Marketing SOS

Starting a new business is always a challenge. Starting a business as a new immigrant to the United States whose food products are unfamiliar to the American palate is doubly challenging. Lets see what we can do to help this new business owner out.

When it comes to starting a new company, what should you focus on? Our listener question today comes from someone building a new company that offers a slew of digital marketing services. Their question is based around whether they can also offer clients financial services as well. Can they? Should they? Let's get into it.

In this episode, a newly minted Director of Marketing is doing an overhaul of his new companies visual identity and recreating their website and marketing collateral. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much in the way of a team and needs to outsource. But what should he do? Does he find an agency that can help him or does he look to hire the services of various freelancers?

When it comes to marketing strategy, the Head of Marketing at an organization is usually the one who sets the strategic priorities. But what happens when you disagree with their approach? Or in this case their lack of one. Today's listener question features an engineer who believes her company needs a corporate identity and brand guidelines - something the Head of Marketing disagrees with. Who is right? And what can our engineer do to convince people that this is needed?

Disagreements in a partnership are always a challenge, how you come out of them can really define your business moving forward. In this episode, we have a question from a listener looking for help answering one such partner disagreement - are Facebook and Google marketers just scammers? Well dear listeners, lets dive in and find out!

When it comes to marketing to specific individuals and industries, it really pays to put yourself in their shoes to learn how to speak, and market to them most effectively.

Today we have a question from a listener who wants to know if all marketing teams are as dysfunctional as theirs. This listener works in the legal industry and their Chief Marketing Officer seems to care very little about what they are producing as long as a box gets checked.

So you've been given the green light to get some new interns in your marketing department - now what? What do you give them to do and how do you trust them to take the ball and run with it? Should you delegate freely? Micromanage? What's the best course of action?

On this episode our dear listener questions features a OBGYN who has poured her own savings into a free app for women to get accurate information, answer questions and track their pregnancies without trying to make a dime off of them. So how do you market and app, and more importantly can you do it for free? Let's kick it off in today's episode.

Creating an effective landing page is critical to converting people into paying happy customers. What do you do if you don't have a clear offer and your company wants multiple products and service to be featured in a landing page? It's time to dive in and figure out the bigger problem with your company's strategic vision.

One of the downsides of there being so much free content available on the internet is that it's super easy and hard to track plagiarism. Stealing work, not from coworkers, but from others on the internet and passing it off as your own can make you look great but can also have devastating effects on your reputation and career. It can also negatively impact your company and its search engine rankings. So what do you do when you notice a coworker passing off other's work as their own?

Times are extremely challenging for small business owners who are facing a dramatic change in the way they do business and how their customers interact with them. It is an unprecedented challenge that no one could prepare for. With the future being so uncertain, this is a critical time to pivot or change the way you do business in order to survive the challenges ahead.

The world of SEO advice is filled with videos and forms full of potential strategies to one up your competition. When you dive into this world, you'll find 'white hat' strategies, often considered good or friendly to search engines and 'black hat' strategies that are often riskier and frowned upon by search engines.. When you are looking for an edge, is it worth taking the risk and trying one of the 'black hat' techniques in order to get ahead?

There are lots of ways to fund a new project or venture. You can invest your own cash to bootstrap it, take on a debt loan from a bank, beg and borrow for funds from family and friends or raise capital through outside investment. One of the less sexy ways that is usually reserved for academics is by applying for grants. Grants are setup to fund certain types of projects. While there are lots of hoops to jump through there aren't as many strings attached to them (in most cases). One of those hoops is explaining how you plan to connect with customers and market your product, which is where today's episode comes in.

Despite working in the marketing field, the terms in each industry can be vastly different. This episode a marketer from the world of big established brands dips their toe into the start up world and is confused by the term Product Market Fit and believes the entrepreneurial process behind it may be inefficient.

If you find yourself in the position of having developed a following or an audience on a platform, inevitably your thoughts will eventually turn to ways you can make some additional income for yourself. On this episode we explore how one niche dental Instagram page can do just that.

Sometimes in life we find ourselves in positions we don't want to be in. When your down on your luck, between jobs, or stuck in a job you dislike, it can be especially mentally taxing, you feel bad about yourself and it becomes easy to let things slide. This episode might just give you a little motivation to stay the course and keep working toward your dreams.

It's strange times these days with the world grinding to a halt and economies everywhere on the verge of collapsing. Small business owners that dealt directly with the public are bearing most of the burden. To be quite honest,  many businesses that existed last month, won't be around after this. So what can they do? They need to pivot their business rapidly, if they can, to weather this storm.

It is never an enviable place to be, when you have a product you believe in but no cash to help you promote it. It does take money to make money but there are methods where you can burn your time or use alternative routes to make cash. Today's question deals with one such scenario in the Amazon book industry and we explore a couple ways to make the sale with $0.

Dealing with people is tough, especially when you have stakeholders with conflicting opinions. How do you best get everyone thinking the same way and more importantly thinking your way? Tune in to find out.

These are uncharted waters for sure, and everyone is looking to figure out the path forward. When it comes to social media, its a difficult line to toe between focusing too much on the crisis and ignoring it completely and looking tone deaf to you audience.

When you've built an asset like a Facebook page but haven't monetized it, how do you know the value? On this episode a listener gets an offer to sell a Facebook page but is wondering whether that page they built can be milked for more.

If you don't use it you lose it right? On today's show we help a would-be-marketer prioritize what he should be focusing on after an extended break from the world of marketing. When joining a new company, how do you get up to speed and relearn marketing? Lets dive in and find out.

The pace of change over the last 20 years in business and marketing as been substantial. Many businesses have been left crippled in the dust unable to keep up with the times. Occasionally we happen across some businesses that seem to still be surviving despite not using the modern best practices.  On today's show a listener asks if a website is really required for their business.

While timely, trying to take advantage of a situation may be in poor taste. As a marketer and or a business owner, where do you draw the line on capitalizing on human suffering? If you were a marketer at the Corona Beer company, what would you do to take advantage of this unprecedented situation?

Sometimes opportunities come along that are conflicting. On one hand they could be lucrative but on the other, something just seems a bit off. Is this company or person trying to pull a fast one on you or are they just terrible at communicating?

Depending on how your marketing team is structured and where it gets it projects and directions from, all marketing teams need to triage campaigns and practice good project management. It is too easy for the loudest person to get your attention, meanwhile you have missed deadlines on key projects while juggling tasks and requests coming in through the phone, email, post it notes, drop ins, etc. Get some tips on the best way to manage the chaos that is the world of Marketing.

We all want to push the easy button and find that magic solution to make use millions of dollars. While I'm sure that button does exist for some people, for the majority of us it isn't so simple. On today's episode one listener is looking for the best channel to focus on in order to grow sales of their privacy and security product. Let's dive in!

On the surface, applying for a job is easy - we've all probably done it. But what advice would you have for someone new to the workforce who has never applied for a job before?

If you don't have expertise in a subject, how do you incorporate it into your business? Hire a consultant or agency to help you of course. Without any knowledge of the subject matter, how would you know whether your new partner is treating you right?

On this episode we hear from a listener struggling to get their message to professional chefs as they believe they are too hard to target. How can we use digital marketing to get in front of this coveted audiences without overlapping to foodies?

On this episode we explore a question from a listener whose client sells B2B products in the form of certifications than can generate $5-$7k annually per certification!

The world of marketing is vast with so many specializations and new innovating techniques seeming to develop every day. So to a newbie to the marketing space, there is an overwhelming amount of information to digest and expertise to be gained. When your in a job with little oversight and direction, how do you best spend your time? Lets dive in.

When you’re marketing in a wholesale business it can be tough to align your marketing and business priorities. While you get sales numbers from your retailers, it’s tough to directly tie your efforts to financial results. You need to adjust your metrics in order prove your digital marketing strategies are moving the needle even if there is no direct through line to sales.

When starting a new business or pivoting to marketing in different ways, it can be very daunting looking at all the potential tactics and strategies you need to take. In this episode we explore how to tackle this overwhelming position and make some forward momentum.

How do you market a product or service when modern methods aren't accessible? Its time to kick it a bit old school and rely on print and face to face interactions.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything. While you can have the best marketing strategies and sales funnels, if your team behind them aren't taken care of you might just be building a house of cards, or at least a high turnover rate. In this episode, I speak with Darren Chait co-founder and COO of Hugo and one of the authors of 10X Culture. We explore how focusing on culture can be one of the key drivers to building a high performing team for years to come. 

Sometimes we carry faulty biases and assumptions with us that can impact how we view situations. On this episode, one private investigator is operating with a false premise that's impacting his marketing strategy.

This is episode 60! Thanks to everyone for listening and helping us out! In this episode we take a question from a restaurateur looking to expand into vegan options but their existing customers are pushing back or going elsewhere. Luckily there is an easy solution.

The second episode of 2020 sees us taking a question on marketing a subscription box business as well as a tease of new things to come in 2020.

Life is short and full of unpredictable paths. One of those paths may put you in front of someone frustrating who also happens to pay you, which is never a good combination. On this episode we hear from someone who needs help not blowing up in front of their clients.

It's easy to get too focused on the benefits and features of our product or service that we forget about who we are selling to. Learning about and developing strategies to position your product and market to customers is key to success.

When entering new markets or trying to capture new sources of revenue, your company will often have to grow in new ways. The saying goes "What got you here, won't get you there." Well this is true in today's episode that features one company looking to expand from being an unknown player working with retailers to trying to capture consumers directly.

Getting started in marketing can be a bit daunting, especially when you haven't ever worked in the industry before. New business owners and entrepreneurs can often get stuck in analysis paralysis, being overwhelmed with which marketing tactics and channels to choose and how much they have to learn about them. In the end, its all about keeping it simple and figuring out whats going to work for you.

Sometimes promotions do just happen but do you really want to leave your destiny in someone else's hands? Don't you want to do everything possible to stack the deck in your favour? In this episode we explore how to best position yourself for future advancement. 

There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the potential for your team or business and not being able to reach it due to bureaucracy and inefficient processes. In this episode we examine how one internal marketing team can transition from chaos to ordered marketing superiority.  

Every business needs a strategy to reach and capture new customers and build relationships. In this episode we explore how a workspace design studio catering to start up companies can reinvent the way it captures new customers.

Switching careers can be a daunting task. There are so many unknowns and its easy for imposter syndrome to take hold. In today's episode I help a listener by giving them actionable advice to achieve their goal of switching into content marketing. Lets go!

There seems be a hurdle that a specific degree or background is required to perform certain tasks. Not True! In this episode we hear from someone who is stuck and needs help learning more about their customers. 

One of the single best ways to generate leads and new business is by demonstrating your authority and expertise in a particular niche. In this episode we hear from a listener looking for ideas on generating new business for their auto broker client. The answer? Build their authority.

Most of the time marketing involves making sales numbers, and hitting quarterly targets to keep shareholders happy and everyone employed. Occasionally there are roles that have more of an altruistic outcome and can have an huge impact on people's lives.