Data and thought leadership are two things that work better together, especially in public relations and content marketing.
Today’s guest is Amy Littleton, Executive Vice President of Public Relations and Content at KemperLesnik. Amy talks about how to make thought leadership more accurate and authoritative to land massive PR wins. She knows what it takes to use data-backed insights to tell stories that earn media attention.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Amy Littleton:
“Even the way that we search for news and information in our personal lives, in business, you’re looking for news and information, and you can get that from multiple sources.”
“The first thing you would do is lose trust with your audience if you put out crappy content. You’re not going to get people to want to come back to you for information if the information you put out is really a marketing piece disguised as thought leadership.”
“Data can come from anywhere. I think your own curated data, third-party data, information that you’ve found that is already publicly available, and any combination of that, can help you to inform a thought leadership piece.”
“It’s about credibility. You want your piece to have credibility.”
How ethical is your marketing practice? Imagine describing your job to your best non-marketing friend. What’s your response if they think your work is ethically gray or morally suspect?
Today’s guest is Robin Cangie from The Empowered Freelancer. Robin talks about how to do work that’s radically effective and ethical, where marketers avoid ethical shortcuts by focusing on work that is genuinely helpful for leads, prospects, and customers.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Robin Cangie:
“Radically Ethical Marketing is simply marketing that puts honesty, transparency, and genuine helpfulness at its center.”
“People are becoming more wise to ways that marketers try to manipulate their perceptions, use their data to get them to buy as much stuff as possible.”
“Being radically ethical is a more sustainable long-term choice.”
“Truth be told, it was a matter of needing to look in the mirror every morning and feel good about the work that I was doing. That is something that’s very important to me.”
“You may have more power than you realize to effect change.”
As a marketer, do you need to create content that applies insights derived from data and research? If so, pay attention to the right data and apply it the right way to produce the most effective work possible.
Today’s guest is Anastasia Leng from CreativeX. She talks about where marketers get misled with data and how to merge data and creativity to create content that connects with customers.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Anastasia Leng:
“It’s really about having a common language for evaluating every piece of content that we create.”
“Understand what is the long-term metric that really matters, and how can you start to get creative and whatever that KPI is closer together so you can understand the relationship and the journey these two things take together.”
“Analyze content more objectively so that we’re not letting our own biases drive our understanding of what is working and what is not working in our content strategy.”
“If you’re not even aware of these things, how can you truly be a good marketer? How can you truly put out great content if you’re not actually able to really look deeply within it?”
Too often, content marketing strategies follow one of two paths: Keyword driven or driven based on what the writer thinks makes an interesting topic. The path to success is somewhere in between those two strategies.
Today’s guest is Brad Smith from Wordable, Codeless, and uSERP. He talks about how to create data-backed and ROI-driven content strategies that blend both approaches for maximum results.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Brad Smith:
“If you’re relatively small, relatively new, not well-funded, don’t have a name for yourself or brand yet, that kind of excludes like 70 percent of the good stuff from a keyword perspective that you’d want to write for, ultimately, that’s going to bring in ROI.”
“When you’re following this method of let’s just create ‘good’ content, you’re completely 100 percent relying on what other people find interesting.”
“Social things are going to be a lot more beneficial shorter term. Over the long term, it’s just about scale.”
“The whole ranking thing is like the chicken and the egg. I can’t rank for big keywords until I’m big, but I’m not going to be big until I rank for some keywords.”
“Marketers don’t need more ideas. They don’t need better ideas. They just need to execute better, and executing better comes from processes and boring systems and operations.”
CoSchedule started as an editorial calendar WordPress plugin created by an agency that co-founders, Garrett Moon and Justin Walsh, ran called Todaymade. Since then, CoSchedule has grown. Not only has the core content calendar gone through a lot of changes, but so has the company.
Today’s guest is Nathan Ellering, Head of Marketing at CoSchedule, which now offers multiple different product lines under one brand name. Nathan explains how CoSchedule made pivots and tackled some risks and challenges. His advice will help you navigate from being one company that makes one product and expand to one company that makes four products.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Nathan Ellering:
“We're aiming to create experiences that help out people who really are being marketed to...from a customer service perspective. That's been really fun so far.”
”We were working a lot with bloggers and we discovered many years ago that marketers are starting to turn to blogging as a great way to do content marketing.”
“We identified the need that they had to just organize everything in one place. We say those words all the time. They really resonate with people.”
“We want every experience at CoSchedule to be a positive one and one that lasts a lifetime of you being a marketer.”
Why are marketers good at content production, but not so great at content distribution? They are judged based on how much work they get done, rather than the actual results that they produce. Also, content promotion with traditional channels is harder to do.
Today’s guest is Jonathan Gandolf from The Juice. He talks about a better way for content marketers to produce and distribute value. Curation is actually more powerful than creation.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Jonathan Gandolf:
”What ends up happening is we create really compelling content, but then we end up going to the same channels and the same audience over and over and over again.”
“You hit this law of diminishing returns. You’re getting less returns out of that same audience. The only way to get more returns is to create more content. You end up on this hamster wheel of content creation.”
“Nobody, right now, is looking for more content. They’re just looking for the right content.”
“Curation is actually more powerful than creation.”
Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT-3) and artificial intelligence (AI) first made their way into the marketing industry last year. There's been a lot of talk about whether or not robots will take over content marketers’ jobs. Probably not, as long as they’re doing quality work. Machines like a degree of certainty.
Today’s guest is Jeff Coyle, co-founder and chief strategy officer at MarketMuse, an AI-driven content planning and strategy platform. He knows how AI is and will affect content marketing by making our jobs easier and our work better. What do content marketers need to know to prepare for the inevitable future?
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Jeff Coyle:
”Focus on the client and focus on our audience, even if they're not clients. How can they ensure that they're getting the most out of their investments in content?”
“The various aspects of artificial intelligence that influence writers’ jobs isn’t going away. It's only going to ramp up. But is it coming for their jobs? Not really.”
“Content already in many businesses has a two-order disconnect to value and revenue. Some people don't have the real value of content. They don't understand the true cost of content. They don't understand how it connects directly to revenue.”
“That's what AI can do. It can figure out those quick wins versus those infrastructure pieces, versus those risk avoidance pieces. It can actually help to define why you're writing.”
“if you go copy those people, you're sorely mistaken. That is one of the biggest pitfalls, and one of the biggest misconceptions of search engine optimization.”
Some marketers have side hustles to learn new skills, explore their passion projects, and make a little extra cash. Are you a marketer struggling to overcome challenges to be successful outside of your day job?
Today’s guest is John Bonini of Databox, a business analytics platform, and his side hustle, Some Good Content, a subscription-based marketing education product. John offers advice on how to find balance and avoid burnout with content marketing.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from John Bonini:
“You really enjoy and/or are passionate about a specific subject and you can’t not talk about it.”
“You get to play founder with none of the risk.”
“Most content advice, most content education, most content training is often too general to be helpful.”
“I just saw this gap between people wanting to get better at content and the content out there not really existing to help them do that.”
“When you start to get lost in those thoughts of, ‘I don’t know if this is viable,’ what you end up doing is, you start defaulting to busy work.”
When you’re in a leadership position, sometimes it’s hard to know who to ask or where to look when you need answers to questions and solutions to problems—especially because others expect you to have all the answers and solutions.
Today’s guest is Simon Berg, CEO at Ceros, an experiential content creation platform that empowers marketers and designers to create engaging, interactive, and immersive content experiences. Simon talks about what to do when forced to use your own critical-thinking and problem-solving skills instead of a paint-by-numbers playbook. Creativity matters!
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Simon Berg:
“There’s a lot of feelings involved. Feelings of the people that you lead, and feelings as the leader.”
“I attempted to lead through, predominantly authenticity, being authentically myself, and then also, trying very hard to make sure that I was at the right time in the right ways leading through vulnerability.”
“Every single person in a position of leadership, or otherwise, is a human being, and human beings are fundamentally flawed.”
“Step forward and fight for what I believe made sense and have the courage to do the difficult thing.”
“You won’t find a chapter that says, ‘how to run a company in a global pandemic with civil unrest, economic crisis, and an insane president. It’s not in the book.”
Data problems are probably lurking somewhere inside of your marketing stack. Don’t freak out, just yet. Most analytics packages and marketing software services that deal with data have some gaps or inaccuracies.
Today’s guest is Dan McGaw, CEO and founder of McGaw.io, a marketing technology and marketing analytics consulting company. Dan talks about how to make better marketing decisions—identify and fix deeper issues to avoid data disasters. He explains everything you need to know to keep your data clean and metrics moving.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Dan McGaw:
“If you have analytics and your analytics have bad data that means your analytics are wrong, which means that you’re naturally going to be making bad decisions.”
“Companies that are typically growing the fastest, are the ones who are less focused on definitive and more focused on how do we get directional data that’s going to tell us which way is growth and let’s start moving and let’s make action.”
“If you take the quality time to do taxonomy right, you see really, really good outcomes. Trying to make sure that taxonomy works across the stack I think is where you get the best outcomes, as well.”
“The best way to audit is really to build good rigor around your analytics, understand how that data flows in, and use the auditing tools to be able to do that.”
How does design happen, and how do designers and marketers collaborate? As a common courtesy, provide details to get more work done better and faster. CoSchedule is consistently committed to quality design and creative output.
Today’s guest is Tim Walker, visual designer at CoSchedule. Tim talks about how he infuses brand with individual style that is distinctly CoSchedule. Discover how to replicate CoSchedule’s processes and philosophies.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Tim Walker:
“Every designer has their own style. A lot of designers can do a lot of things, but I think each designer kind of has their own unique kind of signature. Integrating that into the brand, that’s always a fun little challenge.”
“It’s really important to kind of have those standards set in place and well-defined, and then you can kind of have some fun within those. It was enjoyable to try to meld my own style with the existing guidelines.”
“Everyone’s really great at communicating exactly what they need from design and the purpose of the design, too, and what we’re trying to achieve with it.”
“If you have valuable content to share, why not give it some great clothes to wear?”
“Humans are visual creatures. When we see images, our brains store the details verbally and visually. If you want people to pay attention to your content, and recognize your brand, or buy your product, share your posts, you need to have strong design or you’ll be forgotten and ignored.”
In a single sentence, describe your ideal customer. Where do they hang out online? What are their biggest problems? How often do you talk to them? Don’t rely on assumptions. Consciously focus on your customers by creating content that serves their needs and beats the competition.
Today’s guest is Shondell Varcianna from Varci Media, a content writing company for financial institutions, about how to get to know your audience. She shares effective and easy-to-follow advice to improve audience research without extra time and resources.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Shondell Varcianna:
“If I know of you, but I don’t know you, how can I offer you anything because I don’t really know what you want.”
“Wherever your target audience is, is where you want to be. You’ll have to find out where they are, and then you just need to show up where they are, consistently.”
“Everyone is accessible on social media. Everybody. I connect with strangers every single day on social media.”
“Content that speaks to everyone is content that speaks to no one.”
High-profile data breaches at big-name companies have become an all-too-common pitfall that creates negative press. Marketers need to protect their company and customers by knowing how to prevent a cybersecurity attack or security lapse.
Today’s guest is Gary S. Chan from Alfizo Security Solutions. Gary is a cybersecurity expert and helps organizations make sure software and systems are safe and secure. Avoid being the next victim and consider the cost of inaction.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Gary S. Chan:
“I help businesses improve their sales, meet compliance, and stay safe.”
“Larger clients tend to care about buying from companies with good security.”
“If you don’t configure things properly, a lot of your emails will go to Spam boxes, which means that your recipients don’t read them.”
“You’re going to lose customer data, you’re going to lose intellectual property, you’re going to lose time, you’re going to lose money, and you’re going to lose some of your reputation.”
Are you familiar with the dark mode? About 92% of those with smartphones use dark mode on at least one app. The increased use of dark mode with various email services and clients present challenges. How do email marketers make sure that emails are easy to read in dark mode?
Today’s guest is Melissa Sargeant, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Litmus, a well-known email marketing software company. She explains exactly why dark mode matters for marketers, and what they can do to make sure their emails look their best. Melissa provides insights into why this is important for marketers to understand, test, and optimize.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Melissa Sargeant:
“The reason why a lot of people are viewing things in dark mode—we talk a lot in email marketing about accessibility to your emails—for some folks, it's just easier on their eyes. It’s an easier way for them to read content.”
“We think about email as a channel. It’s truly this one-to-one connection that you have with your subscribers. If they are showing a preference for how they want to view their content, it's a good idea to honor that and respect that and do the best you can to deliver them their content the way they want to read it.”
“If you are using an email optimization platform, you can do all this building and testing across all these devices and ensure end clients that when that email goes out the door, you'll know with certainty that people who are viewing in dark mode are able to view it in dark mode.”
“Efficiency and the email workflow process is super important.”
What does it take to write a great headline? A simple, yet effective tool that makes marketers more confident when writing headlines. Take the guesswork out of improving headlines.
Today’s guest is LaRissa Hendricks from CoSchedule’s product marketing team. She introduces Headline Studio, CoSchedule’s new premium headline testing platform that takes your headline writing to the next level.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from LaRissa Hendricks:
“Writing headlines can feel very vague.”
“How are you even supposed to know what to write for your headline? How are you supposed to know what’s actually going to catch people’s attention? What’s actually going to make them click and read your content? That’s a huge challenge.”
“With over four million headlines, we have a very good idea of what works and what doesn’t.”
“Headline Studio is like a super fun playground for your headlines.”
What's the problem with doing what everybody else is doing? Marketers are expected to come up with something wildly innovative or creative. Dare to be different and get unstuck by presenting interesting or authentic ideas in a meaningful way.
Today’s guest is Mike Poznansky, founder and managing partner at Neato—a full-service marketing agency that helps brands connect with young audiences, including college students and Gen Z. Mike explains how to break out of a rut and do work that reflects you and your brand. What makes you uniquely valuable, instead of someone simply following the leader of the pack?
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes from Mike Poznansky:
“Prototype it, and then get out there and try stuff, and show up. Be a part of that experience or that event, and see how people respond, and talk to people afterwards. Then, refine it. It's an iterative process.”
“Everyone acknowledges in some capacity, the need to build a genuine and meaningful relationship with the segment in order to get them to care about your brand. It's critical for brands to show up in an authentic way.”
“Stay invested, stay involved, continue to refine that approach, continue to learn, continue to listen to your segment, assess the results, and figure out how you can improve and make it better.”
“Fear of failure or fear of sounding stupid or uninformed, those are real creativity killers in businesses and in the agency-client dynamics.”
How do marketers bring customers back to maximize revenue? Loyalty programs build customer devotion and retention by incentivizing repeat business. Buying becomes a habit.
Today’s guest is Matt Baglia, co-founder and CEO of SlickText, an SMS marketing platform. If a loyalty program makes sense for your business, Matt talks about what it takes to make a loyalty program work as a growth lever.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes:
“Research shows that 20 percent of a company’s customers will typically make up about 80 percent of their revenue.” Ben Sailer
“You have a small cohort of your best customers, and it’s really important that we’re paying attention to what they’re doing, what their interests are, what they’re buying, what they’re not buying, how they’re buying, and make sure that we communicate and market to them appropriately.” Matt Baglia
“When we think, loyalty program, we actually think, ‘Register for our loyalty program and earn points towards rewards’.” Matt Baglia
“The value is very, very simple. For us, it serves two purposes. One, we need to get people to come back, and in order to do that, we need to give them a reason to come back.” Matt Baglia
How can marketers retain an engaged audience? Treat content like a carousel by getting people to come back for unique value from you and your brand.
Today’s guest is Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder of Casted—the first and only B2B marketing platform for brand podcasts. Lindsay knows what it takes to build, grow, and retain an audience.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Lindsay Tjepkema:
“Is it a bad thing if people aren’t listening or consuming that content anymore? Are they advancing onto the next step? Then, it’s not a bad thing, as long as you keep filling that funnel.”
“If it is a bad thing, and you’re losing people for the wrong reasons, how can you just go back to the basics? How can you better understand your audience and give them more of what they are looking for?”
“Repurpose your content. You put a lot of effort into it. If it’s good, it’s good, especially if it’s evergreen.”
“An expert is someone who knows a lot about the subject matter that your audience cares about.”
What strategies can marketers learn from nonprofits about building brand advocacy? Successful nonprofits know what it takes to get people to rally behind a belief or cause. Brands that turn their best customers into advocates build brand loyalty and drive sales.
Today’s guest is Spencer Brooks from Brooks Digital, an agency that helps health-focused nonprofits grow a digital presence and turn patients into advocates.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Spencer Brooks:
“It’s this push from passive to active that I think really represents turning a customer into an advocate.”
“Advocates are important because they provide a leverage point. They are doing, a lot of times, free marketing for you.”
“Creating advocates is work, and you have to recognize when that is an appropriate strategy to be using.”
“Nonprofits are really good about using emotional storytelling to turn people into advocates.”
What are the best ways for brands to make a difference during times of crisis? Connect customers with solutions to their problems.
Today’s guest is Richard Lau, founder of Logo and executive director at Water School. Richard discusses how to build a business and brand. Find the right balance between being genuinely helpful and useful while driving sales and revenue.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Richard Lau:
“We use the sun as the main focus. The sun is what disinfects the water, rather than using chlorine or wood.”
“Life is about relationships. It’s not about money.”
“Life is too short to work for a bad boss.”
“There’s no better remedy for self-motivation than for helping someone in need.”
The belief that being empathetic means being emotional is not actually very empathetic. Marketers often misunderstand customers when crafting messaging and marketing content. How can marketers be genuinely empathetic?
Today’s guest is Megan Thudium from MTC - The Content Agency. Megan discusses how to adjust, adapt, and authentically understand the needs of customers from different cultures and countries.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Megan Thudium:
“Empathy marketing is a long-term gain.”
“Empathy is understanding your audience at a level that has a deeper understanding of what they need.”
“You’re going to isolate your audience. They’re going to step away from you. They’re going to disconnect, which is the worst thing that we want in marketing because then we lose customers.”
“Depending on your specific audience, there might be specific needs.”
Consumer behavior is always changing. Even with COVID-19 affecting people’s lives and how businesses operate, it will never be the same. How can businesses better serve customers by staying ahead of changes and trends? Data.
Today’s guest is Jonathan Silver from Affinity Solutions, a data intelligence platform with access to consumer data. Jonathan talks about how businesses need to collect data, know how to interpret that data, and turn it into action to succeed.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Jonathan Silver:
“We have a ton of unique data around people’s purchasing habits.”
“Businesses build deeper relationships with consumers, with their customers and prospects, so that they can grow and retain their market share.”
“(Parallel reality and personalized experiences) where physical environments are changing with these different technologies is going to become a norm.”
“The best predictor of future purchase behavior is what you’ve done in the past.”
Two things are true about marketing—saturation across digital channels makes it difficult to be different and using direct mail is a unique option to reach customers at home where they are spending most of their time these days.
Today’s guest is Nick Runyon from PFL. The software company makes tools that help marketers bridge the gap between digital and direct mail marketing using Tactile Marketing Automation (TMA). Go beyond the send!
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Nick Runyon:
“When I think about direct mail and I think about Tactile Marketing Automation, the difference between those two is that we’ve taken direct mail into really the digital environment.”
“Tactile Marketing Automation is really the orchestration of an overall multichannel customer journey.”
“One of the challenges that marketers are facing now with this increase in digital consumption is really cutting through the clutter and making an impact and gaining a moment of attention from our customers and our prospects.”
“Reasons why direct mail is overall resurging: It’s comfortable, it’s familiar, it also monopolizes my attention whenever direct mail is in my hand.”
Marketers have access to more data than ever before that enables them to offer better customer experiences—if they make use of that data. Don’t struggle to find and apply the right information.
Today’s guest is Michael Loban, Chief Growth Officer at InfoTrust. Also, Michael is the co-author of Crawl, Walk, Run, a new book on advancing marketing analytics maturity. He describes how to level up your analytics progress with consistent practice.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Michael Loban:
“The idea of Crawl, Walk, Run is to demonstrate how organizations tend to progress through certain subject matter.”
“Just like with data, if you know what you are looking for, you will find some help in this book.”
“Change is inevitable, but progress is optional.”
Research shows that 73% of consumers expect brands to personalize and tailor online experiences to meet their needs. It feels weird when websites don’t give people what they want and expect. Personalization matters for your business, even in difficult times.
Today’s guest is Amey Shivapurkar, an experienced optimization SME at Avionos. Amey helps clients create data-driven experiences that deliver business outcomes. He talks about how personalization isn’t always easy, but worth considering for marketers to maximize CRO, create meaningful results, and drive user experiences.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Links:
Quotes by Amey Shivapurkar:
“Customers are really looking for brands to give an experience based off of previous interactions that they’ve done.”
“It’s really about providing the most relevant content at the right time.”
“Bad experiences will lead to bad personalization.”
“Personalization is one of those things where a lot of people...they think it’s a nice-to-have. Personally, I think it’s kind of a must.”