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Welcome to the latest PRmoment podcast. Today we're chatting about some new research that looks at the impact of earned media on ChatGPT's content.On the show to talk about this is Darryl Sparey, the MD and Co-Founder of Hard Numbers, a PRmoment award winning communications consultancy. Hard Numbers is predominantly an B2B PR firm, working with clients like BT Group and Nebius AI, but also with consumer clients like PDD, Roadchef. It has around 20 staff, and a fee incoming approaching £2m.Unlike many agency founders, Darryl spent much of his career in business development. After ten years running sales and marketing for Precise (now Onclusive), he moved into digital marketing, running the London office of a Search Engine Marketing agency. He then moved into PR as a board director of Hotwire. Thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.Here's a summary of what Darryl and Ben Smith spoke about:2 mins Darryl talk to us about the approach you took for Coverage to Capital 4 in terms of the methodology?4 mins What content sources does ChatGPT use?“Editorial content drives 61% of ChatGPT's content.”5 mins What was the impact of earned media overall? And by the criteria you set, so: quality, trust, innovation and value?8 mins Owned media was the second biggest source of data for ChatGPT.11 mins What were the other most used sources of information about a company?:Earned MediaOwned mediaCustomer review sites and ratings,Industry awards and lists12 mins What sources of media does ChatGPT not use?14 mins What are the implications for this report for PR?15 mins What are the implications of this report for publishers and journalism?16 mins The irony of LLMs being built on journalistic content from a publishing business model that they might destroy.20 mins What are LLMs for PR professionals? Another channel? Or more than that?
In this week's interview, Derek Champagne talks with Shark Tank veteran Steven Sashen. Steven talks with Derek about building an international business, stepping in the Shark Tank, and even his days of stand up comedy.Steven is the developer and CEO of Xero Shoes • Your Original Barefootware – www.XeroShoes.com. Steven and his wife, Lena Phoenix, started the “Barefoot… PLUS!” sandal business in late 2009; he had returned to sprinting 2 years earlier, at age 45, and experienced almost continuous injuries. An experiment with running barefoot cured the injuries and improved his times. Knowing about the Tarahumara indians in Mexico, who run hundreds of miles in sandals made of tire scraps lashed to their feet, Steven created a high-tech upgrade of that product and launched it online.With nothing but Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing, Xero Shoes has become the best-selling running sandal in the world.Steven's commitment is to making footwear that lets customers connect with the ground and “Feel The World,” fits perfectly, express wearer's personalities, outlasts any other footwear, and uses fewer resources than any other footwear. He's also committed to discovering and teaching the best techniques for teaching natural movement — for walking, hiking, and running.Prior to jumping into the sandal business, Steven was an internationally-known Internet marketing expert, Search Engine and Social Media marketing consultant, and software designer. He also co-hosted the Emmy award winning, internationally syndicated TV show, Disk Doctors.Steven is also a Masters All-American sprinter, one of the fastest 50+ year olds in the United States.Learn more at www.xeroshoes.com
The digital marketing world has gone through a lot of changes in the past decade, but search engine optimization (SEO) remains as relevant as ever. Jesse Ringer is the founder of Method and Metric search engine marketing agency. For over 10 years, he has helped business owners and marketing teams build winning SEO strategies for their organizations that drive website traffic and generate revenue. Jesse's passion for progression, creativity backed by data, and the democratization of tech have led him to build an agency focused on connecting data and people in an ethical and forward-thinking way. He is a creative problem solver, marketer, and entrepreneur, known for building high-performing teams and delivering results. The Best Type of Content to Create in 2025 As AI becomes more commonly used in content writing, Jesse encourages his clients not to underestimate the value of human connection. Any business can pump out 50 articles per month using AI, but all those articles will sound identical. What makes great content is your brand's unique voice, perspective, and ideas. On a related note, don't create content just for the sake of ranking on Google. Write for lead generation, not just traffic. What type of content will actually drive revenue in your business? In most cases, this will mean going beyond how-to educational content. What questions do your clients commonly ask you? Get clear on your target audience and their pain points, then create content that demonstrates your expertise in solving those problems. The Website Optimization Process To optimize your website, start by auditing your current system: what technology and plug-ins are you using? How is the website content organized? What keywords are you targeting and which are you actually ranking for? Then decide what your priorities are moving forward. At this stage, Jesse usually builds out a list of recommendations for his clients: including updates to their keyword strategy, site architecture, website pages, blog content, as well as the technical implementation. The next step is a roadmap for implementation. Depending on the changes that need to be made, it could take up to six months. Most clients start to see results within the first few months, with exponential growth around the six-month mark. Enjoy this episode with Jesse Ringer… Soundbytes 14:13-14:40 “We could pump out 50 articles a month now, right? Okay, but they're gonna sound like all the other ones that are being pumped out right now. How do you continue to make this unique to your brand and resonate with your audience? If they're just producing content for the sake of ranking, great, but that's not like that's not going to be a driving force of their business.” 20:59-21:17 “Find the thing that you do really well. And how do you put that into a guide to help educate your potential customers? When smarter customers see how helpful you are and how good you are at what you do, they'll be more inclined to work with you down the road.” 27:10-27:36 “If you're running paid ads or social ads, SEO is a way to lower customer acquisition costs. SEO is always on. Organic search is always on. If you decide to stop working, it will continue to help bring traffic in for quite some time after you pull the plug on that. Whereas ads, you turn it off, you don't see any more traffic from those ads.” Quotes “I always wanted to have my own business. I just had no idea how I was going to get there.” “Clicks are not going to make you more money.” “Clicks are part of it. But if those clicks don't convert, it's wasted.” “You could rank number one for 1000 keywords, but if nobody searches for them, what good does it do?” “SEO helps to inform the whole marketing strategy. It informs your website strategy and it serves a lot of other marketing channels.” “AI is pulling from all of the internet, so you are just going to get the average of all of the internet. And I really hope you don't think your business is average.” Links mentioned in this episode: From Our Guest Website: https://methodandmetric.com Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesseringer/ Connect with brandiD Download our free guide to learn 16 crucial website updates that attract more leads and convert visitors into clients: https://thebrandid.com/website-tweaks/ Ready to elevate your digital presence with a powerful brand or website? Contact us here: https://thebrandid.com/contact-form/
Marketing Expedition Podcast with Rhea Allen, Peppershock Media
Chris Peer brings over 20 years of experience in B2B digital marketing strategy, lead generation, and marketing consultancy for manufacturing firms. An author and entrepreneur, Chris is the founder and CEO of G8P and SyncShow. Having witnessed the pain and frustration caused by ineffective marketing, Chris and his team developed the Great 8 Pillars to transform the marketing department from a corporate expense into a profit center. He has helped hundreds of companies scale through world-class marketing best practices.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) Strategies for Non-Profit Organizations In this episode, my guest is Sean Littman, a Search Engine Marketing and Google Ads expert who focuses on helping non-profit organizations grow. Sean Littman is the founder of GiveSuite and the host of the podcast, “Profiting with Non Profits.” While he shies away from bombastic approbations like “guru” and “expert”, don't let his humility fool you. Non-profit organizations from around the world consult him about marketing strategies for fundraising. In this conversation, just in time for Thanksgiving and #GivingTuesday, Sean Littman generously shared insights from his vast experience managing successful, ROI-positive ad campaigns on Google and other search engine platforms for small and medium-sized non-profits. Topics Covered: How Non-Profits can put their best foot forward The Psychology Behind Why People Give to Some Organizations and Not Others Non-profit Growth Strategies and Taking Advantage of Google Grants CRMs and all-in-one marketing solutions for managing your fundraising and donor base And much, much more! Connect with Sean Littman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-littman-catch22nonprofit/ Learn more about GiveSuite: https://givesuite.com/ Check out the Profiting with Non-Profits Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHJPx7qg79CYEe6hV7qV6Q3Yu5cYMRimF Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/q6vmSsIV8xc
بازاریابی موتور جستجو در کنار بازاریابی محتوا دو ابزار اصلی ما توی دیجیتال مارکتینگ هستن. با بازاریابی موتور جستجو یا SEM میتونیم توی گوگل به نوعی سرمایه گذاری کنیم و همیشه مخاطب جدید و هدفمند جذب کسب و کارمون کنیم. توی این قسمت میخوام درمورد SEM، SEO و PPC صحبت کنم. اصطلاحاتی که همگی به بازاریابی موتور جستجو اشاره دارن. لینک یوتوب فوربوhttps://youtube.com/@furbodm لینک حمایت مالی | https://furbodm.com/plus/فوربو در اینستاگرام (@furbodm)پادکست فوربو در توییتر (@FurboPodcast)سایت فوربو در توییتر (@Furbodm) برای خوندن مقالات حوزهی دیجیتال مارکتینگ به سایت فوربو سر بزنیدhttps://furbodm.com/صفحه اختصاصی پادکست فوربو در سایتhttps://furbodm.com/podcast/ بلاگ شخصی من – رضا توکلیRezaTavakoli.comاینستاگرام (@r.t98)توییتر (@RezaTavakoli98) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Vlad Mkrtumyan, Co-Founder of Logic Inbound is a serial entrepreneur, search engine marketing evangelist and a passionate networker Go to www.thejasoncavnessexperience.com for the full episode and other episodes of The Jason Cavness Experience on your favorite platforms. Sponsor CavnessHR delivers HR companies with 49 or fewer people with our HR platform and by providing you access to your own HRBP. www.CavnessHR.com Partners Message your customers - https://www.tawk.to/?pid=byo1znq Payroll - https://offers.everee.com/cavness-hr Sales CRM for small business - https://refer.close.com/100cqlbfcgg5 Health Insurance and Benefits - https://www.peoplekeep.com/refer Vlad's Bio Vlad Mkrtumyan, Co-Founder of Logic Inbound is a serial entrepreneur, search engine marketing evangelist and a passionate networker, responsible for running five meetups including the Seattle Marketing and Demand Leaders Meetup – the largest marketing meetup in Seattle. Each company that Vlad has started has been bigger and more ambitious, and Logic Inbound is his biggest, most ambitious venture to date hitting the 7 figure mark. The Website Development and SEO business is highly competitive, but running a team of 13 talented individuals, Vlad has propelled Logic Inbound into a fast growing agency in Seattle. Vlad has landed coverage on online media outlets such as TechCrunch, Blind Entrepreneur Podcast and the Business Marketing Engine Podcast. He has also been featured on Shopify, Geekwire and has appeared on the 1590 AM Lifestyle Business Owner radio show, among many others. Adding to his list of distinctions, In 2019 at 28 Vlad was recognized and on the Cover of 425 "30 Under 30" Award, a testament to his entrepreneurial excellence. In 2022 Vlad became an alumni of the prestigious Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. His growing legacy, fueled by his passion for advanced business solutions and his dedication to helping businesses, continues to make an indelible mark in the digital marketing industry. In 2023, he spoke at the Pure Maintenance annual convention (https://youtu.be/H-w9Ee9WUlc) and will be speaking at the 2024 "The Experience" event, the top conference for the Restoration industry. We talked about the following and other items Entrepreneurship, self-care, and sleep habits. Managing sleep deprivation in military and business settings. Immigration, family, and personal growth. Political tensions and resource exchange in the Middle East. Business culture and travel experiences in various countries. Entrepreneurship, leadership, and work ethic. Business strategies, networking, and hiring. Networking philosophy and strategies for successful relationships. Networking, corruption, and motivation. Entrepreneurship, mentorship, and networking. Luck and success in entrepreneurship. Why successful people don't help others as much. Building a community and sales funnel for a restoration business. Setting goals and quit markers for business growth. Digital marketing strategies for small businesses. Choosing and firing clients in digital marketing. Pricing strategies for businesses. Networking, luck, and being kind to others. Networking and building relationships for long-term success. Networking, follow-up, and Goldman Sachs program. Entrepreneurship, business growth, and environment. AI's impact on marketing and skills development. Prioritization, team management, and communication in business. Remote work, hiring, and marketing. Business growth strategies and community building in Seattle. Entrepreneurship, culture, and success in Seattle. Entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and personal goals. Parenting and entrepreneurship with personal anecdotes. Parenting, grandparents, and work-life balance. Selling a marketing agency, potential buyers, and future plans. Finding success and admiring role models. Politics, AI, and business growth. Personal development habits and meditation techniques. Health, wealth, relationships, and habits for success. Mentoring, mentees, and sharing knowledge. Personal growth, business, and parenting with insights from a successful entrepreneur. Social media marketing strategies for businesses. Personal branding, networking, and scaling a business. Vlad's Social Media Vlad's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-mkrtumyan/ Vlad's X: https://twitter.com/vladgives Vlad's email: vlad@logicinbound.com - Be sure to tell him you found him on the jason cavness experience Company Website: https://www.logicinbound.com/ Vlad's Advice I would just do what I said in the beginning. Which is, whatever you want to do. You can have some very useful resources. You can use the techniques I talked about in this podcast episode to create a mastermind group around what you're doing. You can read a couple books on the topic, you can create a list of all your options. Get your peers involved to give you feedback, and that'll give you leverage to get whatever the hell you need done. So that's what I'd recommend people do for their personal or business life or whatever they need.
Welcome to Dealer Talk, where we delve into the ever-evolving landscape of search engine marketing (SEM). For years, SEM has stood as a stalwart method to capture consumer intent, defining our ability to seize consumers' interest and amplify visibility on search engine result pages. SEM operates on a pay-to-play basis, unlike the gradual ascent of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which strategically aims for higher organic rankings over time. Think of SEO as the marathon, diligently laying the groundwork for future visibility and credibility, while SEM represents the sprint designed for immediate visibility and results. Understanding this distinction is vital for our clients. SEO sets the stage for long-term success, while SEM provides the necessary boost for instant visibility. As consumers embark on their purchasing journey or seek vehicle service options, platforms like Google, Bing, and Yahoo become pivotal in their decision-making process. For trusted partnerships to enhance your dealership's success, explore our extensive experience and exclusive volume discounts by visiting our website. Click the link below to learn more: Connect with me directly: ✍️- SEM Article: https://dealertalk.io/search-engine-marketing-is-it-dead-or-evolving/
In this week’s In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris discuss the impact of services like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot on traditional SEO and search. What will be the generative AI impact on search engine optimization? Tune in to find out, and what steps you should take to prepare for the future. Watch the [...]Read More... from In-Ear Insights: Generative AI Impact on Search Engine Marketing
00:00 Intro00:32 Today's Special Guest01:46 Sweatshirt Models03:08 Today's "Big Dreamer" Topic05:46 The 5 Major Changes to SEM06:46 AI Has Complicated the Game16:29 Google is Making Things More Expensive just because26:12 Conversion Tracking is Getting More Complex34:24 Match Types are a Disaster40:19 Branding is Your Best Bet48:01 Do You Have an SEM Question and Want a Free Hoodie?48:39 Outro48:55 But Wait..... Christmas MusicHost: Brandon WelchCo-Host: Ryan BakerExecutive Producer: Carter BreauxAudio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera GuyOur Website: https://frankandmaven.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frankandmavenmarketing/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@frankandmavenTwitter: https://twitter.com/frankandmavenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frank-and-maven/Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a
In this week's interview, Derek Champagne talks with Shark Tank veteran Steven Sashen. Steven talks with Derek about building an international business, stepping in the Shark Tank, and even his days of stand up comedy.Steven is the developer and CEO of Xero Shoes • Your Original Barefootware – www.XeroShoes.com. Steven and his wife, Lena Phoenix, started the “Barefoot… PLUS!” sandal business in late 2009; he had returned to sprinting 2 years earlier, at age 45, and experienced almost continuous injuries. An experiment with running barefoot cured the injuries and improved his times. Knowing about the Tarahumara indians in Mexico, who run hundreds of miles in sandals made of tire scraps lashed to their feet, Steven created a high-tech upgrade of that product and launched it online.With nothing but Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing, Xero Shoes has become the best-selling running sandal in the world.Steven's commitment is to making footwear that lets customers connect with the ground and “Feel The World,” fits perfectly, express wearer's personalities, outlasts any other footwear, and uses fewer resources than any other footwear. He's also committed to discovering and teaching the best techniques for teaching natural movement — for walking, hiking, and running.Prior to jumping into the sandal business, Steven was an internationally-known Internet marketing expert, Search Engine and Social Media marketing consultant, and software designer. He also co-hosted the Emmy award winning, internationally syndicated TV show, Disk Doctors.Steven is also a Masters All-American sprinter, one of the fastest 50+ year olds in the United States.Learn more at www.xeroshoes.com
If you're feeling overwhelmed by SEO, this episode of Marketing Smarts is for you. Host George B. Thomas leads a discussion with Kyle Roof about what really matters in SEO, what doesn't, and where to start.
What does it take to generate a six-figure ROI on a marketing event to engage with new customers and wow them with your brand right out the gate? Today Etan Polinger is providing us with two specific case studies on how he got a 6-figure return on an event for his clients – and how you can replicate his results.How much are you willing to invest to acquire a client properly? Does spending $5K to get 170 people at your event, sharing their photos, and engaging with your brand seem like a lot? Not really, especially when the sales you generate from the event are over $100K – and that's not even mentioning the leads that come from it!Solid marketing principles are on offer in this episode of DigitalMarketer which reminds us of the importance of the human experience when getting a potential new customer to buy into your brand. Ask yourself: Why should someone care and come to your event? And: How do you turn what the client expects into a 'wow'!From event touchstones to the email marketing buildup, and from Etan's hands-on approach of making the event look professional on the day, this episode has it all. There are practical and philosophical lessons to be gleaned for digital marketers out there as the world returns to live events in a more prosperous, post-pandemic climate. Perhaps it's time for you to revisit the power of a well-marketed live event tailored to meet your business needs. Please join us to find out more.Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is a member of The DigitalMarketer faculty and you can find more of his insightful content on our website.Key Takeaways:01:57 Unpacking the evolution of Etan's sales flow idea04:28 Creating early anticipation via email (how to hype your event)07:43 Understanding the marketing steps and ideas leading up to the event13:25 What did the whole process cost?16:17 Why should people care about your offer and come to your event?18:19 What is your way to sell? How do you get clients to buy at the event?20:04 What happens when your leads and traffic run out? 22:43 Appreciating an event experience as a way to connect with your client24:56 What is the behavioral flow for someone at your event? Guiding someone to buyConnect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerWebsite - https://prosperousmedia.us/Be sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketer/This Month's Sponsors:Conversion Fanatics - Conversion Rate Optimization AgencyGet 50% Off Monthly Blog Writing Service - BKA Content More...
What does it take to generate a six-figure ROI on a marketing event to engage with new customers and wow them with your brand right out the gate? Today Etan Polinger is providing us with two specific case studies on how he got a 6-figure return on an event for his clients – and how you can replicate his results.How much are you willing to invest to acquire a client properly? Does spending $5K to get 170 people at your event, sharing their photos, and engaging with your brand seem like a lot? Not really, especially when the sales you generate from the event are over $100K – and that's not even mentioning the leads that come from it!Solid marketing principles are on offer in this episode of DigitalMarketer which reminds us of the importance of the human experience when getting a potential new customer to buy into your brand. Ask yourself: Why should someone care and come to your event? And: How do you turn what the client expects into a 'wow'!From event touchstones to the email marketing buildup, and from Etan's hands-on approach of making the event look professional on the day, this episode has it all. There are practical and philosophical lessons to be gleaned for digital marketers out there as the world returns to live events in a more prosperous, post-pandemic climate. Perhaps it's time for you to revisit the power of a well-marketed live event tailored to meet your business needs. Please join us to find out more.Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is a member of The DigitalMarketer faculty and you can find more of his insightful content on our website.Key Takeaways:01:57 Unpacking the evolution of Etan's sales flow idea04:28 Creating early anticipation via email (how to hype your event)07:43 Understanding the marketing steps and ideas leading up to the event13:25 What did the whole process cost?16:17 Why should people care about your offer and come to your event?18:19 What is your way to sell? How do you get clients to buy at the event?20:04 What happens when your leads and traffic run out? 22:43 Appreciating an event experience as a way to connect with your client24:56 What is the behavioral flow for someone at your event? Guiding someone to buyConnect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerWebsite - https://prosperousmedia.us/Be sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketer/This Month's Sponsors:Conversion Fanatics - Conversion Rate Optimization AgencyGet 50% Off Monthly Blog Writing Service - BKA Content More Resources from Scalable
In this episode Jamie Birch, the Founder of JEBCommerce, delves into the intriguing realm of affiliate publishers and their impact on your SEM marketing strategy. If you've ever wondered about the potential downsides of affiliates increasing your costs, cannibalizing customers, or complicating your other marketing channels, this episode is a must-listen.Discover how working with SEM affiliates can be not just rewarding but highly successful. Jamie presents three key ways in which this collaboration can drive significant benefits:Expanding Your Presence on Familiar SERPs: Learn how SEM affiliates can help you secure more opportunities on search engine results pages (SERPs) where your brand is already visible, ultimately boosting your brand's online presence.Venturing into New SERPs: Explore how SEM affiliates can assist you in gaining visibility on SERPs where your brand isn't currently present, opening up new avenues for customer acquisition and growth.Leveraging Others' Budgets for Amplified Results: Jamie discusses the smart strategy of utilizing the budgets of affiliate partners to complement your own, achieving greater reach and impact without incurring additional costs.This episode promises to be a valuable resource for businesses seeking to harness the full potential of SEM affiliates while mitigating potential challenges. Don't miss out on this insightful discussion that offers actionable insights for a more effective SEM marketing strategy.
Video for NEW Owners: https://youtu.be/YZSwxD0eEbA Episode Numbers Mentioned: High ticket and recurring revenue (115) Call forwarding software (105) Email welcome sequence (2) Evergreen Facebook ads (29) Hiring a manager (34) Hiring a virtual assistant (163) Hiring contractors (165) Hiring interns (37) Money Making tasks (114) Search Engine Marketing (241) Book More Birthdays Challenge: https://www.michelecaruana.com/2023birthdaychallenge OTHER RESOURCES: Book More Birthdays Challenge: https://www.michelecaruana.com/2023birthdaychallenge Play Cafe Academy & Play Makers Socity: http://bit.ly/3HES7fD Fund Your Indoor Play Business: http://bit.ly/38KbYbz Courses & Consulting: http://bit.ly/3N7bPAI Indoor Playground Business Courses: https://bit.ly/37yCxAC Michele's Instagram: https://bit.ly/3Ia4PTK Michele's Website: https://www.michelecaruana.com YouTube Channel: https://bit.ly/3JDkSe7 FREE 14-DAY Active Campaign Trial: https://bit.ly/3rjp5bP What's Working 2023 Guide: http://bit.ly/3GwXQAS ETSY Template Shop: https://bit.ly/40RF5D4 Recession Prep Playlist: https://www.michelecaruana.com/recessionprep Register for the annual Book More Birthdays Challenge and PAY WHAT YOU WANT (for the first 100 registrants): https://www.michelecaruana.com/2023birthdaychallenge
Kristin Lawton joined us earlier this year for an episode of The Simple & Smart SEO Show and we couldn't miss the chance to ask her to go deeper on one specific task she shared.How to have a 6-week business planning retreat with yourself!This is a 2-hour task (maybe 4 hr total if you've never done this before).Here's how Kristin breaks it down:Make it feel like a treat: get out to a coffee shop or take yourself to dinnerPlan for a quarter and treat the 6-week planning session like a check in—a little more work the first time you do this, but each future retreat will feel like a lighter lift!2 categories: personal & professionalWrite things on or add things to your calendarReview your quarterly goals & check in on key metricsBe sure to take Kristin's quiz to discover your signature brand marketing style!(Brittany is Shaken!)Take the quiz & share your result with all of us on Instagram!Hey, football fans! Score big this fall with Senior Night Gifts from LoveYourSenior.com. These treasures are just what you need to make your memories last a lifetime. But hurry, these limited edition pieces are as fleeting as those Friday night lights Visit loveyoursenior.com and grab yours before the final whistle blows.That's loveyoursenior.com.Support the showApply to be our podcast guest!
Host George B. Thomas and guest Chris Rodgers delve into AI and its connection to SEO, breaking it down into easy-to-understand terms. They discuss the emergence of prompt engineering, the importance of educating yourself, the necessity of maintainin
Where are you in your customer journey? Just starting out, filled with unbridled optimism for how your business is going to change the world? Or perhaps you're in the valley of despair, where your optimism has been met with founded pessimism, and you're stuck in the daily hustle, trying to pay the bills with no time for the bigger picture?Etan Polinger is further along in his journey: he has reached the peak of informed optimism having a bumper quarter, bringing in $50Ks worth of additional revenue for one client alone, just by reviewing their sales data.In today's episode Etan is sharing his journey, from being overwhelmed and treading water to now being able to take the time out (one whole day!) to chat to his client's customers in-store and develop an avatar based on his field research. Learn about the 'modern marketer' in this highly entertaining conversation between Mark and Etan, as they explore the ethics of marketing and an AI future where strategic management holds the key to your survival as you teach the machines to automate your ideas.Etan's partnership with TDM has allowed him to become more intentional with the clients he chooses to work with, operating as a fractional CMO and taking on bigger contracts. Part of the strategic map for getting you out of the valley of despair can be found in this episode and by applying the tools of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Please join us. Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is enjoying increased success as a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Key Takeaways:01:24 How the Certified Partner has helped Etan with his entrepreneurial journey02:40 Unlocking a process that leads to informed optimism04:36 Learning to trust that TDM's Certified Partner framework of tools will work05:49 Unpacking the tools: a systemized way to sell your services08:20 Articulating the shift that has happened for Etan in Q1 '2310:20 Working with the Strategic Map to grow your business13:06 Becoming more intentional with the clients you choose to work with15:00 Learning how to delegate: listening to the simple advice16:00 Strategic management as a route to secure your marketing future18:27 How Etan is giving his clients the infrastructure they need so they have the tools themselves19:10 The ethics of marketing: understanding your marketing function (cohesion and integration)23:53 Understanding your customer demographic: chatting to the customer in-store25:25 Understanding who your message is for by talking to the customer first30:09 Etan as a 'modern marketer': Mark coins a new term! 31:17 Take action: identify where you are in your journey (are you in the valley of despair?)Connect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerWebsite - https://prosperousmedia.us/Be sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn:...
Where are you in your customer journey? Just starting out, filled with unbridled optimism for how your business is going to change the world? Or perhaps you're in the valley of despair, where your optimism has been met with founded pessimism, and you're stuck in the daily hustle, trying to pay the bills with no time for the bigger picture?Etan Polinger is further along in his journey: he has reached the peak of informed optimism having a bumper quarter, bringing in $50Ks worth of additional revenue for one client alone, just by reviewing their sales data.In today's episode Etan is sharing his journey, from being overwhelmed and treading water to now being able to take the time out (one whole day!) to chat to his client's customers in-store and develop an avatar based on his field research. Learn about the 'modern marketer' in this highly entertaining conversation between Mark and Etan, as they explore the ethics of marketing and an AI future where strategic management holds the key to your survival as you teach the machines to automate your ideas.Etan's partnership with TDM has allowed him to become more intentional with the clients he chooses to work with, operating as a fractional CMO and taking on bigger contracts. Part of the strategic map for getting you out of the valley of despair can be found in this episode and by applying the tools of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Please join us. Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is enjoying increased success as a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Key Takeaways:01:24 How the Certified Partner has helped Etan with his entrepreneurial journey02:40 Unlocking a process that leads to informed optimism04:36 Learning to trust that TDM's Certified Partner framework of tools will work05:49 Unpacking the tools: a systemized way to sell your services08:20 Articulating the shift that has happened for Etan in Q1 '2310:20 Working with the Strategic Map to grow your business13:06 Becoming more intentional with the clients you choose to work with15:00 Learning how to delegate: listening to the simple advice16:00 Strategic management as a route to secure your marketing future18:27 How Etan is giving his clients the infrastructure they need so they have the tools themselves19:10 The ethics of marketing: understanding your marketing function (cohesion and integration)23:53 Understanding your customer demographic: chatting to the customer in-store25:25 Understanding who your message is for by talking to the customer first30:09 Etan as a 'modern marketer': Mark coins a new term! 31:17 Take action: identify where you are in your journey (are you in the valley of despair?)Connect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerWebsite - https://prosperousmedia.us/Be sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketer/This Month's Sponsors:
Get ready to forget everything you thought you knew about SEO. Host George B. Thomas and guest Ryan Brock discuss the powerful approach of pillar-based marketing and becoming a topical authority in the eyes of Google.
Lauren PetrulloLinkedIn:linkedin.com/in/laurenpetrulloWebsite:laurenpetrullo.commongoosemedia.us/ Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/laurenepetrullo/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Lauren.E.PetrulloTwitter:https://twitter.com/lauren_petrullo My social media links:Podcast:https://podcast.app/day-in-day-out-p832991Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/muui23LinkedIn page:https://www.linkedin.com/company/day-in-day-out-podcast/?viewAsMember=trueYouTube:https://bit.ly/2UVszCm
On this episode, we'll be discussing search engine marketing and SEO in the age of A.I with guests Brittany Filori and Michael Borgelt of 51Blocks. 51Blocks started in 2009 as an SEO company serving small businesses. By 2015, 51Blocks had moved to a Denver-based office with a small team helping businesses all across the US and was... The post 186: Search Engine Marketing in the Age of A.I. first appeared on Cast Polymer Radio.
Laura talks to Break the Image's Jeff Gutowski about Search Engine Marketing, what it means and how to excel at it.
Adam Viener is the Founder and Chairman of Imwave, a performance search engine marketing agency focused on driving performance-based sales to companies through pay-per-click search engine advertising. He is the Founder of Yazing, an influencer monetization and cashback shopping platform, where they get a commission on every sale they make and influence online. He also co-founded Cyberia, one of the first Internet access companies, in 1993, which he sold in 1998. Adam is a recognized leader in the internet marketing world who has been on the publisher advisory boards of The Google Affiliate Network and Commission Junction. He is a Performance Marketing Association and Forbes Business Council member who has written for Forbes, ReveNews.com, and Search Engine Land. In this episode… Are you struggling with making your affiliate program a success? How can you drive the right type of traffic to your site? Driving performance-based sales through pay-per-click search engine advertising is challenging. Adam Viener recommends partnering with a marketing agency that can help you with your marketing efforts without increasing the costs. He shares how he helps companies build and launch a large-scale search marketing campaign to drive traffic that converts to sales on their sites. Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz, featuring Adam Viener, Founder and Chairman of Imwave. Adam talks about the genesis of Imwave, how it helps clients build and launch effective pay-per-click search engine keyword marketing campaigns, its ideal clients, and Yazing.
On this episode, we’ll be discussing SEO (search engine optimization) and principles of persuasion with guests Brittany Filori and Michael Borgelt of 51Blocks. 51Blocks started in 2009 as an SEO company serving small businesses. By 2015, 51Blocks had moved to a Denver-based office with a small team helping businesses all across the US and was moving […] The post 315: SEO and Persuasion – How to Use Search Engine Marketing the Right Way first appeared on Persuasion by the Pint.
Delaney Mullennix, the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast host, interviews Nichole Vander Wall, Search Marketing Coach, about nonprofit search engine marketing. Explore the potential of Google & Microsoft Grants for nonprofits with search marketing expert Nichole Vander Wall. Boost impact through SEM.
In this episode of Mastering Your Financial Life, Judy Heft interviews Robin Faller, Vice President of Digital Sales at Ferocious Media. Robin is experienced in website design, SEO, SEM, social media content and advertising, and much more in the realm of social media and the internet. Ferocious Media is a full service digital marketing agency, among the top 3% of Google Partners in the US. Their award-winning expert team is dedicated to their client's success in website design and development, search engine marketing & optimization, social media marketing, and branding through display and native advertising, audio streaming, video streaming ads including pre-roll and OTT/Connected TV. Tune into the episode to learn about: The differences between Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization What types of businesses and people you should hire to help you with Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization The anatomy of the search engine results page Why consistent blogging is an amazing tool for any business The importance and usefulness of a Google Business page What a business owner should consider when organizing their website Connect with and learn more about Robin Faller: Connect with Robin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-faller-1210a93/ Visit Ferocious Media's Website: https://ferociousmedia.com In each episode of Mastering Your Financial Life, Judy Heft interviews professionals who help others successfully manage their financial lives. Judy is a Financial and Lifestyle Concierge and Founder & CEO of Judith Heft & Associates. Connect with Judy Heft on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judyheft/ Visit Judith Heft & Associates' Website: http://www.judithheft.com/ Subscribe to Mastering Your Financial Life on Apple podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mastering-your-financial-life/id1628822980 Don't miss a video by subscribing to Judith Heft & Associates' YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxnWUm35dJhmCX0XPX_eZhQ
ClimbHigh SEO's Ray Cassidy knows what high-quality SEO services can do for Cumbrian companies. His comprehensive SEO service can organically boost your online visibility so that when customers are ready to buy, your company can be found. Learn more at https://climbhighseo.agency/ Consulting Cumbria Ltd DBA ClimbHigh SEO 24 Cant Crescent, Carlisle, Cumbria CA2 4JF, United Kingdom Website https://climbhighseo.agency/ Email prc.pressagency@gmail.com
In this power-packed episode, our conversation delves deep into the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with SEO maestro Lauren Gaggioli. Joining us for this chat is our co-host, Conor Brown, adding his unique insights to the conversation.Our dialogue with Lauren takes us through the labyrinth of SEO. She elaborates on topics ranging from the significance of keywords and metadata to the understanding of domain authority and the critical role of backlinks. But the conversation doesn't stop at just the technical aspects. Lauren stresses the human side of SEO, emphasizing the importance of being truly present online and offering a remarkable user experience.Lauren shares her personal journey, touching upon how she mastered SEO strategies and implemented them within her business. She discusses how she came to truly understand her online persona and the significant influence of personal branding on SEO.A key takeaway from this episode is the ever-evolving landscape of SEO. As emphasized by our host, Jeff Sieh, SEO is a constantly changing game, and businesses need to stay updated and adaptive to succeed.Don't forget to explore the fantastic resources Lauren and Conor bring to the table. Lauren's website is chock-full of insightful content, and she also co-hosts a parenting podcast called "Magical Mindset Moments," available on Spotify and other platforms. Conor, our co-host, offers excellent resources for planning a Disney trip on his website. Follow him on Instagram @WDWopinion for more updates.A big thank you to our sponsor for this episode, Ecamm. They're hosting Creator Camp 23, a must-attend event for content creators. Check it out on Ecamm's website.Guest Details:Lauren Gaggioli: SEO expert, can be found at www.laurengaggioli.com.Sponsor:This episode was brought to you by Ecamm. For more information, visit www.socialmedianewslive.com/ecamm.
Which clients do you enjoy serving the most? Because those clients are the ones you will invariably give your best to. Etan Polinger is the owner of Prosperous Media, a full-service digital marketing agency that, perhaps, bit off more than it could chew when Etan first started out on his own. Etan has since learned a thing or two about choosing which clients to work with you as you scale. Etan is chatting with Mark de Grasse today about the benefits of becoming a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer's Agency Accelerator Program. In particular, the structure and framework that concepts like the Customer Value Journey have provided Etan with as he revels in partnering with The DigitalMarketer. Discernment when it comes to niching down and working with the right clients on the right kind of projects is discussed, as is the authenticity that comes with having failed before and not positioning yourself to your clients as some kind of know-it-all guru. While immediate growth as an entrepreneur may be considered awesome to some, for others, the sudden scalability of your enterprise (particularly in the digital marketing space) creates its own new set of business challenges. The value of having a partner such as The DigitalMarketer is well articulated by Etan in this honest account of his success as well as the challenges that success has brought.Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is enjoying increased success as a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Key Takeaways:01:12 What happened? Etan's journey as an entrepreneur and then joining the Accelerator Program06:32 Appreciating Etan's breakout moment: understanding the Customer Value Journey09:26 Learning to let go of clients that you can't serve to the best of your ability12:16 How does Etan plan and systemize his business future as he niches down?16:00 Being in the right frame of mind to help your clients (having failed before)18:44 Building a business model that is based on AI opportunity22:45 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome so people will do business with youConnect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerBe sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketer/This Month's Sponsors:Conversion Fanatics - Conversion Rate Optimization AgencyGet 50% Off Monthly Blog Writing Service - BKA Content More Resources from Scalable[Free Guide & Assessment] 7 Levels of Scale
Which clients do you enjoy serving the most? Because those clients are the ones you will invariably give your best to. Etan Polinger is the owner of Prosperous Media, a full-service digital marketing agency that, perhaps, bit off more than it could chew when Etan first started out on his own. Etan has since learned a thing or two about choosing which clients to work with you as you scale. Etan is chatting with Mark de Grasse today about the benefits of becoming a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer's Agency Accelerator Program. In particular, the structure and framework that concepts like the Customer Value Journey have provided Etan with as he revels in partnering with The DigitalMarketer. Discernment when it comes to niching down and working with the right clients on the right kind of projects is discussed, as is the authenticity that comes with having failed before and not positioning yourself to your clients as some kind of know-it-all guru. While immediate growth as an entrepreneur may be considered awesome to some, for others, the sudden scalability of your enterprise (particularly in the digital marketing space) creates its own new set of business challenges. The value of having a partner such as The DigitalMarketer is well articulated by Etan in this honest account of his success as well as the challenges that success has brought.Etan Polinger is the founder of Prosperous Media, a digital marketing company specializing in SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing, and more. Etan is enjoying increased success as a Certified Partner of The DigitalMarketer Agency Accelerator Program. Key Takeaways:01:12 What happened? Etan's journey as an entrepreneur and then joining the Accelerator Program06:32 Appreciating Etan's breakout moment: understanding the Customer Value Journey09:26 Learning to let go of clients that you can't serve to the best of your ability12:16 How does Etan plan and systemize his business future as he niches down?16:00 Being in the right frame of mind to help your clients (having failed before)18:44 Building a business model that is based on AI opportunity22:45 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome so people will do business with youConnect with Etan Polinger :LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/etan-polingerBe sure to subscribe to the podcast at: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/digitalmarketerInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/digitalmarketer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-marketer/This Month's Sponsors:Conversion Fanatics - Conversion Rate Optimization AgencyGet 50% Off Monthly Blog Writing Service - BKA Content More Resources from Scalable[Free Guide & Assessment] 7 Levels of ScaleFREE EPIC Challenge More Shows You'll Love
Jason Shandy is the Director of Digital Marketing for Southern Air LLC, a company that aided in building his extensive background on digital marketing for large private equity-backed home service conglomerates. Over the years, he has demonstrated high level expertise on Search Engine Marketing in a variety of verticals across multiple markets. Johnny Wenzel is a marketing consultant at ServiceTitan, who's passionate about saving contractors money on ads and helping them win. In this episode, we talked about artificial intelligence, digital marketing, search engine optimization…
Welcome to the new and improved Foremost Media Marketing Chat Podcast where we interview some of the most infuential marketers in the manufacturing space to get some of their invaluable insight in both respective industries! In this episode we spoke with Kevin Pawlowski, the marketing and communications manager over at ITW Contamination Control Electronics/Chemtronics/Techspray. He's been in the industry for over 30 years and has done quite a bit ranging from being the first to market on a florist system before digital marketing existed to buying 1,000 magic 8-balls! Time Stamps: * Introduction [0:24] * The New Internet [2:03] * Privacy as the Biggest Challenge to Marketers [4:51] * "The Father of Spam" [12:52] * Continuity is key for a successful marketing program [15:33] * The Magic 8ball Story [24:43] * Anything you want to leave us with? [29:09] * Jon joins in [30:40] * Goodbye [34:38] Find more marketing insights and show notes here (https://www.foremostmedia.com/resources/blog/posts?category=foremost-podcast).
We're changing up our style here at Foremost Media by interviewing some of the most infuential marketers in the manufacturing space and getting some of their invaluable insight! In this episode we spoke with Jessica Jacobson, the marketing and communications manager over at Apache Stainless Equipment Corporation. She's been in the industry for over 30 years and has an uncountable number of successes in that time and has built up quite the resume of marketing wisdom. Today, we're talking about her time in Apache, advice on trade shows, and how to always have a mind on ROI in all your marketing efforts. Time Stamps: * Introduction [0:00] * What do you wish everyone understood about what it's like to be a marketer at a manufacturing company? [1:48] * What's the biggest change that you've seen your time at Apache? [5:02] * What's something that you think everyone in this industry should be doing/paying attention to? [6:42] * What are the biggest challenges for manufacturing marketers in the next five years? [8:16] * Who in the marketing or manufacturing space is doing a great job with their marketing? [10:28] * Where are you getting your marketing information from? [12:18] * Is there a marketing success that you're most proud of? [14:17] * What about a marketing failure? What did that teach you? [15:45] * What marketing channels are you focused on that you're having success with? Or what marketing channels are an opportunity for further success? [20:22] * What's a commonly held marketing belief, something that is seen as a best practice or an industry standard that you don't agree with? [22:00] * Goodbye [25:04] Resources Mentioned: * "No Ego" by Cy Wakeman * "Yes Ma'am, No Sir: The 12 Essential Steps for Success in Life" by Coach Carter Find more marketing insights and show notes here (https://www.foremostmedia.com/resources/blog/posts?category=foremost-podcast).
Search engine marketing is top-of-mind for most higher ed marketers, but it's still a drastically underutilized marketing mechanism. In fact, according to our guest, Faton Sopa, co-founder and CEO of Manaferra, only three of the top ten websites that commonly show up from higher ed search terms are school websites. In Part Two of our discussion around search engine marketing, we address some common shortfalls in higher ed marketing SEO strategies. Join us as we discuss: - The marriage of technical web design and content (1:46) - Referral backlinks and the subtle art of link building (19:42) - Why colleges and universities are shorting their SEO potential (36:44) Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast: - Faton Sopa - Manaferra To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website or search for The Higher Edge in your favorite podcast player.
The First 100 | How Founders Acquired their First 100 Customers | Product-Market Fit
In this episode, I chat with Farzad Rashidi, Lead Innovator of Respona, The link-building outreach platform built for B2B SaaS and agencies to increase organic traffic from Google.If you like our podcast, please don't forget to subscribe and support us on your favorite podcast players. We also would appreciate your feedback and rating to reach more people.We recently launched our new newsletter, Principles Friday, where I share one principle that can help you in your life or business, one thought-provoking question, and one call to action toward that principle. Please subscribe Here.It is Free and Short (2min).
Search engine marketing is still considered a 21st-century mystery to many higher ed marketers. But the fact is that, with a solid content marketing strategy, any college or university can turn its website into an SEO darling. In part one of our interview with Faton Sopa, Cofounder and CEO of Manaferra, we discuss the sub-disciplines of search engine marketing and how to establish authority through content. Join us as we discuss: - The sub-disciplines of search engine marketing (4:50) - Establishing authority in your website's content (15:20) - If gated content is appropriate in the conversion funnel (23:21) Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast: - Faton Sopa -Manaferra To hear this interview and many more like it, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or our website or search for The Higher Edge in your favorite podcast player.
Semrush's Olga Andrienko and host George B. Thomas discuss what visual search is, whether it's right for your company, and how to adopt best-practices for it out of the gate.
How can property management companies optimize their presence on search engine sites such as Google as well as social media platforms? In this episode, learn how search engine optimization is used and how it can increase your exposure and ratings on Google and social media platforms. Alex Hassoulas joins us to share how his company, Upkeep Media, can streamline that process for you Connect with Alex and the rest of the Upkeep Media team at www.upkeepmedia.com. Connect with Brad's team at www.rentwerx.com!
In this episode of Search Off the Record, Gary and Lizzi talk with a guest from the larger Search Marketing Community, Jennifer Slegg - an expert on all things Search Engine Marketing, specializing in the Quality Rater's Guidelines and E-A-T. Reminisce about the internet in the early 2000s, hand-coded websites, minimal search results, no ads, and straight-to-the-point content. Jennifer shares her experience transitioning from journalist to Search Marketer, the writing process for her well-known detailed analysis on changes in the Quality Rater's Guidelines, and more! Was there any data available about what people searched for in the early 2000s? What does E-A-T stand for? Listen to find out! Resources: Episode transcript → https://goo.gle/sotr051-transcript Jennifer on Twitter → https://goo.gle/3OKwNad Jennifer's 2022 guide to understanding Quality Rater Guidelines updates → https://goo.gle/3OKwNad The SEM Post → https://goo.gle/3UjqMm9 Search Off the Record is a podcast series that takes you behind the scenes of Google Search with the Search Relations team. #SOTRpodcast
SEGMENT 1 with Andrew Warden, starting at 0:00: With all the changes in search engine optimization (SEO), it has become more difficult to make money and be found online. Andrew Warden is here to help and urges small business owners that now is the time to invest in SEO, not shy away from it. SEGMENT 2 with Blake Hogan, starting at 17:30: How can we help military veterans start businesses? Blake Hogan, CEO of Bunker Labs, shares how the organization is creating a military-connected community to launch and grow businesses across the country.SEGMENT 3 with Anthony Alcazar, starting at 37:00: It's difficult to develop a new product. It's even more difficult to distribute it to customers. Anthony Alcazar shares how he developed a better tortilla and found major success reaching customers through eCommerce. Sponsored by Truly Financial.
I'm pleased to welcome three incredible guests back to the show – Lauren Marts, owner of Baked True North, Duztin Watson, owner of The RiP Group, and RJ Huebert, owner of HBT Digital Consulting. In this in-depth episode, we cover a wide variety of topics, including the critical role that small businesses play in the community and how to attract and retain talented people on your team. Plus, each of our guests gives us an update on the latest developments in their businesses and current trends in their industries.If you have any questions or if you'd like to chat, you can reach me at my contact info below. The purpose of this podcast is to share ideas, inspire action, and build a stronger small business community here in Pittsburgh. So, please say hello, tell me what you think, and let me know how I'm doing. It means a ton!Also, check out my guests' original episodes from when they first appeared on the podcast to share their origin stories.Lauren Marts – Season 5, Episode 5: https://proprietorsofpittsburgh.com/episodes/collaboration-over-competition-lauren-marts-owner-of-baked-true-northDuztin Watson – Season 5, Episode 35: https://proprietorsofpittsburgh.com/episodes/work-on-yourself-every-day-of-your-life-duztin-watson-owner-of-the-rip-groupRJ Huebert – Season 5, Episode 34: https://proprietorsofpittsburgh.com/episodes/be-open-and-share-your-knowledge-rj-huebert-owner-of-hbt-digital-consultingYOU CAN REACH ME AT:Website: https://www.proprietorsofpittsburgh.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/proprietorsofpittsburghpodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/proprietorsofpittsburghpodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darinvilanoPhone: 412-336-8247YOU CAN REACH LAUREN MARTS AT:Website: https://bakedtruenorth.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/bakedtruenorthFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/bakedtruenorthYOU CAN REACH DUZTIN WATSON AT:Website: https://ripusa.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/theripgroupFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RiPUSAIncLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ripusainc.YOU CAN REACH RJ HUEBERT AT:Website: https://hbtdigital.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/hbtdigitalconsultingFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/hbtdigitalconsultingLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hbtdigitalconsulting
How do you know if your marketing campaign is working? Not all channels are created equally when it comes to reporting. Fortunately, digital marketing avenues such as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), offer the value of predictive analytics and effective reach. In the first episode of a two-part podcast series, I sit down with Steve Kroll, President of Granular, to discuss his lifelong exposure to and the power of online relevancy. Tune in to this podcast for a deeper understanding of why getting your SEO and SEM strategy on the right track is paramount for the success of your digital marketing campaigns and online presence. What you'll learn: Steve's background growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and where his passion for digital and online business started Details behind Steve's first job as an intern with a digital marketing agency in the early 2000s How Steve's family, support system, and early job exposure provided the perfect launch pad for his career An overview of Granular and the digital advertising space Steve's team specializes in The predictability of search engine marketing (SEM) and how important FAQs are in developing an SEM strategy Other things businesses can do to make Google reward their site with better placement on the search results page A deep dive into the impact of paid search on organic search
Ready to get creative with Google Ads? Listen for an overview of SEM and tips and tricks to add it as an effective acquisition channel for your business. Resources Mentioned: If you want a deeper dive, check out this course. SpyFu Google Ads Audience Targeting Resource Carrie Rose Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
About Anadelia Anadelia is a B2B marketing leader passionate about building tech brands and growing revenue. She is currently the Sr. Director of Demand Generation at Teleport. In her spare time she enjoys live music and craft beer.Links Referenced: Teleport: https://goteleport.com/ @anadeliafadeev: https://twitter.com/anadeliafadeev LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anadeliafadeev/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: DoorDash had a problem. As their cloud-native environment scaled and developers delivered new features, their monitoring system kept breaking down. In an organization where data is used to make better decisions about technology and about the business, losing observability means the entire company loses their competitive edge. With Chronosphere, DoorDash is no longer losing visibility into their applications suite. The key? Chronosphere is an open-source compatible, scalable, and reliable observability solution that gives the observability lead at DoorDash business, confidence, and peace of mind. Read the full success story at snark.cloud/chronosphere. That's snark.cloud slash C-H-R-O-N-O-S-P-H-E-R-E.Corey: Let's face it, on-call firefighting at 2am is stressful! So there's good news and there's bad news. The bad news is that you probably can't prevent incidents from happening, but the good news is that incident.io makes incidents less stressful and a lot more valuable. incident.io is a Slack-native incident management platform that allows you to automate incident processes, focus on fixing the issues and learn from incident insights to improve site reliability and fix your vulnerabilities. Try incident.io, recover faster and sleep more.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This may surprise some of you to realize, but every once in a while, I mention how these episodes are sponsored by different companies. Well, to peel back a little bit of the mystery behind that curtain, I should probably inform some of you that when I say that, that means that companies have paid me to talk about them. I know, shocking.This is a revelation that will topple the podcast industry if it gets out. That's why it's just between us. My guest today knows this better than most. Anadelia Fadeev is the Senior Director of Demand Generation at Teleport, who does in fact sponsor a number of different things that I do, but this is not a sponsored episode in that context. Anadelia, thank you for joining me today.Anadelia: Thank you for having me.Corey: It's interesting. I always have to double-check where it is that you happen to be working because when we first met you were a Senior Marketing Manager, also in Demand Gen, at InfluxData, then you were a Director of Demand Generation at LightStep, and then you became a Director of Demand Gen and Growth and then a Senior Director of Demand Gen, where you are now at Teleport. And the couple of things that I've noticed are, one, you seem to more or less be not only doing the same role, but advancing within it, and also—selfishly—it turns out that every time you wind up working somewhere, that company winds up sponsoring some of my nonsense. So first, thank you for your business. It's always appreciated. Now, what is demand gen exactly? Because I have to say, when I started podcasting and newslettering and shooting my mouth off on the internet, I had no clue.Anadelia: [laugh]. Well, to put it very simply, demand generation, our goal is to drive awareness and interest in your products or services. It's as simple as that. Now, how we do that, we could definitely dive into the specifics, but it's all about generating awareness and interest. Especially when you work for an early-stage startup, it's all about awareness, right? Just getting your name out there.Corey: Marketing is one of those things that I suspect in some ways is kind of like engineering, where you take a look at, “Oh, what do you do? I'm a software engineer.” Okay, great. For someone who is in that space, does that mean front-end? Does that mean back-end? Does that mean security? Oh, wait, you're crying and awake at weird hours and you're angry all the time. You're a DevOps, aren't you?And you start to realize that there are these breakdowns within engineering. And we realize this and we get offended when people in some cases miscategorize us as, “I am not that kind of engineer. How dare you?” Which I think is unwarranted and ridiculous, but it also sort of slips under our notice in the engineering space that marketing is every bit as divided into different functions, different roles, and the rest. For those of us who think of marketing in the naive approach, like I did when I started this place—“Oh, marketing. So basically, you do Super Bowl ads, right?” And it turns out, there might be more than one or two facets to marketing. What's your journey been like in the wide world of marketing? Where did you start? Where does it stop?Anadelia: Yeah. I have not gotten to the Super Bowl ads phase yet but on my way there. No, but when you think about the different core areas within marketing, right, you have your product marketing team, and this is the team that sets the positioning, the messaging, and the information about who your ideal audience is, what pain points are they having, and how is your product solving those pain points? Right, so they sort of set the direction for the rest of the team, you have another core function, which is the content team, right? So, with the direction from Product Marketing, now that we know what the pain points are and what our value prop for our product is, how do we tell that to the world in a compelling way, right? So, this is where content marketing really comes into play.And then you have your demand generation teams. And some companies might call it growth or revenue or… I guess those two are the ones that come to mind. But this team is taking the direction from Product Marketing, taking the content produced by the content team, and then just making sure that people actually see it, right? And across all those teams, you have a lot of support from operations making sure that there's processes and systems in place to support all of those marketing efforts, you have teams that help support web development and design, and brand.Corey: One of the challenges that I think people have when they don't really understand what marketing is they think back on what they know—maybe they've seen Mad Men, which to my understanding does not much resemble modern all workplaces, but then again, I've been on my own for five years, so one wonders—and they also see things in the context of companies that are targeting more mass-market, in some respects. If you're trying to advertise Coca-Cola, every person on the planet—give or take—knows what Coca-Cola is. And the job is just to resurface it, on some level, in people's awareness, so the correct marketing answer there apparently, is to slap the logo on a bunch of things, be it a stadium, be it a billboard, be it almost anything, whereas when we're talking about earlier stage companies—oh, I don't know Teleport, for example—if you were to slap the Teleport logo on a stadium somewhere for some sports game, I have the impression that most people looking at that, if they notice it at all, would instead respond to some level of confusion of, “Teleport, what is that exactly? Have scientists cracked the way of getting me to Miami from San Francisco in less than ten seconds? Because I feel like I would have heard about that.”There's a matter of targeting beyond just the general public or human beings walking around and starting to target people who might have a problem that you know how to solve. And then, of course, figuring out where those people are gathering and how to get in front of them in a way that resonates instead of being annoying. At least that has been my lived experience of watching the challenges that marketing people have talked to me about over the years. Is that directionally correct or are they all just shining me on and, like, “Oh, Corey, you're adorable, you almost understand how this stuff works. Now, go insult some more things on Twitter. It'll be fine.”Anadelia: [laugh]. The reality is that advertising is a big part of a demand generation program, but it's not all, right? So, good demand generation is meeting people where they are. So, the right channels, the right mediums, the right physical places. So, when you look at it from an inbound and outbound approach, inbound, you have a sign outside of your door inviting people to your house, right, and this is in the form of your website. And outbound is you go out to where people are and you knock on their door to introduce yourself.So, when we look at it from that approach, so on the inbound side, right, the goal is to get people to come to your website because that is where you are telling them what you do and giving them the option to start using your product. So, what reason are you giving people to come to you, right? How are you helping them become better at something or achieve certain results, right? So, understanding the motivations behind it is extremely important.And how are you driving people to you? Well, that's where SEO comes in, right? Search engine optimization.So, what content are you producing that is driving the right search results to get your website to show up and get people to come to you, right? There's also SEM or Search Engine Marketing. So, when people are searching for certain keywords that are relevant to you, are you showing up in those search results?And on the outbound side of things is, what do you do to contribute to existing communities, right? So, this is where things like advertising comes into play. So, I know you have a huge following and I want to be where you are. So, of course, I'm going to sponsor your podcast and your newsletters. And similarly, I'm looking for what events are out there where I know that our potential customers are spending their time and what can we do to join that conversation in a way that adds value?So, that can be in the form of supporting community events and meetups, giving community members a platform to share their experiences, and even supporting local businesses, right, it's all about adding value, and by doing so, you are building trust that will allow you to then talk about how your product can help these communities solve their problems.Corey: It's interesting because when we look at the places that you have been, you were at InfluxData, they are a time-series database company; you were at LightStep, which was effectively an observability company, and now you're at Teleport where you are an authentication and access company. And forgive me, none of these are your terms. These are my understandings of having talked to these folks. And on the one hand, from a product perspective, it sounds like you're hopping between this and that and doing all those other things, and yet, we had conversations about all three of those products and how the companies around them are structured and built, and you've advertised all three of those on this show and others and all three of those companies and products speak specifically to problems that I have dealt with personally in the way I go through my engineering existence as well. So, instead of specializing on a particular product or on a particular niche, it almost feels like you're specializing on a particular audience. Is that how you think about it, or is that just one of those happy accident, or in retrospect, we're just going to retcon everything, and, “Yeah, that's exactly why I did it.” And you're like, “Let we jot that down. That belongs on my resume somewhere.”Anadelia: [laugh]. No, so prior to me joining InfluxData, I was at other companies that were marketing to sales, HR, finance, different audiences, right? And the moment I joined Influx, it was really eye-opening for me to be part of a product that has an open-source community, and between that and marketing to a highly technical audience that probably very likely doesn't want to hear from marketers, I found that to be a really good challenge for myself because it challenged me to elevate my own technical knowledge. And also personally, I just want to be surrounded by people that are smarter than me, and so I know that by being part of a community that markets to a developer audience, I am putting myself in a position where I'm having to constantly continue to learn. So, it's a good challenge for a marketer in our industry. Just like in any others, there's always the latest buzzword or the latest trend, and so it's really easy to get caught up in those things. And I think that being a marketer whose audience is developers really forces you to kind of look at what you're doing and sort of remove the fluff. This happens everywhere.Corey: Well, I have to be careful about selling yourself too short on this because I've talked to a lot of different people who want to wind up promoting what it is that their companies do, and people come from all kinds of different places, and some of the less likely to be successful—in many cases, I turn the business down—are, “Well, this is our first real experience with marketing.” And the reason for that is people expect unrealistic things. I describe what I do as top-of-funnel where we get people's attention and we give them a glimpse and a hook of what it is the product does. And I do that by talking about the painful problem that the product solves. So, when people hear their pain reflected in what we talk about, then that gives them the little bit of a push to go and take a look and see if this solves it.And that's great, but there has to be a process on the other side, where oh, a prospect comes in and starts looking at what it is we do. Do we have a sales funnel that moves them from someone just idly browsing to someone who might sign up for a trial, or try this in their own time, or start to understand how the community views it and the rest because just dropping a bunch of traffic on someone's website doesn't, in isolation, achieve anything without a means to convert that traffic into something that's a bit more meaningful and material to the business? I've talked to other folks who are big on oh, well, we want to wind up just instrument in the living crap out of everything we put out there, so I want to know, when someone clicks on the ad, who they are, what they do for a living, what their signing authority is, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my answer, that's super easy, “Cool. We don't do any of that.”Part of the reason that people like hearing from me, is because I generally tend to respect their time, I'm not supporting invasive tracking of what they do, they don't see my dumb face smiling with a open mouth grin as they travel across the internet on every property. Although one of these days I will see myself on the side of a bus; I'm just waiting for it. And it's really nice to be able to talk to people who get the nuances and the peculiarities of the audience that I tend to speak to the most. You've always had that unlocked, even since our first conversation.Anadelia: Yeah, well, first of all, thank you. And yeah, the reality is that, especially within my world, right—and demand generation, we are very metrics-driven because our goal [tends 00:13:00] to be pipeline, right? Pipeline for the sales team, so we want to generate sales opportunities, and in order to do that, we need to be able to measure what's working and what is not working. But the reality is that good marketing is all about building trust, right? So, that's why I stress the importance of providing something of value to your prospect so that you're not wasting their time, right? The message that you have for them is something that can help them in the future.And if building trust sometimes means I'm not able to measure the direct results of the activity that you're doing, then that is okay, right? Because when you're driving people to your website, there are things that you can measure, like, you have some web visits, and you know that percentage of those visitors might be interested in continue further, right? So, when you look at the journey across the buyer stages, you have to have a compelling offer for a person on each of the possible stages, right? So, if they are just learning about you today because this is the first time that heard your ad, it's probably not expected that they would immediately go to your website and fill out your form, right? They've just heard about you, and now you start building that recognition.Now, if all the stars align, and I actually have a need for a solution that's like yours today, then, of course, you can expect a conversion to happen in that time point. But the reality is that having offers that are aimed at every stage of the buyer's journey is important.Corey: I'm glad to hear you say this. And the reason is that I often feel like when I say it, it sounds incredibly self-serving. But if you imagine the ideal buyer and their journey, they have the exact problem that your product does and there's an ad on my podcast that mentions it. Well, I imagine—and maybe this isn't accurate, but it's how I engage with podcasts myself—I'm probably not sitting in front of a computer ready to type in whatever it is that gets talked about.I'm probably doing dishes or outside harassing a dog or something. And if it resonates is, “Oh, I should look into that.” In an ideal world. I'll remember the short URL that I can go to, but in practice, I might just Google the company name. And oh, this does solve the problem.If it's not just me and there's a team I have to have a buy-in on, I might very well mention it in our next group meeting. And, “Okay, we're going to go ahead and try it out with an open-source version or whatnot.” And, “Oh, this seems to be working. We'll have procurement reach out and see what it takes to wind up generating a longer-term deal.” And the original attribution of the engineer who heard it on a podcast, or the DevOps director who read it in my newsletter, or whatever it is, is long since lost. I've commiserated with marketing people over this, and the adage that I picked up that I love quoting is half your marketing budget is wasted, but you can spend an entire career trying to figure out which half and get nowhere by the end of it.Anadelia: And this sort of touches on the buyer's journey is not linear. On the other side of that ad, or that marketing offer is a human, right? So, of course, as marketers, we're going to try to build this path of once you landed on our website, we want to guide you through all the steps until you do the thing that we want you to do, but the reality is, that does not happen in your example, right? You see something, you come back to it later through another channel, there's no way for us to measure those. And that's okay because that's just the reality of how humans behave.And also, I think it's worth noting that it takes multiple touch points until a person is ready to even hear what you have to say, right? And it sort of goes back to that point of building trust, right? It takes many times until you've gained that person's trust enough for them to listen to what you have to say.Corey: Building trust is important.Anadelia: SIt is very important. And that's why I think that running brand awareness programs are an extremely important part of a marketing mix. And sometimes there's not going to be any direct attribution, and we just have to be okay with it.Corey: I come bearing ill tidings. Developers are responsible for more than ever these days. Not just the code that they write, but also the containers and the cloud infrastructure that their apps run on. Because serverless means it's still somebody's problem. And a big part of that responsibility is app security from code to cloud. And that's where our friend Snyk comes in. Snyk is a frictionless security platform that meets developers where they are - Finding and fixing vulnerabilities right from the CLI, IDEs, Repos, and Pipelines. Snyk integrates seamlessly with AWS offerings like code pipeline, EKS, ECR, and more! As well as things you're actually likely to be using. Deploy on AWS, secure with Snyk. Learn more at Snyk.co/scream That's S-N-Y-K.co/screamCorey: I tend to take a perspective that trust is paramount, on some level, where we have our standard rules of, you know, don't break the law, et cetera, et cetera, that we do require our sponsors to conform to, but there are really two rules that I have that I care about. The first is you're not allowed to lie to the audience. Because if I wind up saying something is true in an ad or whatnot, and it's not, that damages my credibility. And I take this old world approach of, well, I believe trust is built over time, and you continually demonstrate a pattern of doing the right thing, and people eventually are willing to extend a little bit of credulousness when you say something that sounds that might be a little bit beyond their experience.The other is, and this is very nebulous, and difficult to define so I don't think we even have this in writing, but you have to be able to convince me if you're going to advertise something in one of my shows, that it will not, when used as directed, leave the user worse off than they were when they started. And that is a very strange thing. Like, a security product that has a bunch of typos on its page and is rolling its own crypto, for example—if you want an easy example—is one of those things that I will very gracefully decline not to wind up engaging with, just because I have the sneaking suspicion that if you trust that thing, you might very well live to regret it. In other cases, though—and this is almost never a problem because most companies that you have heard of and have established themselves as brands in this space already instinctively get that you're not able to build a lasting business by lying to people and then ripping them off.So, it's a relatively straightforward approach, but every once in a while, I see something that makes me raise an eyebrow. And it's not always bad. Sometimes I think that's a little odd. Teleport is a good example of this because, “Oh, really? You wound up doing access and authentication? That sounds exactly like the kind of thing I want something old and boring, not new and exciting, around, so let's dig into this and figure out whether this might be the one company you work at that doesn't get to sponsor stuff that I do.”But of course you do. You're absolutely focusing on an area that is relevant, useful, and having talked to people on your side of the world, you're doing the right thing. And okay, I would absolutely not be opposed to deploying this in the right production environment. But having that credulousness, having that exploratory conversation, makes it clear that I'm talking to people who know what they're doing and not effectively shilling for the highest bidder, which is not really a position I ever want to find myself in.Anadelia: And look, you have only one opportunity to make a first impression, right? So, being clear about what it is that you can do, and also being clear about what it is that you cannot do is extremely important, right? It kind of goes back to the point of just be a good human, don't waste people's time. You want to provide something of value to your audience. And so, setting those expectations early on is extremely important.And I don't know anyone that does this, but if your goal is only to drive people to your website, you can do that, probably very easily, but nothing will come out of it unless you have the right message.Corey: Oh, all you do is write something incendiary and offensive, and you'll have a lot of traffic. They won't buy anything and they'll hate you, but you'll get traffic, so maybe you want to be a little bit more intentional. It's the same reason that the companies that advertise on what I do pick me to advertise with as opposed to other things. It is more expensive than the mass-market podcasts and whatnot that speak to everyone. But you take a look at those podcasts and the things that they're advertising are things that actually apply to an awful lot more people, things like mattresses, and click-and-design website services, and the baseline stuff that a lot of people would be interested in, whereas the things that advertise on what I do tend to look a lot more like B2B SaaS companies where they're talking to folks who spend a lot of time working in cloud computing.And one of the weird things to think about from that perspective, at least for me, is if one person is listening to a show that I'm putting out and they go through the journey and become a customer, well, at the size of some of these B2B contracts between large companies, that one customer has basically paid for everything I can sell for advertising for the next decade and change, just because the long-term value of some of these customers is enormous. But it's why, for example—and I kept expecting it to happen, but it didn't—I've never been subjected to outreach from the mattress companies of, “Hey, you want to go talk about that to your guests?” No, because for those folks, it is pure raw numbers: how many millions of subscribers do you have? Here, it's—the newsletter is the easy one to get numbers on because lies, damned lies, and podcast statistics. I have 31,000 people that receive emails. Great, that's not the biggest newsletter in the world by a longshot, but the people who are the type of person to sign up for cloud computing-style newsletters, that alone says something very specific about them and it doesn't require anyone do anything creepy to wind up reaching out from that perspective.It doesn't require spying on customers to intuit that, hmm, maybe people who care about what AWS is up to and have big AWS-sized problems might sign up to a newsletter called Last Week in AWS. That's the sort of easy thinking about advertising that I tend to go for, which yeah, admittedly sounds a lot like something out of that Mad Men era. But I think that we got a lot right back then, and everything's new all the time.Anadelia: [laugh]. And actually, that's exactly what demand generation is, right? We want to find the right channels to reach our audience. And so, for a consumer company that sells mattresses, right, anyone might be on the market for a mattress, right? You want to go as broad as possible. But for something that's more specific, you want to find what are the right channels to reach that audience where you know that there's—it might be a smaller audience size, but it's the right people.And we've talked about the other core areas of marketing. So, with demand generation, it's all about finding people where they are, right, and providing them their message to you and attracting them to come to you, right? It kind of goes back to that inbound and outbound motion that I mentioned earlier. But at the end of the day also, if you don't have the right messaging to keep them engaged, once you got them to your website, then that's a different problem, right? So, demand gen alone cannot be successful without really strong product marketing and without really strong content, and everything else that's needed to support that, right? I mentioned the—if your website is not loading fast enough, then you're losing people if your form is not working. So, there's so many, so many different factors that come into play.Corey: Oh, God, the forms. Don't get me started on the forms. Hey, we have a great report that's super useful. Okay, cool. I'll click the link and I'll follow that. I talk to sponsors about this all the time. And it's, you have 30 mandatory fields on that website that I need to fill out. I am never going to do that.What is the absolute bare minimum that you need in an ideal world? Don't put any sort of gateway in front of it and just make it that good that I will reach out to thank you for it or something, but just make it an email address or something and that's it. You don't need to know the size of my company, the industry we're in, the level of my signing authority, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Because if this is good, I might very well be in touch. And if it's not, all you're going to do is harass me forever with pointless calls and emails and whatnot, and I don't want to deal with that. There's something to be said for adding value early in the conversation and letting other people sometimes make the first move. But this is also, to be clear, a very inbound type of approach.Anadelia: It's a never-ending debate, to gate or not to gate. And I don't know if there is a right answer. My approach is that if your content is good, people will come back to you. They'll keep coming back, and they'll want to take the next step with you. And so, I have some gated assets, and I have some that are not, and—but—Corey: But your gates have also never been annoying of the type that I'm talking about where it's the, “Oh, great. You need to, like, put in, like, how big is your company? What's the budget?” It feels like I'm answering a survey at some point. AWS is notorious for this.I counted once; there are 19 mandatory fields I had to fill out in order to watch a webinar that AWS was putting on.Anadelia: [laugh].Corey: And the worst part is they asked me the same questions every time I want to watch a different webinar. It's like, for a company that says the data is so valuable, you'd really think they'd be better at managing it.Anadelia: You know, like, some of the questions keep getting stranger. Like, I would not be surprised if people start asking what's your favorite color, or what's the answer to your—Corey: The one they always ask now for, like, big data seminars and whatnot, is where this really gets me, is this in relation to your professional interests or your personal interests? It's… “What do you think my hobbies are over there? Oh, yeah, I like big enterprise software. That's my hobby.” “Okay, I guess.” But I really do wonder what happens if someone checks the personal interest [vibe 00:25:33]. Do they wind up just with various AWS employees showing up want to hang out on the weekends and go surfing or something? I don't know.Anadelia: As somebody who has been on the receiving end of lists like this—for example, we sponsor a conference and we get people stop by to talk to us, and now we get the list of those people. And there's 25 columns. Like, honestly, that data does not come in helpful because at the end of the day, whatever you've marked on the required question is not going to change how I am going to communicate to you after, right, because we just had a conversation in person at this event.Corey: My budget is not material to the reason I let you scan my badge. The reason I let you scan my badge because I really wanted one of those fun plastic toy things, so I waited in line for 45 minutes to get it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to be a buyer; it just means that now I'm in your funnel, although I could not possibly care less about what you do. One thing I do at re:Invent and a couple other conferences, for example, is I will have swag at a booth—because I don't tend to get booths myself, I don't have the staff to man it and I'm bad at that type of thing. But when people come up to get a sticker for Last Week in AWS or when of our data transfer diagram things or whatnot, the rule that we've always put in place is, you're not going to mandate a badge scan for that.And the kind of company I like doing that with gets it because the people who walk by and are interested will say, “Hey, can you scan my badge as well?” But they don't want to pollute their own lead lists with a bunch of people who are only there to get a sticker featuring a sarcastic platypus, as opposed to getting them confused with people actually care about what it is that they're solving for. And that's a delicate balance to strike sometimes, but the nice thing about being me is I have customers who come back again and again and again. Although I will argue that I probably got better at being a service provider when I started also being a customer at the same time, where I hired out a marketing department here because it turns out that fixing the AWS bill is something that does a fair bit of marketing work. It's not something people talk about at large scale in public, so you have to be noisy enough so that inbound finds its path to you a bunch of times. That's always tricky.And learning about how no matter what it is you do, in the case of my consulting work, we are quite honestly selling money, bring us in for an engagement, you will turn a profit on that engagement and we don't come back with a whole bunch of extra add-ons after the fact to basically claw back more things. It's one of the easiest sales in the world. And it's still nuanced, and challenging, and finding the right way to talk about it to the right people at the right time explains why marketing is the industry that it is. It's hard. None of this is easy.Anadelia: It is. And you know, in your example, you're not scanning that badge, but giving the person the sticker, right? Like, it's all about making a good first impression, and if the person's not ready to talk to you, that is okay. But there are ways that you can stay top-of-mind so that the moment that they have a need, they'll come to you. It kind of goes back again to my earlier points of adding value in supporting existing communities, right? So, what are you doing to stay top-of-mind with that person that wasn't quite ready back then, but the moment they have a need, they'll think of you first because you made a good first impression.Corey: And that's really what it comes down to. It's nice to talk to people who actually work in marketing because a lot of what I do in the marketing space, I've got to be honest, is terrible. Because I've done the old engineering thing of, well, I'm no marketer, but I know how to write code, so how hard could marketing really be and I invent this theory of marketing from first principles, which not only is mostly wrong, but also has a way of being incredibly insulting to people who have actually made this their profession and excel at it. But it's an evolutionary process and trying to figure out the right way to do things and how to think about things from particular point of view has been transformative. Really easy example of this: when I first started selling sponsorships, I was constantly worried that a sponsor was going to reach out and say, “Well, hang on a second. We didn't get the number of clicks that we expected to on this campaign. What do you have to say about that?”Because I'm a consultant. I am used to clients not getting results that they expected having some harsh words for me. In practice, I don't believe I've ever had a deep conversation about that with a marketing person. I've talked to them and they've said, “Well, some of these things worked. Some of these things didn't. Here's what works; here's what didn't, and for our next round, here's what we want to try instead.” Those are the great constructive conversations.The ones that I was fearing somehow would assume that I held this iron grip of control over exactly how many people would be clicking on a thing in a newsletter, and I'm not. We barely provide click-tracking at this point in the aggregate, let alone anything more specific, just because it's so hard to actually tell and get value out of it. You talk as well, about there being brand awareness. Even if someone doesn't click an ad, they're potentially reading it, they're starting to associate your company with the problem space. That's one of those things that are effectively impossible to track, but it does pay dividends.When you suddenly have a problem in a particular area. And there's one or two companies off the top of your mind that you know work in that space. Well, what do you think marketing is? There has been huge money put into making that association in your mind. It's not just about click the link; it's not just about buy the thing; it's about shaping the way that we think about different things.Anadelia: And I spend a lot of time thinking about how people think we talk about what are the things that motivate you. When you have a problem, where do you go to look for a solution, or who do you go to, right? So, just understanding what the thought process is when someone is trying to solve a problem or making a purchasing decision, I think that a lot of demand generation is what are the different ways by which someone is trying to solve a problem that they're having? And I had an interest in psychology growing up; both my parents are psychologists, and I think that marketing tends to bring some aspects of that in business and creativity, which is what led me to a career in marketing.And you ended up being sort of a connector, right? Like your job was to connect to people who would benefit from meeting each other. Just one of them happens to be a product, or you know, it depends on your company, right, but you're just introducing people and making sure they know about each other because there's going to be a mutually beneficial relationship between them.Corey: That seems to be what so many jobs ultimately distilled down to in the final analysis of things. I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time and talking about how you view the world slash industry in which we live. If people want to learn more about what you're up to and how you think about these things, where's the best place to find you?Anadelia: You can follow me on Twitter at @anadeliafadeev, or connect with me on LinkedIn.Corey: Oh, you're one of the LinkedIn peoples. I used to do that a bit, and then I just started getting deluged with all kinds of nonsense, and let me adjust my notification settings, and there are 600 of them. And no, no, no, no, no. And I basically have quit the field, by and large, on LinkedIn. But power to you for not having done that. Links to that will of course be in the [show notes 00:32:38]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time.Anadelia: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.Corey: Anadelia Fadeev, Senior Director of Demand Generation at Teleport. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry ranting comment about how we got it completely wrong and that marketing does not work on you in the least. And by the way, when you close out that ranting comment, tell me what kind of brand of shoes you're wearing today.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.
CrowdSouth is a digital marketing agency that specializes in social media, search engine marketing, and web design. They serve clients from California to South Florida, and their office is in Kentucky. The name CrowdSouth was born from their passion for helping businesses connect with their "crowd," and their home base here in the "south."Jason Heflin and Chad Webb, co-owners of CrowdSouth, spent the first 8 years of their careers in corporate sales – managing multi-million dollar marketing budgets, high-stakes projects, and technical teams. In this episode, Jason and Chad share their experiences as co-owners of CrowdSouth, what it's like to split everything 50/50 as partners, their valuable takeaways from being part of Best Damn Agency Mastermind, their initial thoughts about raising prices, and the leaps and bounds in their business after implementing this difficult call.This Cast Covers:Chad and Jason talk about how they decided to become 50-50 business partners at CrowdSouth (02:45) The two most crucial things to having a successful partnership that both Chad and Jason definitely possess (05:22) How Jason and Chad were like as 12-year-old kids and what they thought they would be growing up (07:01)Who earns more: an astronaut or an account manager at Sales Driven Agency? (08:32)The final straw that led Chad and Jason to leave their previous company and go build their own damn thing (09:27)How Jason approached Chad to become his business partner and the birth of CrowdSouth (12:03)What changed in the last 12 to 18 months after Joey challenged them to increase their prices (14:06)Why investing in your own growth as an owner and investing in your agency is the best business decision you'll ever make (15:26)What most owners often forget while running their agency (17:04)Joey emphasizes taking care of the captain first (18:13)The inevitable wrestle between having a lifestyle business and having a full-blown company building towards an enterprise (19:14)How Jason and Chad reach an agreement about landing on a direction for their agency specifically (21:00)Being partners of a company means allowing the other person to excel in the areas they are already great and successful in and having fun while doing it (24:21)Why it's a must to raise your prices and stop undercharging for your services (25:03)Opportunities for growth at CrowdSouth that Chad and Jason might not be currently excelling in and how they're tackling them (31:28)Additional Resources:The Sales Driven AgencyThe Best Damn Agency MastermindCrowdSouth | WebsiteCrowdSouth | LinkedIn
Most SEO conversations are about on-page SEO, which is important. But there is so much more that marketers should be paying attention to. This episode takes a deep dive into everything from outbound SEO to accessibility.
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