Actionable Marketing Podcast

Does your blog stand out from your competition? Does it provide experiences that make prospects want to come back? If your blog is boring, what does that say about your products and services? But if your blog content is engaging, imagine what your target audience will think about them. 

Today, we’re talking to Barry feldman, mastermind behind Feldman Creative. In this episode, Barry shares some tips on what to do and not do to create standout content, build an audience, and offer awesome experiences through your content marketing. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Biggest impediment for content marketing success is tunnel vision, where companies focus explicitly on a blog but nothing more; expectations are unreal
• Think about the entire content marketing funnel - capturing emails, building a community, and building a relationships; a blog is just a piece of that process
• Build an audience; create assets that excite people and don’t depend on one channel
• Barry’s experience with The Article Factory, a cheap content farm; you get what you pay for
• Barry’s price for articles is higher because he understands SEO, writing, positioning, and conversion; he can help you reach your objectives
• Blogs should be educational, entertaining, and inspiring; make customers the stars of your stories and showcase in-house/guest writers with opinions
• High-quality content is so exciting that you want more of it; the purpose of a blog content is to get someone to subscribe to your Website
• Invest more time and resources to create quality content; bigger is better
• Successful content marketers position themselves as experts in their field; communicate authority with your posts
• Content Marketing: Keep trying, roll with the changes, take it seriously; success isn’t instant and you don’t hit a homerun every time

Links: 

• Feldman Creative
• Books by Barry Feldman
• The Article Factory
• How Publishing Crappy Content Ruins Your Rankings
• The (Sarcastic) Guide to Publishing a Boring Blog
• Joe Pulizzi
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Our favorite thing about hosting the Actionable Marketing Podcast is picking the brains of  marketing heroes. So, we’re absolutely blown away by the amazing marketers we’ve gotten to learn from over the past two years.

To our listeners, you’re the reason we do this. It’s all about bringing the best of the best to you. To celebrate the 100th episode of AMP, here are some of our favorite guests, takeaways, and thoughts from more than 60 hours of marketing gold!

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Janna Maron: No more frustration by banking content and scheduling it to auto publish; publish less, but at higher quality
• Michael Brenner: The most compelling way to guide everything you do as a marketer - what’s in it for the customer, colleague, and company?
• Brian Clark: His biggest marketing mistake was the curse of knowledge - a cognitive bias where you assume the audience knows certain things you know
• Noah Kagan: Helped Mint scale to its first 100,000 users in less than a year; what’s your goal and timeline?
• Andrea Fryrear: Marketers are asked to do new projects all the time, but prioritize and simplify backlog of projects to be successful; plan your work, work your plan
• Joanna Wiebe: Describes how to go deeper than Calls To Action and into Calls To Value; clearly articulate the ultra-specific value on the other side of a click
• Tim Soulo: You should write 2,000+ word articles to rank in search engines, but people don’t want to read - they want answers to questions to solve problems
• Nir Eyal: Psychology of habit formation and how marketers can capitalize on it; every product you use is to modulate your mood and alleviate pain
• Jeff Goins: Four qualities in best-performing posts - piece is well written, contains a compelling promise, keeps that promise, and wows reader with value
• Rand Fishkin: Remarkable customer research determines TRUE influencer status and who to partner with for co-promotion; share what audience values

If you enjoy AMP, write a review on iTunes and send a screenshot of it to be entered into a drawing to win the 100th episode giveaway, which includes a $100 CoSchedule swag package, bundle of three marketing books, and $50 Amazon gift card!  

Links: 

• How To Create A Bank Of Content (And Plan Ahead) With Janna Maron From Smart Passive Income
• 3 Questions To Guide Your Marketing Program With Michael Brenner From Marketing Insider Group
• Copyblogger’s Best Advice On How To Scale To 8 Figures With Brian Clark From Copyblogger
• How To Grow From 0 to 1 Million Customers With Noah Kagan From SumoMe and OkDork
• How To Use Agile Project Management To Organize Your Marketing With Andrea Fryrear From AgileSherpas
• How To Use Conversion Psychology To Get Better Results With Joanna Wiebe From Copyhackers
• How To Get Your Content To Rank #1 On Google With Tim Soulo Of Ahrefs
• How To Use The Psychology Of Habit Formation To Be A Better Marketer With Best-Selling Author Nir Eyal
• How To Use A Scorecard To Create More Effective Content With Jeff Goins From Goins, Writer
• How To Do Remarkable Customer Research With Rand Fishkin From SparkToro

What’s the best way to market and grow a business? Do you often lock yourself in a conference room to avoid distractions and answer that question? Does one idea keep coming to mind? Guest writing for influential publications. 

Aaron Orendorff does it. He is the founder and CEO of iconiContent, as well as the editor-in-chief of Shopifyplus. Guest blogging was a foundational ingredient to scaling his personal brand. Aaron’s used guest writing to build clients for his own business and help land a job at Shopify. He shares the importance of writing for such publications, where to start, how to find ideas for articles to be accepted, and how to pitch articles.

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Aaron spent 2 ½ years guest posting, guest blogging, and writing articles for publications that he respected and wanted to be like
• Aaron began building relationships and cold pitching to editors anywhere and everywhere to get ahold of email addresses
• He understands that social proof is one of the most powerful levers to convince somebody to enter your funnel or start talking to you online
• Cold Pitching Process: Reverse engineering of popular topics; speaking language/terminology of audience; using Buzzsumo to find popular social media
• What are the headline formulas? What’s the word count? How did they use images? How are they interlinking? Did they like a lot of data?
• Aaron sent publishers a complete article tailored to their publication; he identified topics related to popular posts on their site and discovered competitive holes
• What gets responses from editors? Behind-the-scenes work, show instead of tell, and sending publishers a brief email with the attached article as a Word doc
• Go to About or Contact Website pages for the publications or use tools to find email addresses of the editors
• Rejections: Write an entire article for a specific publication, send it to the editors; wait to get rejected
• Risk-to-Reward Ratio: Once rejected, tweak it and send to a different publication; work your way down a publication list; risk goes way down
• After first “yes,” doors open and it’s far easier to write for publications a second, a third, a fourth time; promote articles after published to maximize opportunities
• Guest writing has helped by getting attention from editors/other writers and building relationships with them through customized, valuable articles
• To start guest writing: 1) Write complete articles tailored for specific publications; don’t send pitches; 2) Find what’s popular at their and competitors’ sites

Links: 

• iconiContent
• Shopifyplus
• Buzzsumo
• Google Trends
• Email Permutator
• ContactOut
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

As marketers, you’ve probably been told that you have to pay to play. But how do you make the most out of what you put in? People buy from people who they know, like, and trust. 

Today, we’re talking to Amanda Bond, owner of Ad Strategist. She tells us how to get more results from our Facebook ads, how much to spend on ads, and how to scale the use of ads. She shares her “secret sauce” comprised of a 3-step formula that goes from engagement to purchases. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Stop guessing, get results with Facebook ads; manage ads to get a better ROI
• As Facebook ads gain popularity and attract more advertisers, cost for them will only continue to rise; stay ahead of growth curve and remain competitive
• The Strategy System: Put people through a customer journey - Connect, Commit, and Close
• Connect: Amplify content, put the brand out there, and engage your audience; review Facebook Page Insights to identify how your organic content performs
• Commit: For lead generation, Ad Strategist only targets warm custom audiences; a custom audience is one that has previously interacted with your brands
• Close: When you set up your Facebook ad, it is the first thing you do; patch up holes of close/sales retargeting ads for them to convert to purchase decisions
• Take 3 main objections submitted to customer service and turn them into Facebooks ads to overcome those objections and increase sales conversion rate
• Make sure you can sell an offer before spending lots of money on Facebook ads
• Continue to fill pipeline with new members and scale sustainably by figuring out what information an audience needs to know to make a future purchase decision
• Targeting broad audiences can be just as cost-effective; power of Facebook ad tools and optimization
• If brand new to Facebook ads, don’t start Facebook advertising before you understand your earnings per lead

Links: 

• Ad Strategist
• Facebook Page Insights
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Want to provide a better experience for your prospects and customers, and make your work life a little more efficient at the same time? That’s the dream behind marketing automation. It’s about delivering the right messages to the right people in the most effective way. 

Today, we’re talking to Chris Davis, director of education at ActiveCampaign. He teaches us that marketing automation goes beyond email marketing and shares ideas on how you can improve your customer experience with automation. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Marketing automation is the process of employing technology to execute a marketing strategy
• Hire and train each tool that you use in marketing to solve a problem
• Owners wear many hats; marketing automation lets them do more of what they want to do in their business, than what they have to do
• Examples of automation include someone filling out a form and your company following up or giving away something for free to obtain email addresses
• Biggest mindset shift to automation is looking at your platform not as a way to send out emails, but as a way to collect data
• Sole purpose of marketing automation is to scale personalization and make people feel individualized; automation allows you to sort or segment contacts
• Before doing anything technical, define segments in your business; who are you going to be talking to? First 2 segments: customers and non-customers
• Simple things become complex when understanding isn’t in close proximity; most businesses struggle to understand marketing and technology
• Email can be the channel or means in which a message travels; send a message to customers to break the barrier of technology
• Marketing automation qualifies customers and determines who should follow-up with them; automation serves as a facilitator
• People prefer to buy online, rather than going into a store; their guards are down, but everybody still wants to be treated like a human being and individual
• Outsourcing marketing can be a mistake; you may need someone internal to your business that is involved in the day-to-day to unleash your marketing

Links: 

• ActiveCampaign
• Jobs to be Done
• Drip

Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

If you are a marketer, then you have probably heard of Rainmaker Digital’s Copyblogger and read some of its articles. Copyblogger is one of the most iconic marketing blogs in the world. It is kind of a big deal, and there’s a good reason for that. The team at Copyblogger works hard to publish specific content that the audience finds extremely useful and valuable.  

Today, we’re talking to Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Rainmaker Digital and creator of Copyblogger. Brian and Copyblogger are recognized by many as the most influential blogging resources. If you haven’t got the hint yet, Brian knows his stuff! So, learn all about audience, value, and generosity from him.  

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Getting back to basics with digital and content marketing automation and personalization; it’s still the human being in the middle of it that matters the most
• Know your audience for automation and personalization to be a delivery engine that gets better content to people who care about it
• Learn how to use new tools before applying them in the fundamentals of a sound digital marketing strategy; the tool does not make the strategy
• Audience First Content: Build your audience by providing them value; then you will understand what products they want and need
• Publish content first that attracts an audience, and then build a product
• Copyblogger is considered the Bible of content marketing despite no advertising
• Rainmakers: Use email marketing principles and have a product to sell to develop authority and clients
• How much to give away for free with your content marketing - be generous, tell them everything, and share as much as you can, if you are selling something
• Content Creation to Revenue Generation: Are you getting more business than if you weren’t doing content marketing?
• Productize content and charge audience for information by knowing the objective and removing all objections that prevent buying
• Know your audience to determine the right format (audio, video, written, etc.)
• Internet is the greatest market research environment; it’s no longer about not having enough information, but how to manage and utilize it all
• Biggest mistake made is trying to appeal to everyone and not turn anyone off

Links: 

• Copyblogger
• Rainmaker Digital
• Brian Clark on Twitter
• Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Can a well-researched piece of content from a single URL help bring in millions of views in just one year? The answer is, “Yes.” CoSchedule knows exactly how that feels. Researched content helps you drive 10X results that convert into profitable customer action. 

Today, we’re talking to Michele Linn, who knows everything about research-driven content marketing. She is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at Mantis Research. Michele has amazing advice to offer on how to succeed at content marketing. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Research is crucial for content marketing; people want to find data that supports their thoughts and beliefs; become the authoritative source for some type of topic
• Examples of research include CoSchedule’s State of Marketing Strategy Report, and research reports from Salesforce and Robert Half
• Find new ideas for your audience/niche by conducting a survey, or looking for a stat that people believe but is not backed up by data   
• Audiences that care most about research-based content are those in a new industry to gain justification, and on social media that like to share stats
• Importance of research-driven content to prove or disprove something
• Targeting Topics: Is it something that’s interesting to your audience? Does it align with your brand’s story? Is there other research available on this topic?
• Research can be time consuming, about 4-6 months; but it is worth the effort
• Research can be a guiding force and the glue that holds your story and editorial strategy together
• Pitching researched content to justify time spent; what does client care about?
• Content to produce results; start out small, don’t do too much at once
• Tools and processes work well to gather research; try surveys and secondary research; determine sample size to be considered representative and valid
• Metrics to measure for success include media mentions, impressions of research, leads, downloads, email subscribers, and backlinks
• Research Process: 1) Strategy and planning, 2) Data science, 3) Compile data and turn into story, 4) Incorporate research into blogs, infographs, videos, etc.   

Links: 

• Mantis Research
• Content Marketing Institute
• Ultimate Guide: How to Publish Survey-Based Research for Content Marketing
• CoSchedule State of Marketing Strategy Report
• Salesforce
• Robert Half
• Andy Crestodina
• DivvyHQ
• Andrea Fryrear
• SurveyGizmo
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

How can you grow your website to become the world’s largest in your niche? Traffic without conversions does not let you influence profitable customer action, which marketing is designed to do. How can you get more results from your Website traffic? Marketing automation with Google provides prospective customers with what they want and when they need it to help influence their purchase decisions.

Today, we’re talking to Mike Danner, vice president of digital marketing at Ancient Nutrition. He helped the company’s Website, Dr. Axe, become the largest natural health Website in the world and generate about 19 million unique visits each month. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Ancient Nutrition and Dr. Axe help educate and provide supplements for those who want a natural approach
• Ancient Nutrition is progressive and doing things right to grow its Website
• Every generation requires its own revolution; current generation is focused on sustainable farming and getting rid of big manufacturing lines
• Ancient Nutrition evolved out of passion and vision to become #1 natural health Website in the world and buy Whole Foods some day
• Organic and surge approach through success leaving clues; seek the best and biggest to mimic
• Use automation to help increase conversions; automation through ClickFunnels improved growth for Ancient Nutrition
• Focus on the return received from training, not the cost of the training
• Organize, optimize, customize when building automation
• Funnels that trigger journeys include micro-intense steps (cart abandonment)
• Review and analyze data to make decisions; phases of data absorption, monitoring, and testing - experimentation and exploitation
• Shiny objects are fun, but deploy something to earn money
• Marketing Automation and Integrative/Holistic Approach to Testing Program: How often are you going to test? What are you going to do with the data?
• If brand new to marketing automation, anchor toward your goals; make as much as you can evergreen, and automation’s only as good as the multiplier

Links: 

• Ancient Nutrition
• Dr. Axe
• Jim Rohn
• Neil Patel
• ClickFunnels
• Brad Martineau
• Google Analytics
• Tim Ferriss
• Convert.com
• Austin Brawner
• Russell Brunson
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Do you know how to use social media to build an irresistible brand and delight customers? Want to be amazing on Facebook, Instagram, and all the other sites? Need some inspiration for your social media branding? 

Today, we’re talking to Dave Kerpen, chairman of Likeable Media and best-selling author of Likeable Social Media. He shares his advice on what has remained relevant in social media over the past few years and what will continue to help you be successful. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Dave’s favorite ideas/concepts include using social media for listening and storytelling to put ideas into the world
• Brands that are good at storytelling are Redbox, Ahold, Century 21, and Work It
• Dave’s #1 social media goal for brands is to make money; have a specific monetary ROI in mind
• Move people down the sales funnel for awareness to purchase 
• Social media savagery trend where brands troll the trolls; is it helpful or hurtful? Depends on your brand’s personality and audience
• Biggest mistakes marketers make include using social media to sell too quickly, not sell at all, and not use advertising to take advantage of paid opportunities
• Make sure you’re not selling too much and your content is something you would Like, share, or comment on
• For paid opportunities, focus first on investing dollars into ads on social media
• Future Social Media Trends: Musical.ly, videos, and messaging apps
• Stop investing time into a social channel when the reason you joined no longer applies

Links: 

• Dave Kerpen on Facebook
• Dave Kerpen on Twitter
• Dave Kerpen on Instagram
• Likeable Media
• Likeable Social Media
• The Art of People
• Redbox
• Ahold Supermarkets
• Century 21
• Carrie Kerpen
• Work It book
• All the Social Ladies podcast
• Musical.ly
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Every day, consider your marketing career mindset. You can plan all you want, but at some point, you need to get to work, create something your audience will love, and launch it. You’ll probably make mistakes and face roadblocks along the way. But whatever goal you have for your marketing strategy, getting and staying organized will help you on your path to success.

Today, we’re talking to Kelly Napoli, who is the content marketing coordinator at Obermiller Nelson Engineering (ONE). Learn how to collaborate with subject matter experts (SMEs), importance of taking risks with your marketing, and why starting is more important than anything else. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• ONE is trying a bit of everything with its content marketing to see what works and what doesn’t
• Marketers should pick SMEs’ brains to figure out what clients find interesting
• It works better and smoother to have a conversation with SMEs vs. asking them to write marketing content
• Lessons Learned: Once you’ve got a plan, implement it or nothing gets done
• Personas: Have conversations about your target market
• Provide audience with content that’s beneficial for them; at the same time, you don’t necessarily want to give away your secret sauce
• Efficient collaboration with remote teams involves utilizing tools, including phones and video chats
• Email is not always the most efficient way to communicate
• CoSchedule advances you through the collaboration and communication process
• Organization is Key: Find what works for you; for ONE, it’s CoSchedule
• You pay for software, so use it; focus on what needs to get done
• If you have multiple projects and tasks, stay organized by using task templates and Excel spreadsheets
• Going from two to four new blog posts monthly to be consistent and productive; publish content to produce results and influence certain perceptions
• Get organized in chaos behind marketing management; turn to CoSchedule, learn from your mistakes, and find software to help you stay organized

Links: 

• Seth Godin
• Obermiller Nelson Engineering
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek

Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package