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Actionable Marketing Podcast

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Now displaying: September, 2021
Sep 28, 2021

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:

  • Paid Platforms: Amazon, Facebook make a profit and ad dollars go up in flames
  • Margins for Error: Marketers have more leeway at big businesses hiring experts
  • Isolation vs. Network: Compare performance to know if you’re missing something
  • Self-Doubt: Lack of confidence can corrode team’s ability to be successful
  • eCommerce/Marketing Strategy: Test, iterate, tweak to measure and manage
  • Business Growth Book: Get basics right and scale core values for positive path
  • Brands: How are you different? Break through noise to sell a story, sell a product
  • Quantitative/Qualitative Research: Get to know your customer base via surveys
  • Best Metrics: Prove what marketers are doing is working or not to be profitable

 

Links:

 

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.”

Sep 21, 2021

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:

  • Equity vs. Equality: What’s the difference and distinction between genders?
  • Imbalances: Promote gender equality by empowering women to be equal
  • COVID Impact: Why gender equity in the workplace is a concern for everyone
  • Diversity of Views: Output isn’t as helpful when everyone looks/thinks same way
  • Marketing Role: Customer targeting and company representation, reputation
  • Positive Benefits and Negative Effects: People talk, culture misfits, and churn
  • What can women do to get unstuck? Who do they talk to be hired and promoted?
  • Gender equity from the ground up:
    • Create inclusive hiring practices
    • Simplify job requirements
    • Don’t ask for salary history
    • Candidates should meet diverse interview panel
    • Build enabling human resources department
    • Allow autonomy to be accountable (flexible hours, remote work, etc.)
    • Give recognition, encourage visibility, and advocate for yourself

 

Links:

 

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.”

Sep 14, 2021

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:

  • How to use content intelligence to create better topic clusters
  • Content Intelligence: Intersection between content strategy, business intelligence
  • Marketers should care about topic modeling when building topic clusters
  • Tedious Topic Process: Takes time if marketers don’t start with parent keywords
  • Content Value: Where should marketers prioritize things to get the most value?
  • Budget: Two ways to do things—do them right or do them again
  • Data and Decisions: Go with gut feeling and/or accurate data to make decisions
  • Current Constraints: Does business need more awareness? Sales material?
  • Tools: There’s things they can't do that you want them to do, so create your own
  • Conversion Data: Where it is going to take a minimal amount of effort to get ROI
  • Problems: Avoid wasting time, energy, and budget by creating a bunch of content

 

Links:

 

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.”

Sep 7, 2021

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:

  • Why marketing leaders need to understand the business objectives
  • Gartner: Average buyer over 50% through buying journey before making contact
  • MBA Playbook: Where CMOs go wrong by following a concrete buying cycle
  • Solution: Spend time with CEO to connect with company’s strategy and revenue
  • Attribution: Avoid ROI issues by shifting from cost center to revenue perspective
  • Pitfalls: When marketing leaders focus more on building, not understanding skills
  • No Excuses: Marketing leaders need to be business-aware, business-oriented

 

Links:

 

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.”

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