Thursday 31 October 2019

Brainfluence Podcast Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Brainfluence Podcast Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch appears on Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence podcast to discuss his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

This book is a departure from Jantsch’s five previous works; while those books were focused on marketing strategy and tactics, this book is a series of 366 daily meditations aimed at helping entrepreneurs to find their path and stay true to themselves.

In this episode of Brainfluence, Jantsch shares with Dooley about the book, why it’s important to push through early struggles in entrepreneurship, and how to remain unhindered by the past in order to reach a brighter future.

Check it out – John Jantsch interviewed by Roger Dooley on the Brainfluence Podcast



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Trick or Treat: The Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist

Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist

Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist Admit it. On Halloween night, the fierce competitor within you sprinted from home to home to claim as much sugary bounty as your pillowcase could carry. But the loyalist and purist in you was on the hunt for a specific candy treat. A treat that put all the rest to shame; a treat that always hit the sweet spot. via GIPHY For me, that coveted treat was: the Almond Joy. Sweetened coconut. Crunchy almonds. Smooth milk chocolate. Devilishly delicious, but ghoulishly elusive amongst a sea of KitKat- and Snickers-purchasing households. (Here’s to you, organic reach on Facebook.) As marketers, we all have our favorites. From tactical techniques that sweeten our marketing mix to the integration of marketing elements to tantalize our audience’s taste buds, the TopRank Marketing team weighs in on both fun- and king-size marketing treats they can’t resist.

Our Favorite Marketing Sweet Treats

Josh NiteJosh Nite

Senior Content Marketing Manager My favorite candy is black licorice. Black licorice doesn't appeal to everyone. That's a quality I like in candy—and in marketing, too. It's easy to make something bland and sweet that everyone tolerates—like, say, Necco Wafers—but that's not how you get raving fans. I've never met anyone passionate about Necco Wafers. Conversely, I've never met anyone who "kind of liked" black licorice. You love it or you hate it. Good marketing takes a bold stand, with personality and purpose. It draws in a target audience and excludes the rest. Love or hate black licorice, it's a perfect reminder that great marketing doesn't aspire to blandness.

Elizabeth Williams

Senior Account Manager Baby Ruth: My favorite part about Baby Ruth bars is they've got a little bit of everything—nuts, nougat, caramel, all with a chocolate coating. And, flavors all work so well together! To work well, good marketing must parallel Baby Ruths: A diverse yet integrated mix so that we can reach our audiences whenever and wherever they are and with a consistent message that resonates with their needs.

Nick NelsonNick Nelson

Senior Content Strategist Skittles. These bite-sized bursts of fruity flavor remind me of social media marketing. The bright colors reflect the vibrant imagery that stands out on feeds, and the many different flavors and colors represent the diversity of voices and viewpoints you can find across various networks.

Annie LeumanAnnie Leuman

Content Strategist Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Two incredible ingredients in their own right, come together to make an irresistible combo—kind of like SEO and content. Content is the peanut buttery center, and it’s wrapped in the perfect amount of chocolate to delight it’s consumers’ senses (and leave us all asking for more).

Ashley Zeckman

Senior Director of Digital Strategy I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for Starbursts. There are so many different delicious flavor varieties—from tropical to classic to my all-time personal favorite: All Reds. Much like the industry experts and influencers we partner with, the different flavor profiles add punch and pizzazz to the content palette. 

Tiffani AllenTiffani Allen

Associate Director of Search & Analytics Twix. To borrow from Saturday Night Live’s Stefon: This candy has everything. Chocolate. Caramel. Cookies. A clever marketing strategy. Everything, people.  The combination of three complementary, yet distinctly different flavors reminds me of a well-integrated digital marketing mix of search, content, and influence. While each discipline on its own is delicious, it’s the mix of all three that produces a truly crave-worthy treat. 

Lane EllisLane Ellis

Social Media and Content Marketing Manager From the 1850s until the 1920s my great-great-uncle Henry H. Ellis, and later his son, ran a confectionery and bakery making homemade candies. The business started first in Janesville, WI and then from 1867 on, moved to Cheyenne, WY, so I suppose my fondness for sweets runs in my family. I love marzipan and adore chocolate, so as a child over Halloween, when a particularly generous and creative woman placed a wrapped chocolate-covered marzipan candy in my sugary goodie bag, I was overjoyed. Decades later, the two mingling flavors are still a favorite, and remind me of a type of marketing nirvana in which two already excellent practices meld together to form something truly rare and beautiful, akin to when a favorite professional comedian takes over the social media channels of a company you're a longtime fan of.

Witch Way to the Candy?

Sorry. Bad pun. Moving on … Regardless of where your loyalties lie in the marketing sweets realm, perhaps the nuggets above will encourage you to reach into the candy bowl for a new variety. What marketing sweet is at the top of your trick or treating list? Tell us in the comments section below.

The post Trick or Treat: The Spellbinding Marketing Sweets the TopRank Team Can’t Resist appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Monstrous Mistakes Marketers Make

Market Street used to have a glorious office building, but now it stands abandoned, and so the story goes…

It was a dark and stormy fiscal quarter. The CMO was asked to make drastic changes on a horrifically tight turn-around. While the marketing team marketed as much as they could, beasts took over their office, causing missteps, mayhem, and mistakes. With each error,  a new beast was born! These are the misguided miscreations that ravaged the office:

The Department Divider:

This monster, content on destruction, divided the Market Street sales and marketing teams—causing them to butt heads. They argued while choosing key accounts and couldn’t compromise on campaign goals, thus leaving grotesque gaps in the sales funnel. The horror!

 

The Optimal Vampire:

This monstrosity rally sucked. The Market Street marketing team’s programs ran short of expectations, and the marketers didn’t analyze what went wrong., reassess A/B test creative, or reallocate spend. Without optimizing, their campaign ran dry. Oh, the humanity! 

 

The Competitive Clown:

This villain made the marketers pay too much attention to their competitor’s messaging, and it showed up in the work. Instead of focusing on differentiation, they became second-rate, copycat versions of their competition. Egads!

 

The Proofreading Poltergeist:

This menace killed Market Street’s work faster than any other marketing monster with a single, villainous move: a typo. Instead of reading copy backwards, forwards, and upside-down, the team rushed through the proofing process, and their audience rushed away from them. My eyes!

 

The Dirty Data Stinker:

This beast created a wasteland of horrors with outdated, incomplete, and duplicative data. The marketers, not normalizing, fixing, and removing data, burned through a lot of dollars. Alas, their hard work ended up in the trash. Jeepers!

 

This tales does not end well, for now the once glorious building on Market Street is left to decay. Legend has it, these monsters still stalk from office to office, finding new marketers to terrorize. Don’t allow one of these monstrous mistakes step foot into your campaign!

See how Oracle Marketing Cloud keeps monsters at bay:

Click here for more treats à

                                                                       

Download the infographic pdf à

 



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Wednesday 30 October 2019

Getting the Meeting with Contact Marketing

Getting the Meeting with Contact Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Stu Heinecke
Podcast Transcript

Stu Heinecke headshot

Today on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with marketer, cartoonist, and author, Stu Heinecke.

He is a cartoonist for the Wall Street Journal and a founder of Cartoonists.org, a collective of well-respected cartoonists who donate their work to benefit charities.

On the marketing side, Heinecke has written several books centered around the idea of contact marketing. His first, called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, and his latest, Get the Meeting! led the American Marketing Association to name him “the father of contact marketing.” He also offers marketing training and consulting services to businesses around the world.

On this episode, Heinecke shares more about contact marketing: what it is, why it works, and what you can do to create your own contact marketing strategy.

Questions I ask Stu Heinecki:

  • What is contact marketing?
  • Can a great contact marketing campaign generate a response rate above 100 percent?
  • What is a pocket campaign?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • What tactics are at the core of any contact marketing approach.
  • What role remarketing can play in a contact marketing campaign.
  • See several real-life contact marketing examples to hopefully inspire you to create your own approach.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Stu Heinecki:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

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Transcript of Getting the Meeting with Contact Marketing

Transcript of Getting the Meeting with Contact Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

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John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Stu Heinecke. He’s a marketer, a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, a bestselling author, and the founder of cartoonists.org. But he’s also the author of a book we’re going to talk about today called Get the Meeting: An Illustrative Content … Nope, contact. And I’m glad I messed that up, because it gives me a chance to highlight the difference … Contact Marketing Playbook. So Stu, thanks for joining me.

Stu Heinecke: Hey, thank you so much. Thanks for flubbing that up because that’s exactly what we need to do.

John Jantsch: Before we get into the book itself, are you still doing the cart … How do you say that? Cartooning? Is that how you’d say that?

Stu Heinecke: Yeah. I’m deeply, deeply involved in cartooning, not only as a cartoonist, I mean, I’m still submitting to the Wall Street Journal, but also I and a group of New Yorker and Wall Street Journal … I should put it the other way around. Wall Street Journal and New Yorker cartoonists have founded this new thing called cartoonists.org, so we’re using our cartoon art to help charities raise funds.

John Jantsch: So you take something that was maybe published and sell the original in a blown up fashion or something like that?

Stu Heinecke: Well, not yet.

John Jantsch: But that’s the plan?

Stu Heinecke: It’s sort of the … Yeah, it’s sort of that … We’re taking cartoons that they might’ve been published or they might not have been. We’re really choosing them based on, well, who would buy this cartoon? Where would they put it into their home? Because now we’re talking about framed, or at least, hanging art. So what cartoons would make sense in what rooms? Cartoons about cooking in the kitchen, of course, and maybe maybe a cartoon about a dinner party going off the rails would be great in the dining room, that kind of stuff. So that’s what it is. They’re all prints at this point, hand-signed prints, but not originals.

John Jantsch: Okay. But also you’ve done a lot of business ones. I could see a lot of office art coming out of some of your ones that have appeared in the Journal.

Stu Heinecke: Yeah, absolutely.

John Jantsch: And giving back a little bit, helping some charitable organizations. So Get the Meeting is really a companion, so we probably should start there, to How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. And those of you that are long time listeners will remember that Stu was on when that book came out, so maybe go back and re-listen to that, but we’ll talk a little bit about it today. So I guess we first should start with the description or definition of contact marketing. What is it?

Stu Heinecke: Well, yeah. I’m glad you asked, and glad you mixed it up a little bit with content marketing in the beginning because it’s not content marketing and it’s a good thing to emphasize that. But contact marketing is a, it’s a fusion of marketing and selling. That’s important because so often in bigger companies, I know your audience is actually smaller companies, but still it seems like those two functions within companies, maybe even within the people’s minds, too, are just highly siloed. And so one doesn’t talk to the other, one doesn’t really interact with the other very well. There’s a lot of friction between marketing and sales. But here, it’s a combination of marketing and selling using micro-focused campaigns to help a sales rep break through to someone of great importance, so really these are top accounts, not prospects.

John Jantsch: So maybe kind of illustrate that. No pun intended because your illustrative book, but kind of illustrate what one, like here’s a couple typical steps in a contact marketing plan.

Stu Heinecke: Well, probably the easiest one to talk about is what I do, what my campaigns look like, but there are many, many others, lots of ways to do this. But as you mentioned, I’m one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists. So I use my cartoons to break through. Typically what that looks like is I produce something I call a big board. It’s an 18 by 24 inch quarter inch thick foam core board. Actually, it’s Gator Board. It’s just like indoor signage material.

Stu Heinecke: And on one side there’s a cartoon about the recipient, what that cartoon says, and what the humor is, is really, really, really critical to all this as you might imagine. But if it’s on target, then it’s something that they want to keep in their offices, really, the rest of their careers. So there’s that cartoon on one side about the recipient and on the other is all the branding and messaging from the sender to the recipient explaining who they are, what value they want to bring to them and why they want to meet, and then what the next steps are to meet or connect in some way.

Stu Heinecke: And that gets sent in a really cool packet, some corrugated packaging that has cartoon art printed all over it. It’s something that you can’t ignore. When it comes in and when it arrives from FedEx, it’s something you just can’t ignore. It looks like something’s coming in from maybe a cartoon art gallery, perhaps something like that. But the thing that’s really fun about this is that is that usually I’m reaching out to people who have executive assistants, dreaded executive assistant.

Stu Heinecke: But actually, I love assistants. I’m a fan of executive assistants. They’re generally some of the smartest, sharpest people in the organizations. If you think about the executive assistant to the CEO of a company, that person is actually just like any other member of the C suite because she or he reports to the CEO just like the CMO does and the CFO and so on. They’re just incredibly sharp people. So they want to know when you call in that do have something relevant and of importance for their executive to pay attention to. So they’re really a lot like talent scouts.

Stu Heinecke: And so what I have been advocating, and that comes from a lot of gathering of information from what a lot of people have done to break through, is that you don’t want to circumvent these people. You want to include them in your campaign. So the way that I do that in the cartoon campaign is that I … or say any of the reps from any of my clients will call up and they’ll say, “Hi, my name is so-and-so.” I’ll just use my name now, so, “Hi, I’m Stu Heinecke. I’m one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists, and I have a print of one of my cartoons, and it’s about your boss, that I’m sending.”

Stu Heinecke: Usually, by that time they’re saying, “Wait, what? Really?” And the rest of it is, “Look, I want it to be a surprise to your boss, but not to you. Would you mind if I send you an email with the details? And that way you’ll have my contact information.” Usually, the response is, “Yeah, of course. Sure. Here’s my email address.” So an email goes out and it’s a, “Thank you so much for your help, and here’s what I was saying. As soon as I have FedEx tracking information, I’ll get that to you.” So then, when the tracking information is available, you send that.

Stu Heinecke: In the meantime, you send a card. We usually send a card with a personalized cartoon for the executive assistant as well, so that they can keep it on their desk if they want to, or that’s generally what happens. They get it, they’re thrilled with it. And, “Oh my gosh, thank you for my cartoon too.” So there are four touch points before the big board even arrives. By the time it arrives, and certainly by the time the sender calls for the target executive, a lot of things have warmed up. That’s a pretty good example of what one version of a contact marketing campaign might look like. But certainly that’s not to say that you have to be a cartoonist to do this.

John Jantsch: Yeah, so there were elements of that that were probably universal in the way that you handled that, but what would be some other ideas that … I mean, obviously the cartoon works for you. You can execute on that. That really works. What are some other ideas you’ve seen that would substitute for the cartoon that people have been effective using that same kind of approach?

Stu Heinecke: Well, I think the thing that we want to do always is we want to be getting in touch with something that provides instant value. And then also, and this is the thing that I think we really need to do, is that it ought to be done so well that the person on the other end of this, they’re saying, “Oh my God, I love the way this person thinks.” So you can see that in the cartoon. That happens, but then consider, let’s say, I think you probably know Dan Waldschmidt?

John Jantsch: Yes. Yeah.

Stu Heinecke: Yeah. So Dan is, as you and I know, but he’s the author of Edgy Conversations, both the blog and the book, and he’s a top blogger in the sales space. But what he does for a living is he’s a turnaround specialist, and he has this really interesting way of getting in touch with the CEOs of companies that are in trouble. What he does then is he starts the day by reading the business news, looking for stories of missing earnings estimates. And when he finds one, he has this beautiful sword made up. And, John, that sword is like, it’s a full size sword. It’s made by the prop maker who made the swords for all of the movie Gladiator, if you remember that. They’re really beautiful and ultra realistic. They’re not sharpened, by the way. That’s a good thing.

Stu Heinecke: And the blade is engraved with the CEO’s name, and then one of Dan’s favorite inscriptions, “If you’re not all in, you’re not in at all.” And so that gets put in this wooden box, beautiful wooden box, with a handwritten note that says, “Hey, dear so and so, business is war and I noticed you lost a battle recently. I just want to let you know, if you ever need a few extra hands in battle, we’ve got your back.” And he signs it, and I don’t know if he even puts a business card in there. It’s not done on letterhead, and it’s all handwritten.

Stu Heinecke: Dan reports that he gets 100% percent response rate to this campaign. That’s amazing. And we’re both marketers so we know that … I used to hear all the time at where I started out in direct mail and direct marketing that if you get a 1% response rate, you’re doing really well. That’s kind of a typical response rate. And of course, there’s no such number, but that’s a 1% response rate. Most click-through rates are fractions of a percent. So these numbers are miraculous, I think, actually.

John Jantsch: Well, I think something that we need to point out is probably the key to this is you said it was something of value, it was hard to ignore, it was personalized. It clearly wasn’t something that somebody sat around and said, “Oh yeah, a thousand people got this today.” I think that for a lot of us, six, seven, eight, more appointments a month would make life beautiful. We don’t necessarily need thousands, right?

Stu Heinecke: That’s right. And if you get in with the right people, then they … Think about everything that’s changed in our lives, and particularly in our business lives. It’s changed because we made contact with someone who changed everything. So six or seven of those a year could do a lot for your business.

John Jantsch: Well, and even obviously, you can take it to the million dollar appointment kind of thing. But if you are a small business owner, I’m a marketing consultant, I train a lot of marketing consultants. Really, six or eight $50,000 clients a year is, for an independent marketing consultant, is a nice piece of business. Because I’m thinking people out there might be going, “Oh, well, that’s a lot of work, and look at the investment in that.” But again, 100% response means you send six of these out and you’re going to get six meetings.

Stu Heinecke: Yeah, no. Yeah, that’s kind of an interesting point because Dan gets 100% response rate. It gets 100% to his piece. But that’s not … How do I put it? It’s not typical. However, in the new book I also explored a completely new model. The current model or, I hesitate to call it the old model, but we’ll call it that for now. The old model is you send something that just knocks their socks off or you do something. Podcasts are a great contact device. Getting interviews with the people you’d like to do business with is a great way to connect with them.

John Jantsch: I’ve said that for years. I tell people, “You ought to be calling your prospects because they’ll return your call if you’re calling to interview them.”

Stu Heinecke: Yeah, and it’s a bonding process when you do the interview and so on. It’s a great thing to do.

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Stu Heinecke: So the thing is, though, as long as you … Well, I guess I should say that that’s very effective, and as I just mentioned, Dan’s response rate is already 100%. For some of my clients, some of my actually Fortune 1000 clients, gets them way up into let’s say the 70% response range and 50% meeting range. That’s huge. That’s really huge. But the thing that bothered me was, if we’re using account based marketing, let’s say if we’ve identified the companies that we want to connect with and do business with, and particularly at the highest level, I always think in terms of the highest level anyway.

Stu Heinecke: But if we get a 70% response rate to a campaign, it’s a miraculous number. But it started to bother me that we were also leaving 30% on the table and what could we do about them? And there’s really no reason we shouldn’t be able to connect with them. So the new model also includes a new digital persistence campaign using remarketing, really, to supplement what should be a natural cadence of persistence anyway. But when you have that going on in the background …

Stu Heinecke: If I wanted to reach out to you, John, and we know that Terminus does this and RollWorks does this, but if I wanted to reach out to you and really get your attention, what would be ideal is to start running ads for my books, probably. So get the meeting and then a headline, one meeting can change everything, and then a link to go buy it at Amazon. If I started running those ads to you on the Google ad network, which means really that it would just follow you around no matter where you went, you’d start to get the sense that, “Wow, who wrote this book?” At first you’d ignore it maybe, and then it starts to grow on you.

Stu Heinecke: And by the time two weeks have gone by, that frequency and exposure has gotten you saying, “Man, this must be a big deal because it looks like Amazon’s actually advertising it, but this must be a big deal.” And then all of a sudden, boom, I call you. That effect can continue on from pre-contact through contact through the entire sales cycle so that perhaps we do more than just get a 100% response rate to the contact campaign. We actually start bringing up the sales hit rate as well. But I think now, based on this new contact marketing model, that we should be resetting the baseline for response at a really kind of insane level, at 100%.

John Jantsch:: Well, another key we haven’t really talked about is by thinking of small numbers, smaller numbers, we’re also probably doing a better job targeting, right? A lot of times direct mail campaigns don’t work or Facebook ad campaigns don’t work that well because 90% of the people shouldn’t even be in the campaign.

Stu Heinecke: Yeah. A lot of them aren’t there. Yeah. For many reasons, you’re just going to have a really lossy sort of …

John Jantsch:: Yeah. It’s so cheap, so I’ll throw them in there. But I think when you’re going to send somebody a sword, they probably better be pretty targeted.

Stu Heinecke: Yeah, well, that costs Dan $1,000 every time he puts one of those out, which is also kind of … Yeah. So yeah, it ought to be right on target. But of course his process is to use a trigger event, the missed earnings report, so they are really well targeted and obviously they’re well targeted because he’s getting not that kind of a response rate.

John Jantsch:: Yeah, I’ll bet in his case, and of course this would just be anecdotal, but I bet you people talk about it too, which maybe increases and introduces him to some people that maybe he didn’t even target.

Stu Heinecke: That’s a great point. Actually the highest response rate I’ve seen now to a contact marketing campaign is now 300%. And you might say, “Well, wait a minute. 300%?” But it’s exactly what you just described. They’re so clever, they’re so interesting and compelling, that they get shown off to other people and it’s, “Oh, can I get that guy’s number?” So you send one piece out, it gets shown around, and you get three responses back.

John Jantsch:: In Get the Meeting, you also … You’ve shared a couple examples, but you have, I think you told me something like 60 case studies with pictures and, really, that’s the illustrative aspect of this that kind of shows somebody, walks people through exactly how to do it, don’t you?

Stu Heinecke: I do. In the first book, in How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, I identified 20 categories of contact marketing campaign types. The one I just described with Dan is he’s using a visual metaphor, so they’re visual metaphors and gifts and all sorts of really interesting uses of media exposure. We just talked about podcasts, for example, and video, [inaudible] and so on. There’s all kinds of ways to do this.

Stu Heinecke: As soon as I finished that book, I started hearing from people saying, “Well, you should have interviewed me because, look, this is the way I do it.” [inaudible] There’s a whole lot more to cover. One of the things that I had heard from people who read How to Get a Meeting with Anyone was, “I loved the book, but I really wished that I could have seen what these campaigns looked like.” So this time I wanted to make sure that I honored that. So there are a lot of photographs of these campaigns in there and, yeah, I think it fills it out really nicely that way.

Speaker 1: You also introduce a new form of contact marketing that you’re calling a pocket campaign. Do you want to explain that one?

Stu Heinecke: Sure, yeah. Well, some of the times, because this is about connecting with the people who, in my mind, it’s about connecting with the people who can change the scale of your business or your career. You want to be ready, and sometimes we meet these people in person and you want to be ready with a campaign there too. So the interesting thing for me was that there’s something about business cards that’s not working and it’s bothered me for a long time that we go through these sort of hoops of …

Stu Heinecke: Well, sometimes, go through hoops of producing cards that are pretty expensive, and they’re pretty fancy in the way that they’re produced. It could be embossed or or foil stamped or, maybe it’s laser engraved on on metal or carbon fiber or wood or something like that. They can get pretty exotic, but they still do the same thing, which is they try to make us look important. Of course, here’s my contact details, but it’s all meant to impress the person receiving it, and that’s not happening. I don’t think anyone’s impressed anymore. Usually those cards just get thrown away or put in a box or something.

Stu Heinecke: And I did a really quick informal … I couldn’t even call it a study or a questionnaire, but I just asked on LinkedIn for people to respond, “Who’s using business cards? Who’s not? If you’re not using business cards, what are you using instead? And if you are using business cards, what does it look like? Show us. What makes it special?” And so what I found was about half of the people aren’t using business cards. They’re saying, “Well, what I do is if I’m at a networking event or something like that, we’ll just swap phones and type our details into each other’s address book or we’ll just agree to … Or not agree to. We’ll just connect on LinkedIn right there.” And I think all of those are missed opportunities.

Stu Heinecke: So I started by just looking at what … I know that I’ve gotten a handful of cards in my career that I’ve gotten them, and you’ve gotten them too, we’ve all gotten them. You look at it and go, “Oh my God, wow. I didn’t even know a card could be like that. That’s really cool.” You save it and it doesn’t get the same treatment. And what I realized is that, by and large, what those cards are is they’re engagement devices, which is totally different from what business cards are. Business cards are showing off. It’s plumage. I don’t know, it’s fluff. But these are invitations to play or to use it in some way.

Stu Heinecke: So a couple of examples. One of the cards was for the owner of a bike repair shop. The card is stamped out of metal and it’s, it’s a multi tool, so [inaudible 00:22:43]. It’s a wrench, different sizes of nuts that can be put in there, and it also will tighten spokes and so on.

John Jantsch: Probably open a beer too, I imagine.

Stu Heinecke: I’m pretty sure it had a bottle opener. Yeah. Because what are you going to do? And it’s wallet size, well, I mean, actually, it’s credit card size. You can put it in your wallet. Now that card gets carried everywhere. And it’s not adorned with a special … Obviously, there’s no foil stamping or anything like that. It’s just his name. It’s just stamped into the thing. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I mean, his name and his contact details.

Stu Heinecke: There was one other one that that really, really, really stood out to me. This was a card that was printed on a piece of sheet rubber and they stretched it on a jig, though, before they printed it. So then they printed it with the person’s name and what they do and their phone number and then when the ink cures and dries, they take it off the jig. Now it returns to its original shape and all those details are squeezed together, kind of like a balloon that’s been deflated.

Stu Heinecke: So, naturally, when he hands that out, people will stretch it. They just grab it at both ends and stretch it. And he would tell me that if he’d give it out at a, let’s say he’s at a pub somewhere and he’s just talking, there’s a conversation and, “What do you do?” “What do you do?” “Well, here’s my card.” “Here’s mine.” Well, when he whips out this floppy little thing, it’s like an ambush, really. And the person takes it, they stretch it, and the funny thing is when they do that, it reveals it’s Paul Nielsen’s card. He’s a fitness trainer. And guess what? He has you exercising. So they take that to the office, they show it around. He’s the one who gets more than 300% response. Actually, he gets three or four new clients every time he hands one of those out.

Stu Heinecke: So I wanted to combine that with and integrate it with the digital persistence track of the new model. So what happens is each of these involvement devices needs to have an offer that leads to a page where we can then pixel the person who’s received it. So if you think about the example of the multi-tool card, if that card was, let’s say it had a lot of cutouts but they weren’t labeled, but what it was labeled with was was the fellow’s name and contact details and then also a URL to go view a video to see how it works, just to see how to use it.

Stu Heinecke: Well, then you’ll follow up, you’ll go, and I’m sure he pointed that out, “Hey, go to this site and just take a look. There’s a little video there. It’ll show you how it works.” Well, the recipient will go to that site and view the video, and then a pixel has been set, a tracking pixel, and from that point on then that person starts seeing the digital persistence campaign and draws them in even further. So the combination of these things, we’ve already seen it.

Stu Heinecke: Some of my consulting clients are, or really mastermind clients, are using big … I’m sorry, not big boards, but pocket campaigns right now, and they’re getting sales directly from these devices, which is exactly what I want. So that instead of handing out something that’s inert that’s probably going to get thrown away or tossed to the side into a box, they’re actually handing out a campaign that still launches from their pocket.

Stu Heinecke: But it plies the recipients with persistence and with probably just continued value and certainly continued reminders of who they met, who this was, and even just the involvement device, engagement devices handed out. It’s resulting in sales, which means it’s resulting in ROI and response rates. You can actually maybe test them, one out of one pocket, the other one out of the other or something.

John Jantsch: I’m visiting with Stu Heinecke. He is the author of Get the Meeting. Stu, tell folks where they can find out more about you and your work.

Stu Heinecke: Sure. Well, I guess probably the easiest way to find me is either on LinkedIn, Stu Heinecke, S-T-U H-E-I-N-E-C-K-E. You can come to my other site, same thing, stuheinecke.com, and get a free preview of Get the Meeting, actually. And those are probably the two best ways to get in touch.

John Jantsch: Well, Stu, thanks for joining us and another great book. Looking forward to diving into it deeper myself, and hopefully we’ll see you someday soon out there on the road.

Stu Heinecke: John, what a pleasure to join you. Thanks so much for having me on.



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Tracking Wonder Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Tracking Wonder Podcast – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

John Jantsch appears on the Tracking Wonder podcast to discuss his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

Having spent more than 30 years in business for himself, Jantsch has learned a thing or two about the entrepreneurial life. While his previous books have been more marketing-focused and have provided tips and guidance on how to manage small business marketing, this book is about feeding the entrepreneurial spirit.

Staying true to yourself, believing in your vision, and cultivating a self-reliant worldview are all critical aspects of being an entrepreneur, but it’s easier said than done. This book is designed to offer daily meditations for entrepreneurs, to guide them on their journey as they grow a business and live their life.

Check it out – Mastering the Entrepreneurial Self episode on the Tracking Wonder Podcast, featuring John Jantsch



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5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement

Colorful pallet of crushed pigment powders image.

Colorful pallet of crushed pigment powders image. With more than 2.4 billion users worldwide, Facebook has long been a popular platform for brands both B2B and direct-to-consumer looking to creatively and effectively showcase their products and services. Facebook has released scores of new features over the past several years that have not only helped it remain among the most-used social media platforms — despite facing well-publicized challenges over the past several years — but also increasingly to become a destination for professional business users, and users looking for a social experience markedly different from LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. With Facebook having launched so many new tools for brands to maximize their engagement on the platform, let’s take a look at how five large primarily B2B companies are creatively  connecting with audiences through pages, groups, communities, and several other methods Facebook provides.

#1 — Canva

Canva Image https://www.facebook.com/canva/ 1,359,228 followers Since arriving on the Web graphic-design scene in 2012, Canva has seen its numerous creative tools adopted by more professionals every year, with company valuations hitting $2.5 billion in 2019. With its recently-launches Canva Enterprise design platform targeting brands by offering features including digital asset management and multi-channel campaign management, Canva counts among its B2B clients Pfizer, RE/MAX, and others. As a firm catering to creative professionals, it’s no surprise that Canva artistically uses its Facebook presence to engage with its community of some 1.3 million page followers, using entertaining video, informative image-rich posts, and coverage of events such as its recent Canva for Enterprise launch New York Times Square billboard. Canva Example 1 Canva regularly asks relevant questions of its Facebook community and actively responds positively in emoji-rich comments, such as a recent color and hue-related post which inquired “How are hue feeling?” Canva Example 2 Canva hosts several Facebook groups including a Canva Teachers Community, a Canva Design Circle, and a Canva Nonprofits Community, utilizes Facebook Events to promote its real-life events such as its recent “Design School After Hours: Branding your Business” workshop, and actively engages with Facebook fans in its page’s community section.

#2 — Airbnb

Airbnb https://www.facebook.com/airbnb/ 16,152,571 followers Airbnb has skillfully utilized its Facebook presence to build a sizable following of more than 16 million fans, and with initiatives such as its Airbnb for Work program targeting business — used by companies including Salesforce and PayPal — the firm is a fine example of how B2B audiences can be engaged and nurtured on Facebook. Native video posts centered around relevant holidays, such as Airbnb’s recent “Welcome to Cisco. Population: 1” initiative — part of its “spooky stays” program — encourage Facebook fans to share and take part. Airbnb Example

#3 — Mailchimp

Mailchimp https://www.facebook.com/mailchimp/ 405,208 followers For email marketing and automation firm Mailchimp, Facebook serves as an important social media platform to communicate with and inform clients and potential partners. Sharing marketing advice, studies, reports, contests and more, Mailchimp’s Facebook page thrives by helping both established B2B firms and new businesses with actionable insight delivered in entertaining and visually enticing stories. Facebook also serves as a platform for sharing news from Mailchimp’s many initiatives, including its original podcasts such as “The Jump with Shirley Manson.” Mailchimp Example

#4 — Boeing

Boeing https://www.facebook.com/Boeing/ 1,433,349 followers Boeing uses its sizable Facebook following to share behind-the-scenes video glimpses into the firm and its many programs around the world, such as a recent "Have you ever wondered?" look at how it goes about capturing the oftentimes breathtaking aerial footage it features on the page. Boeing Example Boeing also regularly encourages its Facebook fans to take part in a variety of corporate social responsibility efforts, such as a recent two-way conversation program for Disability Awareness Month. Boeing Example 2

#5 — 3M

3M https://www.facebook.com/3M/ 4,666,707 followers 3M* cleverly uses a variety of video, image-rich, live-streaming, and other types of Facebook posts to actively share news and information about its many global programs, such as a recent "3M Young Scientist Challenge" call for votes. 3M Example 1 At TopRank Marketing we are B2B influencer marketing specialists, and have recently worked to feature influencers in our client 3M’s Champions of Science series of podcasts. Recent industry experts appearing on Champions of Science have included geophysicist Mika McKinnon, Professor Stephen Curry, Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, Dr. Suze Kundu, Materials Chemist and Science Presenter, Chris Gammell, Principal, Analog Life, LLC, and Matt Hartings, Associate Professor of Chemistry at American University. 3M Example 2 Using podcasting can be a great way to improve customer experience game, and we’ve published several in-depth looks at how B2B marketers can promote podcasts, and have also gathered together an industry-leading list of top marketing-related podcasts, which you can find here: Finally, 3M was the only firm in our list which automatically opens a Facebook chat window to instantly begin communications if desired.

Delivering a Solid & Sustainable Facebook Strategy

It’s clear from the varied examples we’ve looked at here cleverly implemented by Canva, Airbnb, Mailchimp, Boeing, and 3M that there are numerous methods for successfully building a solid and sustainable Facebook brand strategy. * 3M is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post 5 Top B2B Brands Mastering Facebook Engagement appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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What Does a Mobile-Optimized Email Look Like?

A B2B mobile marketing strategy is a must for any company that wants to interact with its target audience. It’s not just consumers looking at their phones and tablets more so than their laptops and desktops. Company decision-makers already use mobile devices to help them work from anywhere, conducting research, interacting with B2B brands, and making purchases.

As part of this B2B mobile marketing strategy, emails are an integral way to reach out to prospects with information they need to make purchase decisions. However, like the other components found in this mobile plan, there are differences in terms of the optimum mobile email experience. Here’s what a mobile-optimized email should look like. 

Be Concise with Everything

An optimized email is easy on the eyes. That means you will have to take a streamlined approach to both the written and visual content. Keeping it simple will help everything from load time to the short attention span of your recipient.

That means a clean, stripped-down design with just one or two key points. With minimal text, you also won’t have to resort to using a tiny font size that no one can read just to fit in everything you need to say. Instead, use at least 14pt for mobile email body text and 20pt for headlines.

You don’t want to make your recipient scroll or move around the screen to find what they need in your email. If you do, they are sure to abandon your email.

Pay Attention to Images in Mobile Emails

Since visuals are such a beloved part of any marketing interaction, your images have to be perfect. Send a mobile email with a blurry picture, and you can basically conclude you’ve lost engagement with whoever received it.

You might think that responsive design typically found in drag-and-drop email templates is the cure-all for image issues for mobile devices. But, it’s not that easy. This is because emails don’t always use the same format, especially if what you are sending is actually a transactional-style message or an email newsletter both of which have multi-column layouts.

Also, you need to optimize your email images for mobile devices in a responsive manner and follow best practice approaches to using images in these mobile emails. For example, avoid using images that are thumbnail size, such as those with a width of 180px. These images will then stretch to twice their size when viewed on an iPhone and look terrible.

You also have to plan your mobile email images for mobile devices that use high-definition displays like the iPhone’s Retina. This display stretches an image even more than other mobile device displays. That means a blurry, pixelated image, which no one wants to look at.

In these cases, you can use the iPhone screen as a point of reference, using images that are twice as large as the screen’s width. This equates to images with an approximate width of 750px.

Take Other Image Actions

However, it’s not just about sizing the images correctly. That’s because you also have to think about load time when your recipient opens their mobile email. This is when you need to think about how to compress your image files.

To do this, you can use your photo editing software that typically include this feature. Or, you can try a photo compression service that figures out the optimum compression to do for each image you upload to it. 

Make Link Size and CTA Buttons Bigger Than You Think

Although you may assume that the smaller screen found on a mobile device means that everything should shrink, that’s not the case with your link size and call-to-action (CTA) buttons. These are two aspects of the mobile email where you want the recipient to do something that directly impacts your leads and conversions.

Therefore, these need to be easy to read, which means make them big enough to read clearly so they know where to click on a text link. For a CTA button, the recommended size is to be taller and wider than 57 x 57 pixels.

Always Preview and Test Before Sending

The best approach is to test your mobile emails before you send them by viewing them on different mobile device screens. You can get others on your marketing team to also look at the mobile email for their feedback. Some email editor software lets you see a preview, but most often you can send the email to others in the company before publishing it to your entire database. After all, you only get one chance to make an impression with that mobile email campaign.

                                                                                                                                                            

Find out more about responsive design and adapting emails to the micro-screens of mobile with this “Mobile Email Guide.”

Go to the guide.

 

 



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Tuesday 29 October 2019

Beyond IMTS Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

Beyond IMTS Interview – The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Steve Miller chats with author and marketing expert John Jantsch about his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. The book is structured as 366 daily meditations; centered around a reading from a transcendentalist author, each entry is designed to help guide entrepreneurs through the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial life.

Check it out – Steve Miller Interviews John Jantsch for Beyond IMTS



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Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together

Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Jill Soley
Podcast Transcript

Jill Soley headshotOn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with author and product and marketing executive Jill Soley.

Soley has been developing, launching, and nurturing products for nearly 20 years; she’s currently the Chief Product Officer at the agile project management software firm Obo.

Over the years, she’s learned a lot about how critical it is to bring together product management and marketing efforts. She’s brought together all of her learnings into a book, Beyond Product: How Exceptional Founders Embrace Marketing to Create and Capture Value for Their Business.

Soley hopes to help entrepreneurs who don’t have a strong marketing background find success for their products and their businesses as a whole. She shares some of her insights from the book on this episode.

Questions I ask Jill Soley:

  • What’s the difference between marketing for non-marketers and regular old marketing?
  • How does the go-to-market approach vary between  services versus products?
  • What are the five things a company must do once they’ve completed the early research stage?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why it’s important to get market validation and to do product testing with real potential customers (not just your friends!).
  • Why it’s important to start customer segmentation early on in your process.
  • Why companies need to start by defining their ideal customer.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Jill Soley:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Klaviyo logo

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re looking to grow your business there is only one way: by building real, quality customer relationships. That’s where Klaviyo comes in.

Klaviyo helps you build meaningful relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers, allowing you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages.

What’s their secret? Tune into Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday docu-series to find out and unlock marketing strategies you can use to keep momentum going year-round. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/beyondbf.



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Transcript of Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together

Transcript of Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

Klaviyo logo

John Jantsch: This episode of The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a platform that helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing.

John Jantsch: Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Duct Tape Marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jill Soley. She is a Silicon Valley based strategic product and marketing executive, happens to be the Chief Product Officer at a project management tool called Obo. And, today we’re going to talk about a book that she’s a co-author on called Beyond Product: How Exceptional Founders Embrace Marketing to Create and Capture Value for Their Business. So Jill, thanks for joining me.

Jill Soley: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.

John Jantsch: So as as we were deciding on the topic for today’s show, you suggested marketing for non marketers. And, I guess it just makes me as a marketer want to know what’s the difference between non-marketing marketers, or marketing for non marketers and just, I don’t know, marketing?

Jill Soley: Specifically, I’m interested and I wrote a book about marketing. And, its audience is really startup founders, small business leaders, anyone launching new products and new businesses, who doesn’t come from a deep marketing background. And, that’s why I suggested the topic, that what I’ve seen is that most founders don’t come from a marketing background, and it’s, I think, obviously super important to the success of their business to understand.

Jill Soley: So, the idea behind the book is that, particularly here in Silicon Valley, there are lots of technical founders, who they have an idea for a company, they start a company, and they have deep expertise in the domain. They have deep expertise in the technology. They’re focused on building product. Maybe they’re sales people. But, most of them aren’t marketing people.

Jill Soley: And, what happens as a result is there’s … Well, there are a bunch of different sort of scenarios. But, many of them, and most of them, lead to companies that aren’t that successful, because there’s often this belief that if you build it, they will come, right? I’ve got the best product, so of course it’s going to be successful. Or they make mistakes that perhaps wouldn’t happen, and they have to do with hiring or mismatched expectations, et cetera, that lead to major points of failure.

John Jantsch: Do you statistics on startups? I mean, I know a lot of people talk about … When I started working primarily with small business, it was like 50% of all small businesses failed in the first three years. I don’t know if that’s statistics accurate or not. But, particularly when it comes to kind of the work you’ve seen with product startup folks, is there kind of a number that people use that … You talked about it not being as successful. But, I mean, is there a number for down outright failure?

Jill Soley: I’ve seen a few different studies that basically sort of are all kind of centered somewhere around this 80% number. I’ve seen some that go as high as saying 95% of startups fail, and some that are a little lower, closer to 70%. But, the upshot is more than half of … It’s not just startups. But, it’s new products in general. So that’s new products in large businesses fail.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Let’s talk about products and product marketers. I mean, you talked about in some cases that this was a scientist or an engineer or something that had a good idea, thought the world needed it, brought it to the market. Is that really much different than say the person that learned how to do accounting, that started in an accounting firm? And, do you see differences between kind of that service and that product in terms of really even what the go to market is?

Jill Soley: Well, differences in terms of the challenges that they face, or difference in terms of the go to market that they need, approaches that they-

John Jantsch: Yeah. I mean, probably the challenges are somewhat similar. But, in terms of the kind of the mentality of how they’re going to go out there and get clients and market the business.

Jill Soley: At the core, I think it’s pretty consistent, right? At the core, the approach is really figure out who your customer is. Figure out what their pain points are. Figure out what their needs are. Speak to those, right? Make sure you’re solving a problem for them. I mean, the fundamentals of marketing are actually pretty consistent. It’s depending on who that customer is, the approach is going to be wildly different. Are you selling to teenagers who live on their phones? Are you selling to moms or elderly people or you name it? These other demographics who may spend time, business people who are at conferences or whatever, right? Where and how you market may be different as a result, but the fundamentals are very much the same.

John Jantsch: Would you say also, I guess, another dynamic that’s at play here when we’re talking about product companies is that a lot of times … I’ll go back to my example of the accounting firm. I mean, there’s already a market established for I got to get my taxes done. I have to have X, Y, Z done. Maybe now I’m just looking for somebody to fill that need for me. Whereas occasionally, or maybe the majority of the time, somebody who’s creating a product that maybe fills a need for something that didn’t exist before, that they actually have to maybe even educate people as to what problem this solves. I mean, would you say that that’s sort of an inherent challenge with a product company?

Jill Soley: I would say those are … But, both of those companies have big, major challenges. But, they’re very different challenges. And, I’ve done both, right? I ran marketing for a company that sold customer support software, right? Very crowded market. And, the challenge is how do you rise above the fray? How do you show that you’re different and get people to pay attention to you versus I’ve done category creation where nobody is looking specifically for that product that you’re selling, and you have to educate them on what it is, and why they needed, and how you could help them and support them. But, I mean, both are inherently hard. They’re just hard in different ways.

John Jantsch: Because you have the word beyond product in the topic, I’m guessing that a big piece of your work and your education is to teach people that it’s not enough to just have a good product. So, how do you have to go beyond that? Or how do you begin to move beyond the fact that maybe you do have a good idea or a good product, I should say?

Jill Soley: Yeah. And, that’s really one of the common problems that I saw was that first stage of a startup, right? Is very much founders get very focused in on the product, building out that product and get the blinders on to the other things that they need to do, right? There’s a lot of stuff that you need to do, that you should be doing early on, and you could be getting benefit from sort of the work you’re doing early on, hopefully with discovery and testing with customers and stuff, that isn’t happening because they’re so focused on product. But, what happens is then all of a sudden that they deem that they have a product that’s ready to go to market, and they haven’t done all the other stuff that they need to do. And so, that launch doesn’t do so well, et cetera.

John Jantsch: Yeah. How important do you think it is to actually develop a product with an ideal customer in mind, or maybe even with feedback from an ideal customer to … So, instead of you’re just doing something in a laboratory, you’re actually doing something that somebody validates while you’re doing it.

Jill Soley: Oh! I believe it’s absolutely essential.

John Jantsch: I mean, is that a step that you see quite often gets completely skipped?

Jill Soley: Yes. I am surprised how often it gets skipped actually. Or there’s not sort of true validation. It’s, “Let me test this with friendly people, right? My buddies, et cetera, who are of course going to support me,” or who the product doesn’t have the … The founders aren’t truly focused on a segment, and they’re sort of trying to meet the needs of too large a segment. And so, they can’t really meet anybody’s needs super well, right? Because you only have so much bandwidth, right? There are bunch of challenges in there if you’re not really sort of focused on an ideal customer.

John Jantsch: I want to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening and understanding cues from your customers. And, this allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages. There’s powerful segmentation, email auto-responders that are ready to go, great reporting. You want to learn a little bit about the secret to building customer relationships, they’ve got a really fun series called Klaviyo’s Beyond Black Friday. It’s a docu-series, a lot of fun, quick lessons. Just head on over to klaviyo.com/BeyondBF, Beyond Black Friday.

John Jantsch: A lot of, I mean, you see it in the media occasionally. Somebody has an idea, creates a product, it’s a huge hit and they cash out, and exit do. And then obviously, there are people that that build a product, and then they decide they want to grow the category, and maybe they want to add more products, and maybe they want to have impact in a different way. Is there a completely different path to how you would develop those two companies? If I had the goal of, “I want to get in. Cash out on this thing as fast as possible.” As opposed to, “I want to mature this product or this company.” I mean, are are you going to go about building those companies in different ways?

Jill Soley: Potentially. If you’re really trying to get a quick win, and you’re going to cash out, and you aren’t really trying to solve a problem, sort of really solve a problem and be there long term to kind of build it out and support it and so forth, then I guess maybe you cut corners and stuff such that you make it look good and seem good up front, but it doesn’t really scale, et cetera, ongoing. Maybe you can hear my voice the skepticism around that strategy. And, maybe that’s my own personal bias around … I’m pretty mission-driven, right? I mean, this book is mission driven. I’m trying to solve a problem that I’m seeing, right? All this waste products that are failing for the wrong reasons, right? I mean, you don’t make money on a book, right?

Jill Soley: I didn’t write the book to make money. I wrote Beyond Product because I’m trying to actually help people, offer some, some painful lessons learned, right? That I’ve learned, and that other people have learned along the way, to people who I think can benefit from it. So, I think if you’re really trying to go and build something that actually makes an impact, then you go out and really figure out what the problem is, right? What’s a real problem in the market? And then, work towards really solving it, right? Which isn’t going to be an overnight thing probably.

John Jantsch: If somebody came to you, and they really had what seemed like a pretty good idea, they’d done some research, they’d done some discovery, what would be kind of your five things that you need to make sure you do?

Jill Soley: If they’re at the really early stage, certainly, I would look into the kind of research they’d done, and try and just really understand it, and make sure that they had kind of dug in deeply, and they weren’t sort of suffering from confirmation bias, if you will, right? Which is common. The early research is either with people I know or I’m listening for things that confirm my beliefs instead of that refute it.

Jill Soley: And so, once I’ve kind of dug into that, and have some level … Either have a level of confidence or kind of send them back to do some additional research. And then, sort of as they get to that next stage, where they’re trying to sort of really define, “Well, what is that solution now, right?” I’d try and get them to segment among those early customers who they talk to, right? Who are you really solving for? Get a really clear picture. Maybe try and find some of those people who will be early beta testers.

Jill Soley: And then, figure out kind of what are some of the smallest … What’s that smallest thing that they could provide that might solve a problem? And, begin to do quick iterations maybe. I mean, they don’t even have to be product at that point. They could potentially be paper prototypes, et cetera. What can you put in front of people to really kind of test out your ideas in a cheap and quick way to iterate before you spend a lot of money to build out your solution?

John Jantsch: Are there some folks that you think have done this particularly well, maybe they learned while they were doing it, but in the end, they came out and did a really great job with what you think is a great way to go beyond product?

Jill Soley: I think there are certainly lots of startups that do this. I’m trying to … I mean, you can go back to something like a Salesforce even, right? I mean, their initial product wasn’t really much to speak of, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that’s a marketing company. They have done a phenomenal job of marketing. But, what they did early on is they saw a pain point in the market, right? They saw that there were these segment, these parts of companies, right? These departments and all whose needs weren’t being met, and they weren’t going to be met by this big enterprise product that was there, right?

Jill Soley: So, they went in with a smaller cloud-based product that these departments could implement, and they could get benefit from. And then, they built out their product. And then, they expanded, and they built a platform, and so on, and so on, until they became the Salesforce that we know today, right?

John Jantsch: Yeah. Then, they became the big enterprise product.

Jill Soley: Exactly. We argue about whether it’s a great product today or not, and so forth. But, I mean, if you’re looking at sort of a model for this, I thought that’s a pretty good one. There’s certainly lots of startups as well that are doing this today as well as the ones who are perhaps not.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I think HubSpot actually probably copied that model to some degree. I mean, they were voracious marketers as they were building out the product. And, I think a lot of people, a lot of HubSpot fans, I don’t know how familiar you are with them and their product, but early on, it was a pretty clunky product. And now, they’ve really continued to invest and enhance it. But, they were voracious marketers.

Jill Soley: Well, and one of the things … They got the marketing right. And, there are some interesting sort of marketing strategy that they did really well. And, one of the things that they in particular did is, I think, early on, as I understand it, they had some internal debates about who their customer was. And, Brian Halligan has actually written about this online that they eventually kind of had a heart to heart as a company, right? Internally, they sat down and kind of forced that decision. And, as I understand it from people there, right? It was forcing that decision and picking a very specific target market that really helped their business be successful.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I would agree with that. Let’s talk a little bit about Obo. Are you, as a Chief Product Officer at Obo, are you bringing kind of what you’ve learned? And certainly, anytime you write a book, and then you’re in this position, I think there’s going to be some people pointing to you, “Are we practicing what we’re preaching in the real world?”

Jill Soley: Yep. And, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do there. I mean, right now I’m actually … I’ve come in. Product isn’t out in the market yet. But, we’re close. But, I’m coming in, and I’m actually going back, and just validating some of what has been decided, in terms of strategy to, frankly, make sure that I buy into it, and to figure out sort of where we go from here.

Jill Soley: Its mission, and sort of where it started, was this idea of market first product, right? Focusing in on a market need and understanding the market as opposed to product out, right? Product first. And, there are expert market researchers as part of the team and so forth, right? And, that really, really believe this, inherently, and are looking at sort of how we include that in our process as well as include it in our product, right? That’s exactly what I’m trying to do at Obo.

John Jantsch: Jill, where can people find out more about your work, get the book obviously, particularly if you’re a product person out there listening, and really anywhere else you want to send people to find out more?

Jill Soley: Sure. You can learn more about Beyond Product at beyondproduct.co. Dot CO, not COM. And of course, it’s available on amazon.com and any of your favorite bookstores. I can also be found at jillsoley.com. And, if you’re interested in software for product managers, Obo is at obo.pm. OBO dot PM. Lots of places to find me.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well Jill, thanks for taking the time to stop by today, and hopefully we’ll run into you when I’m out there on the road.

Jill Soley: Awesome. Well, thanks John. This was fun.



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How Google’s Bert Update Will Affect Content Marketing

Google announced that it has been rolling out a new update called Bert.

I know what you are thinking… does this update really matter? Should I even spend time learning about it?

Well, Bert will affect 1 in 10 search queries.

To give you an idea of how big of an update this is, it’s the biggest update since Google released RankBrain.

In other words, there is a really good chance that this impacts your site. And if it doesn’t, as your traffic grows, it will eventually affect your site.

But before we go into how this update affects SEOs and what you need to adjust (I will go into that later in this post), let’s first get into what this update is all about.

So, what is Bert?

Bert stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

You are probably wondering, what the heck does that mean, right?

Google, in essence, has adjusted its algorithm to better understand natural language processing.

Just think of it this way: you could put a flight number into Google and they typically show you the flight status. Or a calculator may come up when you type in a math equation. Or if you put a stock symbol in, you’ll get a stock chart.

Or even a simpler example is: you can start typing into Google and its autocomplete feature can figure out what you are searching for before you even finishing typing it in.

But Google has already had all of that figured out before Bert. So let’s look at some examples of Bert in action.

Is Bert even useful?

Here are 4 examples of Bert.

Let’s say you search for “2019 brazil traveler to usa need visa”.

Before Bert, the top result would be how US citizens can travel to Brazil without a visa. But look at the search query carefully… it’s slight, but it is a big difference.

The search wasn’t about US people going to Brazil, it was about people from Brazil traveling to the US.

The result after the Bert update is much more relevant.

Google is now taking into account prepositions like “for” or “to” that can have a lot of meanings to the search query.

Here’s another example… “do estheticians stand a lot at work”…

Google used to previously match terms. For example, their system used to think “stand” is the same as “stand-alone”.

Now they understand that the word “stand” has the context of physical demand. In other words, is the job exhausting… do you have to be on your feet a lot?

And one more, “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy” …

As you can see from the before and after picture, it’s clear that the new result is more relevant.

Same with this one on “math practice books for adults” …

Is that the only change?

It isn’t. Google also made changes to featured snippets.

For example, if you searched for “parking on a hill with no curb”, Google used to place too much emphasis on the word “curb” and not enough emphasis on the word “no”.

That’s a big difference… and you can see that in the results.

The new changes this algorithm update brings makes it much more relevant for searchers and it creates a better experience for you and me and everyone else who uses Google.

But how does it affect SEOs?

You need to change your SEO strategy

There are three types of queries people usually make when performing a search:

  1. Informational
  2. Navigational
  3. Transactional

An informational query is like someone looking to lose weight. They aren’t sure how so they may search for “how to lose weight”.

And once they perform the search, they may find a solution such as different diets. From there they may search for a solution, using a navigational query such as “Atkins diet”.

Once someone figures out the exact solution, they then may perform a transactional search query, such as “the Atkins diet cookbook”.

From what we are seeing on our end is that Bert is mainly impacting top-of-the-funnel keywords, which are informational related keywords.

Now if you want to not only maintain your rankings but gobble up some of the rankings of your competition, a simple solution is to get very specific with your content.

Typically, when you create content, which is the easiest way to rank for informational related keywords, SEOs tell you to create super long content.

Yes, you may see that a lot of longer-form content ranks well on Google, but their algorithm doesn’t focus on word count, it focuses on quality.

The context of the tweet from Danny Sullivan, who is Google’s search liaison, is that he wants SEOs to focus on creating content that is fundamentally great, unique, useful, and compelling.

So when you use tools like Ubersuggest to find new topics to go after, you need to make sure your content is super-specific.

For example, if you have a business about fitness and you blog about “how to lose weight without taking pills”, your content shouldn’t focus on diet shakes or supplements or anything too similar to diet pills. Instead, it should discuss all of the alternative methods.

I know what you are thinking, shakes and supplements may not be diet pills and they aren’t the same keyword but expect Bert to get more sophisticated in the next year in which it will better understand what people are really looking for.

Additionally, you should stop focusing on keyword density.

Yes, a lot of SEOs have moved away from this, but I still get a handful of emails each day asking me about keyword density.

Keyword density will even be less important in the future as Google better understands the context of the content you are writing.

So, where’s the opportunity?

As I mentioned, it’s related to creating highly specific content around a topic.

It’s not necessarily about creating a really long page that talks about 50 different things that’s 10,000 words long. It’s more about answering a searcher’s question as quick as possible and providing as much value compared to the competition.

Just like when you search for “what is it like to be in the Olympics”, you’ll see a list of results that look something like this:

Although the first result has the title of “What it’s like to go to the Olympics”, the article doesn’t break down what it is like to go as an attendee, it breaks down what it is like to go as an athlete. Just like a searcher would expect based on the query.

Bert was clearly able to figure this out even though the title could have gone either way. And the article itself isn’t that long. The article itself only has 311 words.

If you want to do well when it comes to ranking for informational keywords, go very specific and answer the question better than your competitors. From videos and images to audio, do whatever needs to be done to create a better experience.

Now to be clear, this doesn’t mean that long-form content doesn’t work. It’s just that every SEO already focuses on long-form content. They are going after generic head terms that can be interpreted in 100 different ways and that’s why the content may be long and thorough.

In other words, focus more on long-tail terms.

You may think that is obvious but let’s look at the data.

It all starts with Ubersuggest. If you haven’t used it yet, you can type in a keyword like “marketing” and it will show you the search volume as well as give you thousands (if not millions) of keyword variations.

In the last 30 days, 4,721,534 keyword queries were performed on Ubersuggest by 694,284 marketers. Those 4,721,534 searches returned 1,674,841,398 keyword recommendations.

And sure, SEOs could be typing in head terms to find more long-tail phrases, but when we look at what keywords people are selecting within Ubersuggest and exporting, 84% of marketers are focusing on 1 or 2-word search terms.

Only 1.7% of marketers are focusing on search terms that are 5 or words longer.

Following the strategy of creating content around very specific long-tail phrases is so effective that sites like Quora are generating 60,428,999 visitors a month just from Google alone in the United States.

And a lot of their content isn’t super detailed with 10,000-word responses. They just focus on answering very specific questions that people have.

Conclusion

Even if your search traffic drops a bit from the latest update, it’s a good thing.

I know that sounds crazy, but think of it this way… if someone searched for “how to lose weight without diet pills” and they landed on your article about how diet pills are amazing, they are just going to hit the back button and go back to Google.

In other words, it is unlikely that the traffic converted into a conversion.

Sure, you may lose some traffic from this update, but the traffic was ruining your user metrics and increasing your bounce rate.

Plus, this is your opportunity to create content that is super-specific. If you lose traffic, look at the pages that dropped, the search queries that you aren’t ranking for anymore, and go and adjust your content or create new content that answers the questions people are looking for.

If you don’t know how to do this, just log into Search Console, click on “search results”, and click on the date button.

Then click on compare and select the dates where your traffic dropped and compare it to the previous periods. Then select “Queries” and sort by the biggest difference.

You’ll have to dig for the longer-term search queries as those are the easiest to fix. And if you are unsure about what to fix, just search for the terms on Google that dropped and look at the top-ranking competitors. Compare their page with yours as it will provide some insights.

So, what do you think about the latest update?

The post How Google’s Bert Update Will Affect Content Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.



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