![Holistic Marketing - Kelly Street - Hard Corps Marketing Show #87]()
July 11, 2019
Marketing is saturated with buzz words and strategic approaches like agile, ABM, AI, conversational marketing, and digital transformation. It’s difficult not to jump to one of these items and hope that it will be the answer to your marketing prayers.
A Marketing Leader, Podcast Host, and the Marketing Director of AttorneySync, Kelly Street, empowers the audience to not look at just one piece of marketing to fix all their problems, but to use a holistic approach. Do you want more than what Google tells you on Holistic Marketing? Then check out this episode to get a practical approach to apply to your marketing strategy.
Takeaways:
- Holistic Marketing takes into account the company’s brand, their ideal buyer, looks at the different marketing initiatives they could be doing to reach the ideal buyers, captures their engagement with reporting, and makes sure that the marketing aligns with the company’s deliverables.
- A brand is more than a logo, it’s the company’s mission, values, goals, and what people think of that company.
- To determine your Ideal Customer Profile, look at who is engaging with your website, your marketing materials, and who is actually buying from you. All three will start to form your ideal customer and show you if your messaging is not aligning with your ideal audience.
- Your company’s mission needs to match the ideal buyers you are trying to attract. Consider, does this mission have an audience?
- At large companies that want to boost internal morale where employees need to connect, consider doing an internal podcast. It spotlights different players at the company and allows your coworkers to learn more about each other.
- Before doing a podcast, look to see if there have been other successful podcasts in your industry. Where are the gaps in content that you could deliver to your audience?
- To plan a podcast, one needs to answer the following questions: who is the audience, why would someone listen to it, what is the content, cadence, and format, and how will production be executed? If these questions are not answered, do not start the podcast until they are.
- “Not all your jobs in marketing will be great, but you will learn something from all of them. And a traditional path sucks, don’t worry about your windy road.”-Kelly Street
Links:
Busted Myths:
- Find the one marketing method that will save your company and do it.-This is not the case as there is no one thing to do that will save you. Marketers need to take a holistic approach and consider their ideal customer, their brand, use all different marketing mediums, and track their reporting to see what marketing efforts are receiving the most engagement from their ideal buyers.
- Everyone should do a podcast.-Not quite. Someone should only do a podcast if they know they have an audience for it. They also need to create a plan and see if they have the time to dedicate to producing a podcast on a timely cadence that will keep listeners engaged.
Books to Check Out:
- Brand: It Ain’t the Logo by Ted Matthews
- Superfans by Pat Flynn
- The 10x Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating Competition‑Free Content by Garrett Moon
![Dethroning the MQL - Justin Keller - Hard Corps Marketing Show #86]()
July 5, 2019
As a marketer, when do you feel like you are doing your job? Is it when you pass an MQL to sales, thinking that you have done your duty to nurture the buyer and it is now the sales team’s responsibility to close the deal and drive revenue?
A marketing leader, speaker, and the VP of Marketing at Sigstr, Justin Keller, delivers a call to action to the audience to shift their focus from the MQL, to pipeline and revenue. Are you thinking of betting all your chips on the MQL? Think again!
Takeaways:
- A good way to think if your sales and marketing teams are aligned, is to ask the question, do they trust each other?
- Marketers can build the relationship with sales by sharing the responsibility for revenue and say, “I am just as concerned about hitting your numbers as you are.”
- Rather than focusing on the MQL, marketers should focus on creating value for the sales team, not leads. Consider, how can the marketing team nurture buyers to contribute to the sales pipeline?
- B2B marketers can learn from B2C brands in the way they create brands that can engage with humans. Focus on building a brand that can resonate with people.
- When marketing a brand, consider what words people use to describe your brand. You can use a question like, if this company was a car, what would it be?
- Brands need to match the product and the company culture to be authentic.
- Prior to purchasing marketing technology, the company should consider if they have the skills, time, and resources, to maximize its use. Does it align with the mission of what needs to be achieved?
- Involve yourself in difficult decisions. Do not brush them aside as they will not get easier. Face them head on because you will mature professionally on the other side.
- Imposter Syndrome-When you don’t feel like you are worthy or that you have not earned what you received. You may really not be worthy, but someone thought you were, so rise to the challenge and do what you need, to prepare and advance in that position.
Links:
Busted Myths:
- The MQL is king and it’s what marketers should be consistently using as a measurement of success.-This is NOT the case. Nowadays you can get leads from anywhere, but it does not mean they are qualified just because the prospect clicked on a link or downloaded a white paper. Instead, marketers should be concerned with measuring their contribution to pipeline and revenue.
Shout Outs:
- 7:46 James Buckley “Saywhatsales”
![Leading a Digital Transformation- Paige O’Neill- Hard Corps Marketing Show #85]()
June 26, 2019
Marketing is filled with buzzwords like AI, MQL, and Digital Transformation. Do you wish that you were able to get the no nonsense take on all of them from an experienced marketing executive?
A career B2B marketer who has worked with all kinds of companies from start-ups to enterprise and the Chief Marketing Officer of Sitecore, Paige O’Neill, wields Thor’s hammer like the pro she is and smashes multiple myths around the marketing fluff buzzwords. You don’t want to miss the marketing executive wisdom Paige delivers, for career growth and for life.
Takeaways:
- Marketers still need to put in the hard work of data cleanliness and customer research rather than only relying on AI to solve all their problems.
- Map out the customer journey and get to know your buyers. What are the customers asking during different parts of the buyer’s journey?
- Content needs to be delivered at the right time. It needs to be connected to the buyer’s journey, otherwise a marketer is talking to themselves.
- Digital transformation is all about being customer-focused and delivering the ideal customer experience.
- Customers expect transactions to be seamless and continuous.
- When thinking about marketing strategy, consider, what the company needs, and what does the company expect the marketing executive to do.
- Get clear on exactly what is expected of the marketing executive in that role. Consider interviewing the company’s stakeholders and ask for the company’s priorities, differentiators, and what is expected of marketing leadership.
- There is always something you can align with someone on, therefore listen before speaking, and ask follow up questions.
- “Be bolder...the only bad decision you can make is doing nothing.”-Paige O’Neill
- “At a certain point, make a decision and then stop thinking about it and just do it.”-Paige O’Neill
Links:
Busted Myths
- AI is going to solve all our problems.-AI is not going to solve all the issues of marketing. The marketer still has to put in the hard work. Data still needs to be collected and kept clean. The marketer still has to talk to customers and build an Ideal Customer Profile and personas, so that the AI software is not automating processes on assumptions.
- Marketing and sales alignment is a constant struggle and most teams are not aligned.-This is not the case with most companies. In order for most companies to be successful the teams have to be aligned. For the few companies that do not have their teams aligned, they are not putting the customer first.
- Marketers should bet all their chips on the MQL’s they generate.-Nobody cares about the MQL. The real topic of conversation is what is the marketing source pipeline and how much revenue has actually come from those marketing qualified leads.
![Stop Blogging, Start Podcasting - Michael Greenberg - Hard Corps Marketing Show #84]()
June 18, 2019
How long does it take you to write a blog article? To research it, create the content, edit it, play with the title, find supplemental images, and then style the body?
Now think of a conversation between a host and an expert. In a 30 minute conversation, how long of a transcript is created? Much longer than an article, perhaps it’s the length of two or three articles?
A B2B Growth & Podcast Strategist, the Host of Talk with the Top: Chicago, and the CEO & Chief Interviewer of Call for Content, Michael Greenberg, delivers a call for action to start with a podcast when creating content, not a blog. Check out this episode and rethink B2B marketing content creation!
Takeaways:
- “Blogs are the worst thing of all content options you could start with.”-Michael Greenberg
- Create an outline to have a structured transcription from a podcast. Create headings, then questions, then bullet points before doing the interview.
- Buyer personas are the first thing to consider when creating a B2B podcast. Who are you trying to reach? Then comes your audience.
- You could have your guests be partners and then your audience be prospects. You could also have your guests be prospects to develop the customer relationship.
- A seasonal podcast is about 8-12 episodes and the story line of content is planned with an arc. Think about the content you want to create, the order of interviews, and the talking points that should tie the episodes together.
- When deciding whether to do a podcast or a webinar for content, “plan for one, repurpose as another.”-Michael Greenberg
- To pull more conversation out of an interviewee, listen and then count to five in your head, the guest will usually keep talking to break the silence.
- A podcast’s audience determines the structure, style, tone, and the music of the show. For example, if the audience is typically listening on their commute, the pace of the show should be slower.
- Using a podcast for ABM works because the business can target the top accounts and have the prospects on the show. Touchpoint number one could be the business inviting the guest, touchpoint number two, the prep call, and then touchpoint number three could be recording an episode of 30 minutes or more. Then a relationship is developed.
- A podcast’s audience trusts the show’s brand. They have followed their episodes, listened to their conversations, and have already started to build a customer relationship.
Links:
Busted Myths
- Don’t start with a blog when creating content. Start with a video or a podcast. The product can then be transcribed into multiple blog articles and creating the content becomes cheaper and faster. More content can be created from an hour conversation rather than an hour of writing an article.
![Speak the Truth in Your Marketing - Andy Rosenbloom - Hard Corps Marketing Show #83]()
June 11, 2019
In a world where magazine covers are airbrushed, movies are overproduced with special effects, and advertisements exaggerate to make products look desirable, marketers need to remember to stay authentic.
A Marketing Leader, Strategist, Public Speaker, and the VP of Marketing at Buyers Edge Platform, Andy Rosenbloom, reminds the audience to stay true to themselves and their brand. If you are tired of the facade that is all around, then listen to this episode for some real inspiration.
Takeaways:
- Don’t lose sight of being authentic in your marketing even in a world where everything seems over the top.
- Marketing is communicating complex ideas in simplified ways that resonate with the brand’s buyers.
- Be willing to accept customer feedback, you never know the relationships that you could potentially make with your customers or the ideas for improvement that you could receive.
- When you have different types of buyers, diversify your content to target it specifically to those buyers.
- Remove barriers and make it easy for your buyers to interact with your brand.
- Remember that in B2B marketing, you are still marketing to people from that business. You are still trying to solve their problems and make them better professionals.
- “Moments of delight”-Paying attention to your customers’, likes, dislikes, and what they are going through in their personal life to seize a moment where you can make a difference and show them you care.
- Be humble, listen, learn, and take initiative in your career. Find more ways to be proactive, to anticipate problems and streamline processes for better solutions.
Links:
Busted Myths
- Not everything has to be embellished and exaggerated all the time. Marketers need to make their brand aspirational, but it should still be authentic.
Shout Outs
- Bob Malone 56:33
- Jordan & Barbara Kimmel 1:03:35
![Alignment Through Collaboration - Lauren Mead - Hard Corps Marketing Show #082]()
June 6, 2019
Marketers, you are busy in your bubble. You are creating content, designing email templates, and planning your next event. When is the last time you got out of your bubble? When is the last time you talked to sales? Have you sat in on a conversation with a customer recently to learn their pain points?
An ABM practitioner, strategist, and the CMO of TimeTrade, Lauren Mead, delivers a call to action for marketers to pop their bubble, step out, and get aligned with sales. She charts the course for a collaborative experience where marketing and sales can work together to establish a target market and better understand their customers. Are your marketing and sales teams not feeling the love? Then this is one episode you can’t afford to miss!
Takeaways:
- Marketers need to understand customer pain points to leverage marketing as a resource and share best practices.
- Consider sitting in on a sales call with a customer. Listen to what questions the customer is asking during different parts of the sales cycle.
- When approaching marketing as a whole, start with your data. Consider your buyers’ industries, company size, and the common characteristics among the buyers.
- Identifying and understanding your buyer personas is what allows you to segment and target relevant content. You may have thousands of customers but only five personas to prioritize your efforts towards.
- Align with sales to establish your target market. Buyers that do not fit your criteria, should be not sent to sales. That is a waste of their time.
- As a marketing leader, task your team with generating sales accepted opportunities.
- “...if we’re generating a ton of leads that’s great, but if they’re not quality leads, who cares? It’s not tied to revenue.”- Lauren Mead
- Look at the marketing emails you receive from other companies and learn from them. Reflect on what trends you see and what you can do to improve your own marketing emails.
- Be willing to jump into new challenges and see things as an opportunity.
- When needs come up in your company, take initiative and contribute. You may not see the immediate return in your career from this effort, but look at the big picture and see it as a way to develop your overall skillset.
Links:
Busted Myths
- Sales owns the customer relationship, so marketing has to ask for permission to talk to customers. It’s important for marketing to be aligned with sales, but marketing needs to be able to talk with customers to understand their pain points and create targeted content. There needs to be a trust built between the two departments, so that marketing does not feel they have to ask for permission.
Shout Outs
![ABM & The Dark Funnel - Latane Conant - Hard Corps Marketing Show #81]()
May 30, 2019
Everyone is talking about Account Based Marketing (ABM). It’s all over social media, webinars, speaking sessions, and there are books about it. It has become a buzzword in marketing, the centerstage of a magic show. But what is ABM really? There is so much hype about it don’t you wish it was boiled down to just the essential keys?
Listen to a marketing executive with sales, accounting, and consulting experience, one that hosts the podcast, Talking Sense, and is the CMO of 6sense, Latane Conant. She demystifies ABM and takes away the smoke and mirrors to reveal it at its core. You don’t want to miss the show!
Takeaways:
- In marketing, consider the kind of prospect experience you want to deliver. Think about how buyers buy today and you are going to execute the practices of ABM.
- Marketers need to consider The Dark Funnel. It’s the part of the buyer’s journey that you are not able to track. For example, when buyers research your competition, or when they listen to podcasts, or when they search for certain keywords, or if there is a member of the buying team you don’t know about.
- When you ask your prospect to fill out a form give them something better in return.
- Use your content marketing as a means to answer the questions your prospects are having during different stages of the purchase cycle.
- Think about the information that marketers can provide to sales about the account. Why is that account considered in-market? What is their buyer persona? What is their anonymous and known activity and what key-words have they searched?
- Segment your marketing to the different buyer personas. For example, if a competitor’s product fails, how can you market to that specific group of people to reach them and show that your product and brand is the answer?
- The 5 Keys to the ABM Process: 1) Select the Best Accounts 2) Know About Them 3) Engage the Right Way 4) Collaborate with Sales 5) Track Real Stuff
- Collaborate with your sales team. They will help decide the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Finding the ICP will help the marketing team decide to which accounts they should prioritize their marketing.
- The 3 Keys to Sales & Marketing Alignment: 1) Trust 2) Transparency 3) Time Horizon
- Be aligned with the product team, think about where is the market going? What are your customers asking for?
- Start your marketing approach with “The Why” and establish your culture, vision, strategy, and your brand. These foundational pieces need to be understood holistically.
- A vision should ignite uncomfortable excitement. Push the limits and be bold.
- Once a vision is established, consider how you can drive that growth. Always be considering the overall pipeline, deal velocity, average deal size, and the win rates.
- Marketers can always learn from the sales team. The sales team members understand the business, customers, and go-to market strategy really well. Therefore, get aligned with sales!
- Prioritize your marketing efforts around the product, service, and buyer personas that are making your company money. Marketers cannot afford to accommodate everybody. Understand the data and go after what gets your company the best win rates.
- Leaders need to help create the fun, it’s why people want to work for them. The fun comes from being motivated, thinking that the work is meaningful, and enjoying the team of employees.
Links:
Busted Myths
- ABM is a buzzword that people just throw around. It’s really just good marketing. It focuses the marketer to go back to the roots, the customer. This makes for a good marketing and sales experience. To execute ABM the marketer needs to think about how the go-to market strategy can be framed around how buyers buy today.
- Content is king. Content matters, but there is already so much of it. Content marketing efforts need to be prioritized to answering the question of what jobs do the prospects need to do, to make a purchasing decision.
![Activating Content Marketing - Randy Frisch - Hard Corps Marketing Show #80]()
May 22, 2019
Your marketing team writes thought provoking blogs, creates educational webinars, and polished white papers, but what good is all that content if it’s not being activated? Have you considered how your buyers are interacting with your content? Is your content organized by format or by the problems your buyers could have?
A Speaker, Author, Host of the Content Experience, and Co-Founder & CMO of Uberflip, Randy Frisch, challenges marketers to be intentional about the content experience they are creating for their customers. Don’t miss this episode and learn how to activate your content marketing!
Takeaways:
- The goal of content marketing is to drive profitable customer action.
- A content marketer needs to consider what type of content experience they want to put in front of their buyers. The buyers are already having an experience with the content, whether the marketer is intentional about this experience or not, is the difference.
- “70% of the content that we’re creating is going unused.”-Randy Frisch referencing Sirius Decisions
- Think about the content as a nurture campaign. After the buyer interacts with your content, what is the next piece of content that they should be looking at to move them along in their buyer’s journey.
- How do buyers experience content in real life? For example, if someone is watching a Netflix show, they are not waiting for a week before seeing the next episode. How can your content be a series of information to help solve the buyer’s problem?
- There are three areas of content marketing: content creation, content distribution, and content experience.
- The difference between content distribution and content experience is that distribution is just about sending out the content. The experience considers where people will see the content and what content they should be given next.
- There are three keys to creating a good content experience: structure, environment, and engagement. How is the content structured to give to the right people, at the right time? Is the content visually appealing and easy to navigate? How do we personalize the content and serve the next piece?
- There is a five-step framework to creating a good content experience: centralize, organize, personalize, distribute, and generate results.
- When organizing content, do not categorize by format, sort by the solution that your content solves, for the problem the buyer has.
- Earn your way and make sure that you understand what your customers are experiencing first, before diving too deep into the marketing world.
- “The more that we can start to solve with content the same way that we solve for people those real life problems, versus, ‘Here are my products, what do you want?’ That’s really how we have to start shifting our thinking.” - Randy Frisch
Links:
Busted Myths
- Content marketing is simply creating content. The concept goes beyond this, a content marketer has to consider how the content is valuable, relevant, and consistent to the audience they are trying to reach. Does the content help to solve the problem the buyer has?
- Organizing content by format is best practice. The format is not what solves the buyer’s problem. The buyer should not have to search and sift through a company’s blogs, webinars, and white papers to find information about the solution to their problem. Consider your buyers and their journey when deciding how to organize content.
Shout Outs
- Ann Handley - 3:27
- G2Crowd - 19:26
- Drew Davis - 24:49
![Marketers That Own The Problem - Tom Butta - Hard Corps Marketing Show #79]()
May 20, 2019
Marketers are used to rocket launching the message out to their buyers, creating eye catching explosions with their brand, and nurturing their prospects by sharing, sharing, sharing. Sometimes, marketers need a reminder to listen.
An award winning Marketing Leader, Brand Strategist, and the CMO of SignalFx, Tom Butta, reminds marketers to listen to prospects and customers, learn the pain points, and own the problem. This episode is filled with “nuggets” of wisdom, that will challenge, encourage, and guide marketers on their journey.
Takeaways:
- Be concerned about what your prospects and customers think of your brand. Be open to what the other groups think, but compare it to your buyers’ concerns.
- Be open and curious to what others are suggesting. Think about what they say. People are often too concerned with waiting to be in the conversation that they are not listening to the ideas in front of them.
- Listen, listen, listen! When creating a marketing plan, listen to the executives of the company, to the clients, and prospects. Compare what they are all saying and search for the “nuggets” that could be ideas for your plan.
- Consider the emotion that your product and/or service is trying satisfy with the solution you are providing and then market to that emotion.
- Be the guide on the buyer’s journey rather than the advisor. An advisor provides suggestions but then they are not there with you in the process. Guide your customers in their journey, empathize and be with them.
- Own the problem that your buyer is facing to market how your product and/or service is the solution.
- Gather customer references that want to share their positive experience. In today’s social media age, it’s not about what “we” say, it’s about what “they” say. Prospects look at the reviews and testimonials before going directly to the source.
- Mobilize the believers in your brand. If your brand has a huge following. Provide a platform for your believers to communicate why they love your brand.
- People never forget how you make them feel.
- “Don’t be afraid to take on something new or try something new because you’re going to learn something.”-Tom Butta
- Be open to learning about the experience that is in front of you, and look at it as an opportunity.
Links:
Busted Myths
- A lot of people know a lot about marketing and you should heed their opinion about your branding, strategy, and logo. This is not necessarily true. Everybody has an opinion and they have the freedom to express it, however, you should be paying attention to the opinion of your buyers and future prospects. What do your customers think of your brand?
- In marketing, it’s best to give your prospects an information overload and tell them all the good things about your product and/or service. Giving your buyers information overload sounds salesy and just creates noise that does not allow them to pinpoint how your brand could truly help them. Get to know your buyers first, learn their pain points and then inform them how your product and/or service can help.
![Chess Master Marketing - Darryl Praill - Hard Corps Marketing Show #78]()
May 7, 2019
Are you a marketer feeling discouraged that your department is thought of as the cost center at your business? Or perhaps your department is respected and you are dreaming about someday having that CMO position, but you may feel intimidated about where to start?
Ever thought of marketing as a game of chess? A Lecturer, Public, Speaker, Radio Personality, and the CMO of VanillaSoft, Darryl Praill, turns on the lights for the match and provides professional insight on how to plan your strategy for victory among the many moving pieces of marketing.
Takeaways:
- Marketing now owns the technology stack of marketing automation software and CRM. They have earned a respected seat at the table and can report the ROI on every campaign.
- The sales funnel has shifted. Buyers are getting smarter and they do not want to talk to sales representatives until the very end when they are ready to negotiate. Now, marketers have the buyers for two-thirds of the sales funnel.
- When you close a big lead, consider: where did the lead come from, what was the campaign, how many touch points did they have? Then celebrate those touchpoints. They DO make a difference.
- Marketing can be viewed as a game of chess. No one piece will win you the game. Consider taking one bigger piece of content and running smaller campaigns from it. Look at how all your pieces can work together.
- When strategizing marketing, consider: What’s the category that our business is in, where do we fit?
- Keep the answers of what you do simple.
- Once a marketer knows their business category, they know the influencers they need to be reaching and who they should be following, the pain points that their buyers are facing, and how their messaging and propositions should be defined.
- “The whole point of [creating] notoriety is making sure that you’re in the conversation.”-Darryl Praill
- When influencers are mentioning your brand in conversation, you are now a trusted player.
- Every single sales cycle starts with a pain point the prospect has.
- When nurturing prospects, do not spray and pray! This only dilutes the frequency that you are in front of your target market.
- “Learn to listen to your gut it is an important input into the decision making process.” -Darryl Praill
Links:
Busted Myths
- Marketing is about picking the right color, producing awesome parties at trade shows, and press releases. These activities are NOT what marketing is about. These are simple tasks done in the pursuit of what a marketer is mandated to do.
- Marketing is not held accountable and does not generate revenue for the company, they are a cost center. Marketers now have the technology to track the success of every touchpoint to determine the level of ROI for each activity. They are held accountable for the leads they generate and the amount of return they get for their efforts put in.
Shout Outs
- Revelation Technologies-51:27
