Actionable Marketing Podcast

Mentors can make a major difference in people’s careers. Always willing and able to answer questions, even after you leave a job or company. They are generous with their time to provide expert advice, insight, and guidance. 

Today’s guest is Ben Sailer’s former supervisor and mentor, Dean Froslie, EVP of marketing at Western State Bank in North Dakota. Dean uses the term, Content Super Connector, as a way to bridge the gap between two worlds—content strategy and content marketing.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Turning Point: Writing for digital channels should be more than cranking out copy 
• Converging Channels: Content is center of digital, social, and other teams 
• Evolution: Interpretations and arguments against content strategy meaning
• Content Considerations: Workflow, governance, and people are overlooked
• Web: Make it a better place via UX writing, content models, SEO, accessibility 
• Quantity over Quality: Content marketers fail to consider sustainable practices
• Digital Disappointments: Emphasis on more channels, posts, and engagement 
• Audience-focused Mindset: Produce less content and more results 
• True Differentiator: Define and understand what brand stands for and represents  

Links: 

• Dean Froslie
• Western State Bank
• Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson
• Karen McGrane
• This is Marketing by Seth Godin
• Content Inc by Joe Pulizzi
• Gerry McGovern
• Content Strategy Toolkit by Meghan Casey
• Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
• Letting Go of the Words by Janice Redish
• CoSchedule

Excuses, excuses. Too many tools? Too complicated? Too stressful? It takes time and help to learn how to use new software effectively, especially if you don’t use it regularly. How can marketers successfully onboard new clients and convince them to switch to new software tools and platforms? 

Today’s guest is Andrea Moxham, co-founder and co-owner of Horseshoe & Co. The HubSpot consultancy and partner program member helps businesses understand how to use the comprehensive marketing automation tool to create a cohesive inbound marketing strategy. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Common Challenges: Clients struggle to seamlessly transition to HubSpot and how to use its workflow feature 
• Getting Started: Audit, segment, strategize, scale, and streamline sales and marketing processes
• Resistance or Skepticism? HubSpot ranks highly and doesn’t need buy-in from most decision makers 
• Horseshoe & Co.’s Onboarding Process: 
• • Focus solely on HubSpot
  • Focus on customer service, sales, marketing, and other initiatives 
  • Wish List: What do customers want to get out of HubSpot?
• Key to Success: Establish effective communication and expectations early on

Links: 

• Horseshoe & Co.
• HubSpot
• Salesforce
• Teamwork
• CoSchedule

Do you prefer shorter or longer content? As marketers, you can use the curiosity gap concept to attract and retain your audience’s attention.   

Today’s guest is Andrew Davis, a well-respected marketing keynote speaker who helps people around the world solve marketing and business challenges. He describes how marketers can create content that encourages their customers to take action, stay engaged, and keep coming back for more.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Consumer Behavior: Don’t have time or don’t make time to consume content
• SEO: Search engines now favor longer content not full of keywords
• Curiosity Gap: Void between what you know and want to know to find answers
• Teasers and Promos: Curiosity gaps need to be used for good, not evil by building excitement that measures up and pays off    
• Create curiosity gap by following Storybox Formula: 
• • Show what audience wants
  • Challenge solutions
  • Show potential outcomes
  • Reinforce results
• Consume content to provide feedback on curiosity gaps:
• • When it this content too long? Don’t cut content, reorder elements
  • Watch reality TV to recognize tension that keeps the audience's attention

Links: 

• Andrew Davis
• CoSchedule
• CoSchedule's Blog

Quotes by Andrew Davis: 

“It’s not the fact that they have no time. It’s just that they don’t want to make time to consume your content.

“Stop blaming the consumer for having no time or having a short attention span. It’s our job to create content that earns their attention.”

“The more stuff you take out of your content to make it shorter, the less consumable it is.” 

“A curiosity gap is just a void between what you know and what you want to know.”

Do you have a podcast? Why not? What does it take? Learn how to launch a successful podcast—no experience necessary. Just start it, and stick with it.   

Today’s guest is Nathan Ellering, Head of Marketing at CoSchedule. He started the  Actionable Marketing Podcast (AMP) from scratch nearly five years ago. He shares some of the lessons he learned to help listeners create their own show.

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Why launch AMP? Move beyond blog to share similar goals and solve problems
• Strategy: Kickstart conversations to connect with customers and industry experts
• Fail Fast Philosophy: Share lessons learned and mistakes made with audience
• How long does it take to gain traction and traffic? Long-term program that involves ratings, reviews, and subscribers
• Notable Names: Get great podcast guests, such as coworkers, micro-influencers, and experts with existing followers 
• Favorite AMP Memories: Feeling nervous to experiencing outpouring of support  
• Top Tips:
• • Don’t overthink things
  • Build interview skills
  • Know recording quality matters
  • Hire professional editor
  • Utilize host provider
  • Plan ahead to create content

Links:

• Robert Rose
• Content Marketing Institute
• Joe Pulizzi
• Conquering The Everyday Dilemmas Of A Chief Content Officer With Ann Handley From MarketingProfs [AMP 117]
• The Case For Agile Marketing: What 400+ Marketers Reveal As Top Benefits And Barriers With Andrea Fryrear From AgileSherpas [AMP 127]
• How To Do Remarkable Customer Research With Rand Fishkin From SparkToro [AMP081]
• Spotify
• iTunes
• Podcast Motor
• Libsyn
• Garrett Moon
• CoSchedule
• CoSchedule's Blog

What’s stopping you from reaching your goals? Are labor-intensive processes slowing you down? What processes can marketers implement to improve collaboration that makes SEO and content work?    

Today’s guest is Lindsay McGuire, digital content SEO specialist at Formstack. What began as an online form builder, Formstack also offers automatic document generation, electronic signatures, bidirectional data integration software, and workflow automation. It’s not about taking things off your plate, but automating processes to free up time to do other things. 

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Formstack: Helps organizations take manual- and paper-based processes online to make their work more effective and efficient
• Two sides to her job: Content and SEO for Formstack’s blog, podcast, Website, and Webinars 
• Golden Equation = Appeal to search engines + high ranking + appeal to people
• Marketing Department Structure: Formstack values marketing and understands its benefits
• Sprints: Lack of scope, clarity, and communications means switching from shorter to longer sprints to remain agile with extended qualities 
• Planning Priorities: “Needs” are must-have projects, and “Ideas” are fun and creative projects 
• Content Creation Process: Starts with SEO and includes trending keywords, search history, traffic, email statistics, and ranking content 
• SEO and Content Challenges: Connect with audience to close a sale 
• How does Lindsay stay organized to be successful? Calendars, To Do lists, and brain breaks 

Links:

• Formstack
• Formstack on Instagram 
• Google Analytics
• SEMrush
• Sprint Process
• Slack
• WordPress
• CoSchedule

When was the last time you actually talked to your customers? What do they care about? What’s relevant to them? If you don’t know, you better find out. Marketers need to know and understand their audience to attract, convert, and drive profitable action from customers.    

Today’s guest is Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B marketing strategist at Marketing Interactions, Inc. She is the author of, Digital Relevance: Developing Marketing Content and Strategies that Drive Results. Ardath describes how buyer persona frameworks can help unify your brand message—from marketing to sales and beyond.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Buyer Persona: Composite sketch of target market based on validated commonalities for content marketing to steer productive buyer engagement
• Buyer Engagement: Move from problem to solution to make a purchase decision
• Why create buyer personas? Understand audience to create relevant content that resonates with problems they experience and what matters to them
• Questions for Customers: What do you do? What are your responsibilities? What problem triggered your interest to take action in a product/service? 
• Success Story: Sales enablement plus marketing equals huge win for company
• How many is too many buyer personas? Less is more, mitigate risk, allocate resources, collect customer testimonials, and create inclusive relevance content 

Links:

• Marketing Interactions, Inc.
• Digital Relevance: Developing Marketing Content and Strategies that Drive Results
• Gartner

Marketers use key messaging and positioning to connect with target audiences and create personalized customer experiences. Design is a strategy that requires collaboration between marketing and designers to make content visually appealing.  

Today’s guest is Megan Otto, marketing design lead at CoSchedule. She describes how marketing design drives brand engagement. Great marketing with poor design is poor marketing.

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• What makes an unforgettable brand? Relevant and consistent experiences through design to make a connection with customers across all mediums
• Why is design a go-to-market strategy? Design allows marketing and messaging to be seen and understood 
• Team of Teams: CoSchedule’s marketing and design teams focus on specific areas of expertise and effectively support other teams to ensure consistency
• Kickoffs to Handoffs: Determine strategy, objectives, goals, roadmap, and in-progress demos to track projects and tasks
• Translating Strategy into Design: How you’re presenting the message to the audience is as important as the message
• Work Assignments: Depends on capacity, expertise, and interests
• Purpose of Design: Understand goal and over-communicate to reach completion
• What do marketers need to know about designers? Design involves strategy, ideation, graphic design, illustration, Web development and much more 
• Design is in the Code: Web design and development should be a strategic role within marketing teams
• Evolution of Brand, Design, and Marketing: Always new challenges and unique value to be better 

Links:

• ROI Calculator: Build Your Case for CoSchedule
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days 

Marketers know that the value of data from the past helps them strategize for the future. However, it may be time to gather data in a different and proactive way. Why not try an organic and mathematical approach?

Today’s guest is Susan Baier of Audience Audit, a marketing research company. She describes how attitudinal research can be more effective than demographics research. Susan explains the difference between audience and customer research.  

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Audience Audit: Attitudinal audience segmentation research that gains quantitative insight into audiences trying to be reached via marketing efforts
• Attitudinal Research: Understanding how opinions, assumptions, perspectives, and preconceived ideas affect purchase decisions
• Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research: Each offer value, including quantitative statistically significant insights of things affecting some of your audience
• Marketers need to answer ‘Why?’ by providing reliable data
• Audience Research: Only listening to customers, can create skewed perspective
• Who is your sample? Talk to past, present, and potential customers in the market to solve a problem that you understand
• Where to find your audience? Don’t rely on a single source; understand audience via email subscriber list, customer files, and social media platforms
• Why are people here? What kept them from getting help sooner? Focus on what problems your company’s products and services solve, not on what they do
• What does CMT stand for? Write compelling content using existing customers language/lingo to attract a similar audience
• What method(s) to use to gather research? Survey of connotative data; avoid pushing your assumptions that artificially stratify people and don’t make sense
• What doesn’t matter? 95% of studies that identify attitudinal segments reveal that company size, gender, household, and other factors aren’t important
• Crafting Questions: Remove bias from data gathering and analysis processes to improve product positioning, audience targeting, and personas 
• Segmentation: Understand, implement, and use information/data

Links: 

• Audience Audit
• How To Do Remarkable Customer Research With Rand Fishkin From SparkToro [AMP081]
• Gartner 
• Magic Quadrant Content Marketing Platform
• SurveyMonkey
• SurveyGizmo
• Qualtrics
• CoSchedule Marketing Software Suite

Is your marketing workflow bogged down with urgent requests, inefficient software/systems, undocumented processes, and manual tasks that could be automated? How can marketing leaders implement work management solutions to help high-performing teams, especially when it’s a matter of life or death?

Today’s guest is Erin Koschei, digital marketer at Laerdal Medical. Erin describes how to efficiently and effectively manage the "Grand Central Station" marketing analogy.  

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• Resusci Anne: Laerdal Medical creates, manufactures, and sells resuscitation mannequins and medical simulation trainers
• Saving More Lives: No one should die or be disabled unnecessarily
• Grand Central Station: Laerdal’s marketing teams communicate and collaborate on content campaign components
• Plan ahead by prioritizing projects based on company goals, initiatives, products, and providing the right information to customers at the right time 
• Flexible and Supportive Team of Friends: All hands on deck to help when needed
• CoSchedule: Best option for teams to communicate, plan, get organized, meet deadlines, and increase visibility 
• S.M.A.R.T. Success: Set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals that show value contributed by teams and individuals to stakeholders 

Links:

• Laerdal Medical
• Gartner’s Marketing Work Management Article
• CoSchedule: Marketing Management and Strategy
• CoSchedule: State of Marketing Strategy Report 2019 
• CoSchedule: Marketing Strategy Guide
• CoSchedule’s Blog

Do you have content that answers your audience’s questions and provides value along every stage of the sales funnel? Some of the most influential pieces of content include proof of ROI value, thought leadership, customer stories, and case studies.

Today’s guest is LaRissa Hendricks, product marketing copywriter at CoSchedule. She describes how to create relevant and compelling customer case studies. 

Some of the highlights of the show include:

• What are case studies? Success stories about how customers use product or service to reach specific outcome
• Goal of Case Studies: Share how and what can be achieved with CoSchedule   
• Possible Outcomes: CoSchedule helps marketers complete more projects, meet deadlines, and prove value to stakeholders
• Gartner ranks case studies as third most-valued marketing asset for buyers
• Case studies prove most effective at start of sales funnel by covering customer challenges and outcomes achieved to engage and establish trust 
• Pitfalls to Avoid: Focus on customers and outcomes, not product and features
• Target Audience: Anybody with an interest in CoSchedule, including specific industries, various team sizes, and common customer issues 
• Short- or long-form structure used for case studies depends on sales funnel stage, challenges, outcomes, and key data points
• Customer Story Matrix: Who, what, when, where, and why of sales enablement content case studies to use for specific situations
• When is enough, enough when it comes to case studies? Depends on customers and different factors 

Links:

• Gartner
• CoSchedule Customer Stories