AD4 - For Startup Marketers & Aspiring Marketers

On this episode, I’m joined by Brendan Hufford, Director of SEO at Directive. Brendan’s SEO agency works with massive brands like Allstate and rapidly growing B2B SaaS Startup companies like Sumo Logic. Brendan is a veritable SEO and Content Marketing expert. He’s grown monthly site visitors from 56,000 to 193,000 in just 3 months, regularly doubles website traffic for SaaS clients, and is an expert at driving MQLS which he increased for an enterprise software client by +2750%. Brendan and I talk in depth about content and SEO strategies and challenges for early stage B2B SaaS Startups selling to SMB, mid market, and enterprise. The first few minutes I learn about Brendans fun background, so if you want to skip that forward to about 5 minutes in.

After working with almost 20 companies, 6 of which where business of my own that failed or ran out of steam I've started to see 3 common mistakes that damned all of them. I cover at a high level what these mistakes are and introduce season 2 of AD4 B2B SaaS Startup Marketing

On this episode of AD4, I'm joined by Roger Dooley, Forbes Brainy Marketing CMO Council, author, marketing pro and international keynote speaker who's used Neuromarketing principles to create content that's built huge website audiences. His personal record is 3 million unique visitors/month.  He's also the author of the 2 books Friction and Brainfluence, the host of the Brainfluence podcast which has featured Ryan Holiday, Guy Kawasaki, and nobel prize winner Al Roth. If that wasn't enough to convince you to hear him out he's also got decades of experience leading digital marketing organizations and currently runs his own Neuromarketing Consultancy. 

B2B SaaS startups need to change how they manage and iterate on their websites.

You'll make these mistakes as a founder. Here's a better way to go to market early on.

In this episode I interview Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, a highly engaging daily email newsletter that grew to 1.5 million subscribers in just 3 years.

Thinking about becoming a B2B startup marketer? Listen to this!

In your journey in working at startups you may have to kiss a few culture frogs before you find a place where you really fit into the culture. When you do recognize it and make the most of it.

Should you get an MBA? Why did I decide to get one? What goes into the process for applying for one? I cover that in this episode of AD4

You need to be able to produce video marketing content at scale to succeed.

Here's what many B2B startup marketing teams get wrong about their approach to Marketing campaigns and here's how you can solve it with lean startup principles. If it works for product development you can bet it works for marketing too!

Ever wanted to start a podcast? Listen to my conversation with Ojus my brother and engineer at capital one who wants to start a financial technology podcast.

A/B testing is one of the best ways for you to unlock growth, understand your audience, and generate conversions. In fact it's something that's been around for over 60 years and is used by the fastest growing startups.

Do you know all 19 Traction channels? Are you falling prey to the if we build it they will come fallacy?

Social Media isn't just for B2C startup companies anymore. It's a powerful channel for B2B as well the trouble is, most companies aren't using it correctly.

This is what causes most B2B Startups to fail at social media marketing. Lead generation is not the right goal. Listen to this episode to find what is.

You need to be sophisticated in your approach to social media marketing in order to be competitive in the crowded B2B digital space.

You don't need a new set of social media metrics to measure this marketing strategy. Instead just use standard business metrics to measure the impact of social media marketing.

Find out why most B2B Startup Execa don't care at all about your social media marketing efforts.

How Intuit used the soljam and painstorm to leverage crowdsourcing and userresearch to create a culture of innovation that scales.

One day the CEO of Intuit realized that as much as he wanted to be - he wasn't Steve Jobs - and that in order to succeed, Intuit needed to change culturally to become a design driven organization. One concept that helped Intuit do that was creating innovation catalysts.

Interesting results from a study from the 1950s on subliminal messaging

If you can tie your content marketing to these 5 Core Human Drives you'll be able to create highly engaging content and create growth for your startup company.

The Coronavirus crisis can make you feel like you have no control over whats happening but that isn't true. You can make the decision to hold your self to a higher standard and unlock your ability to make a positive impact on everyone around you.

Here's a way to perform an analysis of your new B2B SaaS Product idea or even to analyze how your existing product might perform in a new market. Follow this 10 step model and you'll be able to assign a numeric value to the attractiveness of your idea.

What is quantified self?

If your a marketing manager at an early stage startup right now listen to this episode

The do's and dont's for content Marketing in during COVID19

5 areas to focus on to help you be more happy healthy and productive when working remote.

Worried you might lost your job during coronavirus? Here's what to do.

Hey, if you're thinking about getting your MBA like I am you know it's a stressful process. I recorded this after I spoke with my uncle Sanjib Mama yo get his perspective on the value of an MBA, what the right way to approach the idea of getting one is, and whether timing your MBA is important.

When others are greedy be fearful and when others are fearful be greedy. What can Marketers learn from the Oracle of Omaha?

If marketing isn't aligned with product, sales, and CD you can make some bad judgment calls with your go to market strategy.

Here's what's wrong about most outbound sales sequences and how to write better ones.

Just start one it's been a very positive experience for me so far.

There are lots of different things you can do in the world.

Learnings from completing my first 10 podcast episodes.

3 steps to be more creative in your marketing and in general

What does GV mean by this?

Pursuing a career marketing in the trenches in early stage startups means coming face to face with failure more often than many people in the business world. You can go through years of failure, 5 even 10 failed companies before you join a venture that is successful. When the success comes it'll come quickly suddenly and without warning. Keep your chin up until then & a chip on your shoulder!

In this episode I talk about trying to understand Gary Vs sayings around speaking your truth, loving the process, and document don't create. I also share some ideas around the importance of role models and rivals in the field of content marketing and why it's important to measure yourself against both.

In this episode I talk about how I started to learn through first hand experience how powerful giving value to others can be for marketing both for the way it makes you feel as a human being as well as for the chance it gives you as a marketer to make a positive impact on the world beyond growing a company or building a brand.

I had just finished watched 1917 by Sam Mendez and was blown away by the movie.

This is your brain on social media. Learn more about the effect social media has in dopamine and what it could be doing to your brain and how it could be getting in your way.

Sometimes we get caught in the work to become a better marketer to the point that we start to ignore the things that we do for fun. The truth is doing the things you enjoy will actually help you work harder at your career. I've been on both sides of this and here's a few things I've learned

Are you struggling with patience and being consistent with creating content?listen to this episode. In it I cover my struggles with patience, consistent content creation, and 4 tips for beating the Resistance and empowering the Muse. (I'll explain what those are in the episode as well) I also cover the neurological components of creating new skills and habits and how to transform your brain into a consistent content creating machine.

Go out and fail at more things. In this episode I talk about Homeshare a 1 person startup company (talk about early!) That I worked at briefly early in my journey. I go over the business what went wrong, what went right, share a Airbnb Craigslist growth hack I used involving mechanical turk, discuss what I might have done differently, and share lessons I learned from the experience.

If you've struggled with taking action on a creative idea like making a podcast or starting a business...anything listen to this episode! The only way forward is through but there are some obstacles that will get in your way. I know because they get in my way! Here's how I am working on overcoming them.

I tried to record a podcast episode today about millennials and the passion hypothesis and just failed at it. Even when you're struggling the important thing is to just do the work. Make the piece and put it out. It's just like when you have off days at the gym - finish the workout at 50% and get the reps in. Do the work

There's no other way to grow your brand or grow your business in 2020 than by putting out content. Its a skill many marketers wish they could master that some think they have mastered and most have not. The sheer volume and range of types of content a modern marketer needs to be able to produce is astounding. If you are getting your reps in your falling behind.

Have you ever felt bad about the amount of time you spend on Netflix, social media, or video games? Listen to this episode! Inside: how to play video games in an intentional manner, the dangers of social media, digital minimalism by Cal Newport, my experiments with digital minimalism, why deep focus is needed for the future of work in a world with AI. How social media companies are out to get you