder and CEO. We talk about decisions and tactics to consider, if your company wants to embrace a remote working environment. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Short Version of Entrepreneurial Story: Broke college student to starting an Amazon business to owning a freelancer marketplace
  • FreeeUp helps businesses grow by knowing when, who, and how to hire
  • Managing and working within remote teams effectively
  • Pros and Cons: Access to talent, overhead costs, flexibility
  • Commitment to Communication: Nothing gets lost or misinterpreted
  • Put plans and tools in place to avoid potential pitfalls
  • FreeeUp’s Expectations for Freelancers: Skill, attitude, and communication
  • Remote Culture: Separate office spaces, but on the same page
  • Hiring always involves risk and reward; build trust and relationships
  • Levels and Skill Sets: Basic (followers), Mid (doers), and High (experts)

Links: 

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Apr 30, 2019

What separates the best managed and most successful marketing teams from the rest? How are they leaving you in the dust? What are the strongest predictors for success?

Today, my guest is Ben Sailer, content marketing lead at CoSchedule. We talk about our 2019 State of Marketing Strategy Report. CoSchedule surveyed more than 3,000 marketers to find out what they’re doing to be successful. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Inception and process behind State of Marketing Strategy Report
  • Why do original research? Why put in so much time, effort, and energy?
  • Generate your own data, instead of borrowing statistics
  • How do you stack up? Sense of doing ok, but room for improvement to crush it
  • 5 Marketing Insights about Top Marketers:
  1. Being Organized: They’re confident about their organizational skills; 397%  more likely to report being successful
  2. Setting Goals: They know which goals drive success; 376% more likely to report being successful
  3. Documenting Strategy: It needs to be nimble and actionable, not detailed and lengthy; 313% more likely to report being successful
  4. Planning Projects: Be clear about what needs to be done, by who, and why; 356% more likely to report being successful
  5. Using Agile Methodology: Marketers implement it to manage projects and processes; 252% more likely to report being successful

Links: 

Apr 23, 2019

Marketers are always searching for advice that they can apply to their marketing efforts and strategies. Luckily, plenty of people are more than willing to share their expertise, ideas, and “best” practices. Don’t simply emulate them and their words of wisdom. The biggest problem is sameness. Everything is the same, and no one stands out.

Rather than just taking their advice, make it your own, put your spin on it, and do what works best for your business. Today, my guest is Jay Acunzo, founder of Unthinkable Media and author of Break the Wheel. He describes how to push yourself to ask the right questions and make the right decisions when surrounded by conventional thinking. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Two Stories to Jay’s Career: LinkedIn’s about logos, and liking process of making things through tinkering and not caring if anybody consumes it
  • Google was a great place to work; brand, perks, awesomely smart co-workers
  • Following prescribed path because that’s what you’re “supposed to do”
  • Expertise and checking a bunch of boxes doesn’t make a great career
  • Everyone wants best practices and guidance because they’re afraid of what to do
  • Unthinkable Stories: People did something that seemed crazy, but they clearly explain why what they did was practical and strategic
  • Being taught there’s a right and wrong answer, and approaching marketing the same way; the real answer is, it depends...on context
  • Push yourself beyond commodity work and do something exceptional instead
  • Problems: We don’t want to be average, and we don’t operate in a generality
  • Understand your specific situation and use it as a decision-making filter to find clarity; borrow from your situation and what’s proven to work elsewhere
  • Six fundamental questions to ask to understand how to operate in a more contextualized way for your environment
  • Pike Syndrome: Psychological barrier to making decisions with clarity; based on situation, instead of generality
  • Context parts in every situation: You/team, customer/audience, and resources
  • Reasons for Decisions: Learned helplessness, foraging choice, cultural fluency
  • Aspirational Anchor: Personal- or team-based mission statement; articulates behaviors to change

Links: 

Apr 16, 2019

Marketers spend a lot of time, energy, and money building their social networks to connect with, engage, and share information with followers. How much should you invest in a platform and measure what you’re getting out of it?

Today, my guest is Shonali Burke, founder and leading instructor of Social PR Virtuosa and president and CEO of Shonali Burke Consulting. She encourages marketers to think about their social networks as a social community and shares how to connect with your social community to add value and meaning to your network, product, or service. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Plan, Paine, and MySpace: Community being generated through social space
  • Is traditional public relations (PR) dead? Perception and transformation of PR
  • Putting people back into public relations; getting to the heart of who somebody is and what’s important to them
  • Trend of natural marriage between social media and PR; companies taking initiative and making changes to company culture
  • Purpose and Mission: How to use and leverage social media to grow authentic communities and make people’s lives better, easier, and more fun
  • Two places to find stories: Customers and Company
  • First step to building and activating audience; what you’re asking them to do, why
  • How to measure ROI; depends on goals and data
  • Most common mistake made by PR professionals and strategists

Links: 

 

 

Apr 9, 2019

When you were younger, who did you go to when you had a tough question? Your single source of truth - your dad. These days, when people have questions, they ask a search engine. They go to Alexa!

There are big questions that companies are afraid to answer. As marketers, are you listening to questions your customers are asking? Are you answering the right questions? Today, my guest is Marcus Sheridan, author of They Ask You Answer. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Premise of Book: Business philosophy of how buyers think, questions they ask, and how they want to learn and buy
  • Elements of Success: Seen as a teacher and trusted voice in your space
  • Many of us think and speak like marketers; be honest when creating content
  • Big 5 subjects that determine what people buy and companies don’t want to address; cost-based, negative/problems, comparison, best of, and reviews
  • Let customers learn from you, not someone else; consumer ignorance is no longer a viable sales and marketing strategy
  • Stop mindset of digital marketing as an expense and sales team as revenue
  • Get leadership to understand concepts/results of sales and marketing initiative
  • Marketer Psychology: Prophet to world, but no one listens to you in hometown
  • Why are you producing content? For marketing or sales? Falsehood of too much
  • Emails should include education; refuse to be average  

Links: 

 

 

Apr 2, 2019

Which mentors and managers helped shape and influence you the most  through the years? Who made you a better person and marketing professional? Are most of them smart, talented women? According to the Association of National Advertisers, 67% of the marketing industry is female.

Today, my guest is Jodi Duncan, president of Flint Group. We discuss the current climate and ecosystem for women in marketing and business. What are some of the current challenges and opportunities that women face? 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Marketing agency trends and adapting to them - biggest challenge is the digital movement; expectations and pressure related to measuring ROI and spending
  • How to evaluate, identify, and implement tools and technologies for clients; don’t overlook the client’s objective and what they’re trying to do
  • Creating content and related messages, then effectively communicating content through multiple channels that have different parameters
  • Challenges of creating authentic content experiences; voice should match brand
  • Flint’s best strategies to do high-quality work for clients and be a place where people want to work; communication is critical
  • Progress needs to be made regarding concept of women in leadership and business; Women in Business blog series shares lessons and accomplishments
  • Are you a good bitch, or a bad bitch? Women don’t always support each other; difficult for women to get leadership position and not be branded a bitch
  • Show support and make an impact via direct conversations to address issues
  • Men just need to ask women to participate, include them, and offer opportunities to express their opinions
  • Women entering the workforce need to pay attention, watch, learn, ask questions, and speak up

Links: 

Mar 26, 2019

Marketers are in the business of creating content. They’re modern-day publishers. However, up to 70% of content that they create goes unused.  

Today, my guest is Randy Frisch, author of the new book, F#ck Content Marketing: Focus on Content Experience to Drive Demand, Revenue, & Relationships. Also, he’s the co-founder, president, and CMO of Uberflip. He identifies how to break bad content marketing habits and adapt personalization to marketing. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Content is at the core of marketing strategies; Uberflip empowers marketers to take control of created content assets and mesh them into their marketing efforts
  • Randy’s book is not meant to throw shade at content marketers, but capture his passion and take on the “broken” status of the content marketing industry  
  • What is unused content? Content that’s created and posted, but never leveraged on a day-to-day basis in marketing
  • Definition of content marketing to create content to attract a clearly defined audience and drive profitable customer action is too narrowly focused
  • Content marketers need to start putting the right content in front of the right people for that encounter to be a great experience   
  • Real-life examples of what content marketers are doing right and wrong; tell a story that connects with customers
  • Content marketers feel pressured to produce content, but they’re not the only ones responsible for customer experience
  • Tactics and tools for the personalization of content and marketing at scale
  • Content Experience Framework: Centralize, organize, personalize, distribute, and generate results
  • Evolution of Content: People who want to go beyond content creation and think more strategically by teaming up with colleagues

Links: 

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Mar 19, 2019

What did 447 marketers identify as the top benefits of an agile marketing approach? Helps team change gears quickly; provides better visibility into status of projects; finds roadblocks sooner; and produces higher quality work.  

Today, my guest is Andrea Fryrear, AgileSherpas co-founder and agile marketing consultant. We’re revealing the results of the 2nd Annual State of Agile Marketing Report.   

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Agile Marketing: Transitioning from traditional marketing pieces to short-term, high-quality, flexible work delivered rapidly and focused on the customer
  • Emphasis put on experimentation and validated learning through small, empowered, autonomous marketing teams
  • Marketers moving to agile framework to increase productivity, improve prioritization, and allow time to be innovative and creative
  • Common practices include daily stand-ups and using tools to visualize work  
  • One-third of respondents are agile marketers; 50% are traditional marketers; and 15% are ad-hoc marketers
  • 50% of traditional marketers want to implement agile marketing approach in 2019
  • 54% of agile teams use a hybrid approach
  • Agile aids interpersonal issues; creates better colleagues and work/life balance
  • Processes, project management tools, and education assist agile adoption
  • Overcoming agile skepticism; process of change is less painful than status quo
  • Favorite shifts between 2018 and 2019 reports; marketers are getting educated and thinking for themselves
  • Andrea’s Advice on Agile Approach: If you can’t fix it, make it visible

Links: 

Mar 12, 2019

Do you suffer from shiny object syndrome? It’s difficult to not become enamoured with the latest marketing tactics, trends, and technologies. We are distracted by them because they may offer hope or promise 10X-ing marketing results. Instead, stay focused on helping your business grow to generate revenue!

Today, my guest is Kieran Flanagan, vice president of marketing and growth at HubSpot. Kieran uses traditional marketing methods to help HubSpot and other brands generate additional traffic and revenue. We discuss how to create predictable and product-driven growth. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • Challenge to sustain growth is more difficult as a business gets bigger
  • Find new ways from existing channels or brand new channels to grow from
  • People, products, and businesses change; adapt marketing sales plans
  • Strategic Growth: Think logically about how to grow into being a big company by providing good products and customer experience
  • Develop scalable distribution plan and use search engines to find right product fit
  • 3 Stages of Fit: Product market, product channel, and ROI
  • Growth Power Law: 60-70% of growth comes from one or two channels
  • Build out next 12 months of growth, and predict where it’ll come from
  • Keyword Search: What product does and solves
  • How to choose best acquisition channel and strategy for scalability
  • Establish and measure goals and expectations for different channels
  • Develop work culture that embraces failure; experiment by taking small risks
  • Keep remote team engaged, focused, and motivated by being clear on goals and proactive with communication  

Links: 

Mar 5, 2019

Are you a millennial? Do you work with millennials? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, millennials are expected to make up half of the workforce by 2020 and 75% by 2030. So, it’s important to  figure out ways to understand these smart and talented millennials working at your company. Are there any idiosyncrasies with this generation that may be helpful to marketers?

Today, my guest is Garrett Mehrguth. He’s the CEO and co-founder of Directive, a growing digital agency that employs several millennials. Fortunately, Garrett has found unique ways to keep them engaged and motivated.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Garrett’s Motto: Learn, Engage, Create
  • Lesson Learned from First Consulting Client: Ask clients to pay you upfront
  • Never use your power as a leader to manipulate anyone to make a decision
  • Attract millennials by investing in social media to create a positive work culture
  • Utilize recruiting tools to find the most talented millennials
  • Best Defense for Bad Reviews: Demonstrate importance of sharing experiences and showing reviews to everyone involved to continue to grow and retain talent
  • Millennials are the same as everyone else, but treated differently, alienated, and made to feel demotivated and devalued by others
  • Directive offers a meritocracy and culture where people can grow in the company based on how they perform, not how long they’ve been with the company
  • One of the simplest ways to create a structure for success and motivate millennials is to help them prioritize their tasks and goals
  • 99.9% of millennial performance issues are related to time management and communication, or under-developed professional expertise
  • Millennials are motivated when being a part of something larger; they want to feel like what they’re doing is contributing to something
  • Directive supports career-driven millennials who want to be paid what they’re worth in an environment that accelerates their development professionally
  • Offer benefits that serve your team, not ones that attract talent; Directive’s coolest benefit is mental health support
  • Millennials want to learn, and Directive stresses its importance to be successful by requiring each employee to create a piece of content every quarter
  • Be a leader for millennials by holding yourself accountable and taking an authentic look at and fixing everything that’s wrong in your organization

Links:

 

Quotes by Garrett Mehrguth:

“If you could learn, engage, and create, you could always be better tomorrow...because you never take your foot off the gas.”

“We had this thought process that if we can’t attribute something to revenue, it’s not valuable, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Your brand dictates the type of talent you acquire or it dictates the success of your organization.”

“Millennials want authentic leadership and want an authentic team and an authentic culture that’s doing things for them, not to attract them.”

Feb 26, 2019

When someone says, “chatbot,” do shivers go down your spine? Or, does a big grin cover your face? If chatbots are annoying and an invasion of privacy, why are so many people engaging with this technology? More than 25% of the world’s population is using message apps, and 71% of people use messaging apps for customer assistance. People want their problems solved quickly via personal experience. Enter chatbots.

Exit traditional, one-way marketing, such as email, landing pages for Web forms, and blog posts. At least that’s what today’s guest believes. Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey, a messenger marketing platform. He describes chatbots, their benefits to marketers, and ways to utilize them. He shares how such technology will alter how we think about content creation, calls to action, and customer experiences.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Chatbot Definition: Forget Siri or Alexa; think about chatbots as the top of the funnel, marketing, lead acquisition, nurturing, and conversion technology
  • Chat marketing lets you push notifications to collect emails addresses to send newsletters and other content; get people to subscribe to your channel
  • Messages vs. Emails: Differences include lack of response and interaction
  • Typical open rate for emails is 5-10%, so 90-95% of people aren’t engaging; open rates for chat marketing are 70-80%, and click rates are 10-20%
  • Use advertising to get people to click on an ad that takes them into a chat session, not to your Website
  • Marketers should change how they engage with customers; create personalized experiences where chatbots come in to help with back-and-forth interactions
  • Conventional marketing is based on assumptions made about the audience; chat removes assumptions by asking questions
  • Companies doing online advertising should use Click-to-Messenger Ads; customer clicks the button to subscribe to messaging with your company
  • Website chat where a box in the corner pops up to offer help is not new; most companies fail using it because it’s hard to have someone on-call to chat
  • Chatbots offer Tier 1 support to handle certain questions and respond with user-provided content; create chat content and assign keyword triggers
  • Reciprocal Concessions: If customer believes you’re being helpful to them, they’re more likely to buy from you
  • Identify information customers want; post stories or declarative content, then post a conversation starter to spark them to share their opinions and thoughts

Links:

 

Quotes by Larry Kim:

“I truly believe that messaging is the future. People already overwhelmingly prefer messaging for communication, but yet businesses haven’t figured this out.”

“What you should be thinking about when you think chatbots is it’s the top of the funnel, marketing, lead acquisition, nurturing, and conversion technology.”

“But the messages aren’t just emails. Emails are stupid. You can’t respond to them. They’re not very interactive.”

“Users are okay with and actually covet communications with the companies and brands that they care about through messaging.”

 

Feb 19, 2019

How do you create content? Plan for it? Identify what will resonate with your audience? Marketers need to think of themselves as content producers and publishers. They’re all trying to come up with a story that has an angle and narrative to provide insight or leadership.

Today, we’re talking to Clint Schaff, vice president of strategy and research at the Los Angeles Times. Clint is a dynamic marketer and journalist who offers his perspective on marketers as content creators and publishers, and journalists and media storytellers as marketers. He shares processes around content planning, creation, and promotion.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Doing social good by transforming relationships between consumers and brands; content creation is meant to serve an advocacy for communications
  • Content to cover involves complicated collaboration, stories consistent with brand, and commercial viability
  • Feedback from influencers and data on your audience help determine content
  • Editorial calendar serves as a way to plan and manage content
  • Return on investment (ROI) and generating revenue from content
  • Create unique, exclusive content experiences through experimentation
  • Leverage different mediums and promote content through social media, paid advertising, and other ways to get more content and generate attention
  • Write weekly summary of what you did and what you’re going to do to make sure everyone on your team is moving in the same direction
  • Be a better marketer by making a list of the most surprising things you could do to move toward your objective

Links:

  • What topics and guests do you want on the Actionable Marketing Podcast? Send me your suggestions!

 

Quotes by Clint Schaff:

“It’s about content creation that’s meant to serve an advocacy for something. Advocacy for communications, whether that’d be for a brand or a cause or an idea or story.”

“If you create amazing, impeccable journalism, but no one reads it, and you haven’t figured out how to meet a need in the market, well, that’s not a very good business.”

“Our whole brand is based on credibility and trust.”

“We’re turning on the dials, trying every possible way to get eyeballs on our content that people need to see.”

 

Feb 12, 2019

Is the future of voice search happening as we speak? Are we really in the middle of a voice search revolution? Are you part of the 41% of adults or 55% of teenagers who use voice search daily? By 2020, at least 50% of all Internet searches will be through images or speech.

Today, we’re talking to Jeremiah Smith, founder and CEO of SimpleTiger. He breaks down how voice searches will impact SEO, algorithms, keywords, and research. Also, he shares how marketers can optimize their content in a voice search world.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Pulse and perspective on current state of voice search
  • Search Categories: General and transactional
  • What’s the intent of voice search? Good answers, no advertising
  • Indirect Commercial Intent: Customers become comfortable with and trust voice devices enough to conduct commercial searches to buy something
  • Search engines using artificially intelligent rules and inputs to deduce output
  • User engagement metrics trumping every other ranking metric in Google
  • Google: Changing from a search engine to an answer engine?
  • Evolution of old vs. new types of search; people need to rethink how they search
  • Conversational marketing created to address surge of conversational searches
  • Optimize content for voice search by answering searcher’s intent for any keyword
  • Prepare for voice search by keeping things the same, read SEO documentation

Links:

 

Quotes by Jeremiah Smith:

“Market domination, in terms of voice search as an interface, belongs to Amazon.”

“I don’t think we need to be nervous and be scared because this artificially intelligent engine, at the end of the day, is doing something to produce a result for a company.”

“Your SEO schemes aren’t going to work any more. Your need to actually start pleasing your customers. It’s a much more blunt game that were playing now.”

“The way that we search for things also says a lot about the type of result that ought to occur.”

Feb 5, 2019

How often do you think about customer experience? Marketers put tons of time and energy into creating a brand to communicate a value proposition that makes people feel a certain way about their company. But good marketers know that it’s not about brand, but brand perception developed through conversations and interactions with customers.

Today, we’re talking to Chris Paul, head of customer experience at CoSchedule. He describes how different departments and employees at a company can work together to make sure they are on the same page when it comes to the company’s brand and adding value to customer experience.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Learn about your brand from both customers and co-workers
  • All products, services, and solutions evolve over time; so do customers’ needs and demands
  • Consider product market fit and then pivot and make changes when necessary
  • Dawn of a new era where customers are not afraid to tell you what they think
  • Know customers’ experiences and expectations to create positive experience
  • Help customers grow and be successful by orchestrating value and addressing their pain points/problems
  • How to identify existing and future stakeholders
  • Offer customers on-demand support via various channels, including social media
  • Delegate and streamline support requests to effectively respond to customers
  • Improve customer experience by aligning and collaborating with departments and teams, don’t silo them

Links:

  • Write a review on iTunes and send a screenshot of it to receive a cool CoSchedule swag bag!

 

 

Jan 29, 2019

How would you like to make $22 on every $1 spent promoting content? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, let’s find out.

Today, we’re talking to Freyja Spaven and Daniel Daines-Hutt, authors of How We Drive A $22:1 ROI From Cold Traffic, Using Facebook And Promoted Content. They share secrets to their success when it comes to researching, planning, designing, copywriting, and testing to promote content via paid ads on Facebook.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • AmpMyContent helps small business that have funds, but are time poor and unable to leverage content
  • Tweaking content to make it 10X more effective
  • Paid Ad Process:
  • Ad goes to cold audience
  • Drives them to piece of content
  • Presents hyper-specific, next-step offer with highly efficient lead magnet
  • Over-inundation of content; 83.6 million new posts are published every month
  • Facebook ads allow you to get a lot reach, without spending a lot of money
  • Research: Push traffic to good, not bad content; determine if ad is profitable; and interview readers regarding a problem that needs a solution
  • Avoid creating a lot of content that doesn’t highlight your expertise about a topic
  • Ads start at a loss; use bottom-up testing to make ads profitable
  • Create ideal audience for your content to make an ad that resonates with them
  • Supply and Demand: More specific your ads, the more Facebook charges
  • How people consume a newsfeed ad; on auto-pilot with their attention, interest
  • Use Facebook machine learning to your advantage to obtain user data and create algorithm to achieve conversion goals
  • Branded Solution: Ad content should educate readers about specific systems and processes that reduce stress and solve relevant problems
  • Getting people into a room, but not offering them anything; every piece of content should have a call to action
  • Email is an effective channel to make sales

Links:

 

 

Jan 22, 2019

Do you do whatever you can to get a prospect’s attention? Many marketers actually miss the mark when it comes to connecting their customers and content.

Today, we’re talking to Heidi Cohen, chief content officer of Actionable Marketing Guide. She describes how you can build momentum to keep your content visible, consumable, and actionable. Also, Heidi shares a method to follow for your content’s amplification and distribution process.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Difference between distribution and promotion of content
  • Distribution Method:
    1. Ignite (up to first three days): Build a network and spark participants’ interest and willingness to engage with and share your content
    2. Fuel (first month): Plan, manage, and schedule social media marketing to keep content fresh and visible; utilize many mediums (i.e. video, audio)
    3. Spread (ongoing): Road test content to determine what works or doesn’t to attract new people; perform audit to update content and get conversions
  • Less than 60% of digital traffic is human; build relationships and be creative to reach humans who will share your content
  • Ways to create new or keep content going include visuals/images, guest posts, build authority, get people involved, take content live, and go to conferences   

Links:

 

Jan 15, 2019

We’ve talked about influencer marketing and referral marketing. Now, it’s time to talk about affiliate marketing. With all these types of marketing, where does one end and the other begin? They’re all related, but each is a little different.

Today, we’re talking to Arlen Robinson, chief operating officer and co-founder of OmniStar Interactive. Arlen describes the differences between types of marketing, how to set up a structured program for affiliate marketing, and how to recruit and create incentives to bring affiliates on board.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Affiliate Marketing: People who are outside affiliates, not customers, promote your business, products, and services
  • Referral Marketing: Your customers who refer your business to people they know
  • Influencer Marketing: Someone who has their own audience and following
  • Every business should implement an affiliate or referral program because of stats
  • Due to abundant shopping options being available, consumers get overwhelmed
  • Create an affiliate program by defining reasonable goals and promotional strategies, as well as ways to measure success
  • Find and recruit affiliates via online directories and social media; be competitive and get their attention by offering sizeable incentives - cash is king
  • Other incentives could include offering products, merchandise, and gift cards
  • Affordable solutions are available to internally track and manage sales, payment process, and content influenced by individual affiliates
  • Use a viral loop to create a constant flow into your affiliate and referral programs

Links:

 

 

Jan 8, 2019

How can you improve your content marketing? How can you take advantage of an opportunity to entice people? Every company has the typical branding and collateral, but CoSchedule goes above and beyond with a tower of donuts!

Today, we’re talking to Ann Handley, award-winning content marketing expert and Chief Content Officer (CCO) for MarketingProfs. Ann shares how she organizes her team, what’s she focusing on for the company, and how she measures effectiveness and success. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

  • CCO: Person at a management level who manages content - what a company sells and does
  • MarketingProfs educates and trains marketers; helps them figure out how to use modern digital tools, tactics, and techniques
  • Six Elements of Campaign Marketing: Strategy, plan, create, communicate, analyze, and management
  • Identify what's important to marketers; always ask - what does our audience need to know to be successful in marketing?
  • Focus on the Future: Plan what needs to be done now to know what you will offer in the next six months
  • Remote teams require knowing what everybody's working on and where things are at; MarketingProfs’ philosophy is “When in doubt, cc”
  • Utilize project management tools; don’t buy helpful tools and then not use them
  • Hire people who are able to work in your company’s environment and who value and crave the type of autonomy offered
  • Metrics used to measure success depends on the content; review open rates, trends, and other indicators - what metrics matter more holistically and broadly
  • Ann redesigned and re-launched her Website because to align her personal and professional worlds
  • Focus on your distribution strategy to make your content stand out; distribute conversational and helpful content via email to connect directly with people

Links: 

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