Great content marketing can come from great storytelling. Who better to tell great stories than journalists? Marketers can learn from journalists how to create content that resonates with people through the power of storytelling.
Today’s guest is Ben Worthen, CEO of Message Lab, which combines journalism, data, and design to help organizations create content that resonates with real people. Ben discusses valuable insights for anyone interested in creating content that matters by combining journalistic storytelling techniques with data and design.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Ben Worthen:
“As there's so much choice about what you choose to pay attention to, what you don't want to pay attention to, when you want to pay attention to one thing, and when you get to pay attention to another, it's more important to be able to reach people with things that they care about.”
“People are biologically programmed to want to pay attention to a good story. It's something that goes back to when we all lived in caves and sat around the fire.”
“If you want to broaden your reach, if you want to have more influence, if you want to break out of a sales-only moment in time where you can have a meaningful interaction with someone, stories are the way to do it.”
“When we think about the coolest experiences that we've had, they tend to be experiences that someone has created for us. Those are things that we tend to share with people.”
Great work starts with great workflows. How do the best product marketing teams structure their workflows?
Today’s guest is Sergey Sundukovskiy, Co-Founder, CTO, and Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Salesmsg. Sergey talks about how to develop successful product marketing workflows and processes.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Sergey Sundukovskiy:
“We look at product management in four stages. It’s the ideation, collaboration, construction, and transition.”
“The improvement in repeatability as well as the work orchestration between multiple parties is always the same.”
“At SalesMsg, product marketing is focused on existing customers, and marketing all together is focused on prospects and leads.”
“Execution on the product marketing side becomes a competitive advantage.”
For SaaS companies, onboarding emails help establish long-term relationships with customers to understand and effectively use software tools. Yet, onboarding processes and email copy are often overlooked. The best way to learn what customers need is to talk to them.
Today’s guest is Samar Owais, SaaS and eCommerce email expert. She talks about everything you need to know to make onboarding emails an effective part of your customer acquisition and retention strategy. Samar’s advice on how to talk to customers and identify their pain points can apply to any marketer.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Samar Owais:
“Until and unless your users are not using your app, it doesn't matter whether they're paying for it or not. You are failing at the one thing that you were set out to do, which is solve the problem.”
“We need to onboard with retention in mind.”
“Email is often used as a marketing tool, but it is a communication tool.”
“Email journey is an entire ecosystem. For SaaS companies, you need to map out every customer touch point and then just focus on them.”
Marketers struggle with the fear of focusing on the right things and doing things the wrong way. However, there are ways to use, gather, and apply data to get on the right path to generate a return.
Today’s guest is Carolyn Lowe, Founder and CEO at ROI Swift and author of Business Growth Do’s and Absolute Don’ts. Carolyn talks about how to use the right data to make the right decisions.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Carolyn Lowe:
“I like the idea of outsourcing the expertise when you’re small because you can’t know everything.”
“When you’re always self-doubting, it’s really hard to move forward. We used to always say, ‘If you can measure it, you can manage it.’”
“I’m all about test, iterate, and tweak.”
“It starts and ends with the customer.”
What do marketing leaders and teams need to know about gender equity in the workplace? Make it a priority to be a great communicator, highly effective, and flexible to drive change.
Today’s guest is Ashley McManus, Senior Director of Global Marketing at Smart Eye. She is a tech startup marketing leader with extensive expertise in inbound marketing. Her thoughtful branding and organized approach to execution resulted in acquiring the tech startup, Affectiva.
Ashley is able to break down challenges, come up with creative solutions, and drive results quickly within budget. She combines strategic thinking with tactical execution, analyzing problems, and identifying steps to results by being adaptive and resourceful.
Also, Ashley designs strategies for tech companies to position them as industry thought leaders. She does this by deliberately creating high-quality content that resonates with their target audience and is in line with their vision.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Ashley McManus:
“Equality between men and women, it doesn’t mean that men and women have to become the same. But it’s just that their rights, responsibilities, opportunities, they don’t depend on whether they are born male or female.”
“Gender equity - that means fairness. Fairness of treatment for men and women according to their respective needs.”
“Equity really leads to equality.”
“Women are responsible for, I think, 70 to 80 percent of customer purchasing.”
It’s smart to organize content when you have a core piece of pillar content linked to several smaller pieces covering sub-topics around your main topic. Also, it’s about knowing what to include in a topic cluster and how to organize information within a hub-and-spoke content model.
Today’s guest is Skyler Reeves from Ardent Growth, a content intelligence consultancy. Building out topic clusters can be expensive, especially when mistakes are made. How much time and resources does it take to produce multiple pieces to make something like the hub-and-spoke model work the first time around?
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Skyler Reeves:
“Something we're constantly trying to do is figure out ways to simplify things for everyone with the way they do their work, so they can get it done faster and more accurately.”
“We want to know about the content before we actually go to make those decisions. You can think of it as a precursor or an overarching theme to content strategy and content marketing.”
“How do you know what the perfect hub is? How do you know when something needs to be part of hub A or part of hub B, especially when you're trying to rank these things on search engines?”
“One of the easiest, quick ways to solve cannibalization without having to rely on your gut - just go look at what Google's telling you.”
Chief marketing officers (CMOs) typically only stay with a company for only 24-25 months. That type of turnover at the top level of marketing departments is not good for marketers in leadership roles or with leadership aspirations.
Today’s guest is Mark Donnigan, a marketing consultant. He talks about why CMOs need to think more like business strategists to better connect where marketing fits into the big picture within your organization rather than thinking about marketing as a set of tactics that are separate from what the rest of the business is doing.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Mark Donnigan:
“No longer is it sufficient in today’s fragmented buyer journey to just basically build your whole program around a nice funnel.”
“The average B2B buyer was...over 50% of the way through their buying journey before they even contacted the first vendor.”
“You have the marketing tools to execute. There’s no need to go to another marketing seminar, another martech seminar. Instead, spend time with the CEO.”
“To be able to contribute in a sales meeting, you better know about the business.”
How well do most CMOs know their CIO or IT director? Not as well as they should. It’s important for marketers to build strong relationships with their technical teams to achieve marketing success.
Today’s guest is Theresa O’Neil, CMO of Zylo, a SaaS management platform. She talks about what and why CMOs and marketing leaders need to navigate side by side with IT to get the most from their technology, to make sure they're not bleeding their martech stack budget, and to ensure that they're collectively driving the most ROI possible.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Theresa O’Neil:
“In marketing, to do a great job, you need the right tools, and it's never been more important than it is now.”
“The average company has over 600 SaaS applications. Most of them, IT doesn't know about.”
“38% of licenses go unused every month. Just think about it. If you could reclaim 38% of your tech budget, for a marketer, that could absolutely be found money that you could use for a new initiative, or program, or something else that can really help you meet your goals.”
“By partnering together and making those employees happy and productive, you're also making sure you're not wasting budget.”
What does email automation look like, how does it work, and what are its benefits? Discover how to grow, scale, and mature by owning and not making the same mistakes.
Today’s guest is Jeremiah Utecht, Lead on Marketing Automation and Business Intelligence at CoSchedule. He takes the mystery out of marketing automation and makes it work.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Jeremiah Utecht:
“Marketing automation at CoSchedule seeks to always send the right email to the right person at the right time.”
“The irony of my job is that it’s more about not sending certain emails and saying, ‘No,’ a lot than it is actually blasting things out.”
“Marketing automation is triggering marketing content messaging based on an attribute, a context.”
“As a rule, being super clever almost always blows up in your face.”
Do you create great content for an awesome business but still find it challenging to be found on the internet? Building relationships with the right partners can build your audience by getting in front of the audiences of others.
Today’s guest is Brett McGrath, Vice President of Marketing at The Juice, a content distribution platform for B2B content. It’s like Spotify, but for business content. Brett shares how to develop content partnerships to launch ambitious new companies.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Brett McGrath:
“When I joined The Juice, priority #1 was meet people and just have conversations.”
“Reach out to people and do it in a way that is authentic and natural in building partnerships.”
“We, as B2B marketers, need to move away from me-centered marketing or marketing for our own KPIs and our metrics or what our bosses want.”
“Find the places where people want to go and learn and are like-minded and find ways to engage.”
Marketers understand the value of search engine optimization (SEO), but they need to clearly communicate why it matters to get buy-in from executives, stakeholders, and clients.
Today’s guest is Eli Schwartz, a consultant and growth advisor. Also, he is the author of Product-Led SEO, a new book that describes how to communicate the value of SEO and think strategically and philosophically about SEO to be successful.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Eli Schwartz:
“I am a huge fan of not creating any sort of content unless you know that there are users that will consume it, it makes sense for users, and it will end up converting.”
“If you don't do SEO, then your competitors move ahead of you. If you don't do the right SEO, you just lose your entire investment. But that's not the way most people think of it.”
“Social media is a little bit lower in the funnel. I think paid marketing is at the bottom of the funnel. Brand marketing is potentially higher in the funnel than SEO. Make them all work together and that's where SEO will be the most profitable.”
“They don't need to understand how SEO works. What they do need to understand are the outcomes, and the work that's going to be done, and of course, the investment that's going to be made.”
Too much marketing is based on guesses not backed by data. Paid tactics, like pay-per-click (PPC) and social media advertising, can burn through your budget when guesses are wrong. How can you use data to make marketing more predictable to forecast performance and adjust to shifts in trends to increase your ROI?
Today’s guest is John Readman from BOSCO, a digital analytics and predictive modeling platform for retailers and eCommerce companies. He discusses what it takes for predictable marketing to be successful. It involves understanding historical data, performance, and trends across a client's channels.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from John Readman:
“If we've got the right data in the right format, and we understand what is going on around certain targets, what makes it predictable is understanding the metrics and the outputs we are trying to achieve.”
“Fundamentally, why do people need to make data-driven decisions to really explain where they're spending their money, where are they getting their ROI, and then how can they scale it?”
“It all starts with getting all your data organized in one place, then looking at what I am willing to pay to acquire a customer, and then maybe looking at customer lifetime value.”
“The thing to stand out will be a better proposition, a better product, and a better promotion, which is sort of the traditional marketing going around in a full circle.”
Great content doesn't happen by accident. It's usually a byproduct of refined processes that help teams work together efficiently and effectively. However, planning editorial workflows and implementing content creation processes can be challenging.
Today’s guest is Justin Zimmerman from Salesmsg. Justin talks about how marketing teams can develop and implement editorial workflows and content creation processes to create better content.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Justin Zimmerman:
“Self-reflection and experience really allow me to look at the word process not as a dirty word, but as a way to align teams.”
“Flow state is, I think, the ultimate outcome of teams working together towards a common goal and feeling that sense of higher purpose.”
“I think words matter because they give an indication of the actions that follow them.”
“Workflow is the way that connects where we are today with the progress and results that we want.”
Do you believe in the power of personal video in video outreach or do you remain skeptical? If a pitch for something isn’t interesting on its own, how will a video that takes longer to watch than reading a simple email grab your attention and sway your opinion?
Today’s guest is David Jay, founder of Warm Welcome, a personal video platform. Discover the value of video, how video can be used, and its full potential by making business communication that scales and creates personal conversations and human connections.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from David Jay:
“Video can be personalized or it can just be personal. There’s kind of different directions you can go with it.”
“There's a lot of ways to use video in our business.”
“The first thing not to do is don’t think of it selfishly. Don’t think of it as a way to get what you want. Every sales and marketer, we’re guilty of this.”
“I think business is built on trust, and trust is built through relationships.”
Audience growth - whether in the context of social media followers, email list, podcast listeners, or YouTube subscribers - whatever the case may be, it's easy to believe that more is always better.
Today’s guest is Matt Johnson, author of MicroFamous: Become Famously Influential to the Right People. Also, Matt is the founder of a podcast PR agency, Pursuing Results, and host of the MicroFamous podcast. He talks about how to be micro-famous with the right people and learn to grow as an influencer within a given niche.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Matt Johnson:
“When I go to an industry conference, it's full of my ideal people. I absolutely want everybody there to know who I am. That's really what it means to be MicroFamous.”
“If you're not number one, you're facing an uphill battle.”
“You want to be famously influential, but not to everyone, just to the exact right people.”
“The thing that generated sales was delivering the exact right content that the right people cared deeply about and it resonated with them.”
If you have a podcast, are you repurposing your content assets across other channels and formats? If not, then you are missing out on opportunities to reach potential listeners and customers.
Today’s guest is Holly Pels, Vice President of Marketing at Casted – a podcast platform for B2B marketers. Holly talks about how and why marketers should turn their podcast into a content creation engine to drive return on investment (ROI).
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Holly Pels:
“Podcasting is a channel that is very authentic. It’s two people having a conversation versus what a brand necessarily wants you to hear.”
“Content planning is really important when it comes to podcasting, but this is much richer, better, engaging content than anything.”
“Traffic is great but conversion is better.”
“If it seems to be resonating with our audience, we want to make sure that we’re giving them more.”
Old school press releases never get much hype. Usually, they are not interesting to write or read. Smart marketers and PR professionals know that well-written press releases are crucial to land press coverage and influencer relationships that build brand awareness and establish companies as the authority in their niche.
Today’s guest is Mickie Kennedy from eReleases, a press release distribution company. Mickie discusses how to get press releases right to get coverage from even the biggest media outlets.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Mickie Kennedy:
“That leverage, you just can’t capture elsewhere in marketing. That’s the fun thing that you sit back and watch. When it works, it works well.”
“If you can be strategic with what you’re announcing and sort of craft your own news, you can really get out there and do really well with press releases.”
“I love working with startups. About a third of the people that go on Shark Tank use eReleases to announce their segment coming up when it airs.”
“Press releases are the worst marketing tool because it’s hard as heck to measure the ROI.”
Brands are churning out more content now than ever before. Even though companies are paying more money to create more content to compete in a more crowded space, sometimes content falls flat and does not perform. The content doesn’t build business or drive results, rankings, or traffic. Is it time to prioritize quality over quantity?
Today’s guest is Gaetano DiNardi from Nextiva, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software company. Gaetano talks about what can go wrong from publishing too much content without a strategy. He discusses how to balance content quality with content quantity based on personal and professional experience.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Gaetano DiNardi:
“Companies don’t think about distribution. They just produce.”
“Most content actually lacks expertise, authoritativeness, and it doesn’t always seem like it’s coming from a subject matter expert because oftentimes, it’s not.”
“All this quantity, you have to keep maintaining it, and you have to keep it up to date.”
“These are assets that never die. They live forever if they are good quality.”
The marketing industry is full of talented people who come from all kinds of educational and professional backgrounds. If you want to get into the industry, but you don’t have a directly relevant college degree or previous work experience, how do you break into marketing to succeed?
Today’s guest is Melissa Berrios from Melissa Berrios Consulting and Virtualmente Libre, where she helps consult six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs on how to grow their brands and audiences. Before being a marketing consultant, Melissa spent 13 years as a project engineer.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Melissa Berrios:
“I’ve always been a very creative person growing up and even when I was in engineering school, I was involved in a lot of the arts.”
“Working in engineering is something, it could be really a creative job, which it’s fine. But as you climb the corporate ladder and you climb into more of a management role, more of a corporate role, you lose that creativity aspect of engineering.”
“I was creating a lot of content, so content creation was very strong. I became very strong at it just because blogging required me to edit video, create graphics, and do all that stuff. I became really passionate about it.”
“If you really want to pivot and do something that you are really passionate about, you need to start.”
Traditional public relations (PR) is still one of the most powerful and cost-effective tactics that brands use to get attention and build a business. It may not be the latest and greatest shiny object to chase after, but it is a proven and time-tested option.
Today’s guest is Megan Bennett, CEO of Light Years Ahead. She focuses on managing clients and exceeding their expectations. Megan has helped all kinds of clients get press coverage and measure effectiveness connected to sales and revenue.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Megan Bennett:
“Once you get one good media hit, it helps to build brand awareness, so that consumers know about you.”
“You have to find a way to make your brand stand out from the rest when you're telling a story to the media.”
“Keep shopping around until you find people that you feel are really going to be passionate about your brand and want to help grow with you, not just take your money.”
“Find ways to spread the word because that’s what’s going to give your brand the credibility to move forward is the public relations and the media reviews.”
How can marketers leverage social media to influence search engine optimization (SEO) and boost their content? Social media does and does not influence organic search performance for content.
Today’s guest is Dmitry Dragilev is a public relations (PR) and SEO expert from Criminally Prolific. Dmitry talks about what he knows based on what Google does, what works in the industry, and what works for himself and his clients. He describes how to leverage social media to drive short- and long-term SEO gains and amplify your content through channels.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Dmitry Dragilev:
“Social signals are not used by Google for ranking purposes. I think that's really important to remember. If you are trying to think about that or trying to rank that Google will not use those social signals to rank you.”
“Your brand reputation, your brand recognition, and getting that out there via social media do indirectly impact your rankings.”
“Those assets, which are going to be linked to from many different pages, many different sites, and used in all these different posts, that's where I think the gold mine really lies with sharing information on social that people can use in all sorts of different avenues.”
“The name of the game should be spending time and money to create quality, engaging content. I think that is worth every penny. Whether it works well on social media or organically, it should probably be both.”
Are you frustrated being on an in-house marketing team working with external agencies? And vice versa? Client and agency relationships can turn sour for several different reasons, such as unreasonable expectations, misaligned objectives, overselling capabilities, or poor communication of needs.
Today’s guest is Tyler Elliston, founder of Right Side Up. Tyler talks about how his company is structured to set up client relationships for mutual success using basic philosophical and strategic approaches. Actual measures and practical guidance can prevent and avoid problems from starting in the first place.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Tyler Elliston:
“Ultimately, our goal is to help them build a best-in-class organization that consists of full-time people, agencies (not us - Right Side Up), whatever sort of makes sense for their business. So, we try to take a more kind of holistic approach to their success.”
“We really index on individual talent. We really believe that great marketing comes from great marketers.”
“I felt like I had relatively little control over the talent I was working with.”
“In a lot of cases, the problem is not the person. A lot of times, the problem is the structure that the person is in.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion, or the ‘DEI’ initiatives, have received increased attention for a wide variety of reasons. How and why should marketing leaders and teams implement effective DEI programs and strategies? The consequences for not understanding what DEI means does matter.
Today’s guest is Jimi Vaughn, a DEI consultant and expert. He talks about making a case for DEI by aiming for both the head and the heart of organizations’ decision makers and internal stakeholders.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Jimi Vaughn:
“When I talk about diversity, I’m really referencing the traits and characteristics that makes us all unique.”
“Equity is really about fair treatment, where equality is about the same treatment. Sometimes, equality isn’t necessarily fair.”
“I do believe that there’s an ethical responsibility for organizations and marketers and basically any business to be thinking about these types of things.”
“It would be foolish to not understand the buying power of minority groups.”
How can smaller companies compete against bigger businesses? Agile marketing is a methodology that helps companies work more efficiently and effectively to produce better outcomes.
Today’s guest is Andrea Fryrear from AgileSherpas, an agile marketing consultancy. Andrea talks about how companies can leverage limited resources the right way by having a plan and path to follow and drive outsized outcomes.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes from Andrea Fryrear:
“If it’s not getting you anywhere, then that speed is just waste. It’s wasted energy.”
“Agile does all of its optimization and its speed and its waste reduction to deliver value to a customer faster.”
“What do we need in order to effectively identify the high-value work and prioritize the high-value work? We need to know everything that’s out there. Everything we are doing compared with everything we could be doing.”
“Agile is meant to apply holistically across all the work that a team does.”
Are you a hiring manager responsible for building a marketing team? An internship program should not be an afterthought. Take the time to select candidates and support interns effectively to be productive team members and get a good start on their career.
Today’s guest is Owen Piehl, CoSchedule intern, who shares insights about how to get an internship for a specific role with limited experience. Owen talks about what college students and hiring managers need to know to make marketing internships successful.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
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Quotes:
“I started out as the social media intern. That’s what I got hired on as with little social media experience, I might add, and then now I’ve made the transfer over to the content editor intern.” Owen Piehl
“I was looking for something where I could get into marketing a little bit, learn a little more about just how marketing teams work. As I was researching, I saw a few openings for CoSchedule, and I did some research on the company.” Owen Piehl
“(Owen) You chose to focus on how your skills fit the role, rather than how your experience fit the description.” Ben Sailer
“Ask yourself what skills you have right now that might transfer. Combine that with a dedication to never stop learning, and you just might surprise yourself with what you can achieve.” Ben Sailer
“One thing I really appreciate about CoSchedule is it’s very results oriented.” Owen Piehl