Actionable Marketing Podcast

Do you open your Inbox only to see several emails asking for the same thing? To link to someone else’s content? Instantly, you move them to the Trash folder. Email outreach can actually work and complement your inbound marketing efforts. But your emails need to not be anything like the random ones that you throw away.

Today, we’re talking to Ian Cleary of RazorSocial and OutreachPlus. He is an amazing inbound marketer, who has discovered that complementing inbound tactics with outbound email outreach can help you build relationships, increase brand authority, and boost your backlink profile. To do it well, you need to think about personalized connections, providing value to them, and starting small. Everything you will learn about email outreach from Ian is pure gold. It works, and it can help you reach your goals. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Definition of Email Outreach: An email outreach tool helps you reach out to subscribers, a new audience, a smaller audience, or a group of influencers
• Send highly personalized emails to promote content or generate leads
• Benefits of email outreach include building your brand, driving relevant traffic to your site, promoting your content, and growing your authority
• Cold email outreach works by with highly personalized, relevant, and very targeted emails
• Provide something of value; deliver brief, quality content
• Conduct research to make sure you are reaching out to the right target audience
• Don’t think about selling, but about starting a conversation
• Ways to find influencers and build relationships, develop relevancy
• Following Up: Send two emails and then stop; don’t be annoying or damage relationships
• Outreach Criteria: Look for opportunities to engage and interact with Websites with a higher authority to get valuable links
• Tactics that work to complement outreach efforts include getting onto social media, sharing content, and looking for opportunities to interact; when reaching out, reference a conversation, interaction, or piece of content
• Highest converting outreach for Ian is guest posting; invite people to be a part of the blogs you’re writing
• When getting started with email outreach - start small, build the skill, and get better at it over time to be successful

Links: 

• RazorSocial
• OutreachPlus
• How to Find Influencers with a Framework for Measuring Influence
• Twitonomy
• GroupHigh
• Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

Exclusive interviews continue from Garrett Moon’s book, 10X-Marketing Formula, which features top marketing professionals who uncover uncommon marketing mindsets, methods, and growth strategies.

In this episode, we’re talking to John T. Meyer, CEO and co-founder of Lemonly, which is a visual marketing firm. John started Lemonly as a way to educate people about how digital media is a way to reach customers, and eventually the business ended up specializing in infographics. Lemonly helped build and pioneer the infographics industry, and it has evolved into visual storytelling - the secret sauce. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Humans are visual creatures bombarded by messages; infographics make the world less noisy and confusing
• Infographics transitioned from visualizing data to a storytelling formula, where there is a beginning, middle, and end
• Core types of stories offer familiarity and ability to predict what will happen
• Lemonly starts with content by creating an outline that features the goal, 3 main points, and summary/call to action
• Web of Content: Where will content live to connect and hook pieces on mediums
• Issues related to driving traffic through visuals on various social media mediums
• Visuals grab people’s attention, but you need a good story for ROI
• Other options available, but Lemonly offers person-to-person relationships
• Examples of 10X ROI results from visual content
• Infographics fail and don’t live up to full potential when delivery is blurry, squished; don’t do all that work, and then stumble at the end

Links: 

• Lemonly
• 9 Clouds
• 10X-Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
• Donald Miller’s StoryBrand
• Canva
• Infogram
• Piktochart
• Pablo by Buffer

Write and send a review to receive a CoSchedule care package

How are your conversion rates? Are you getting qualified leads? To drive value for your company, you need to convert audience members to customers. If you think you need help, you do. 

Today, we’re talking to Lance Jones, director of marketing at ReCharge, which helps its customers sell subscriptions on their Shopify stores. Lance shares powerful tactics to help you increase conversion rates. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• ReCharge’s biggest marketing challenges; from distractions to lack of patience
• Combining conversion rate optimization and audience language to communicate effectively
• Connecting with customers by using their words and phrases in your copywriting
• Formulas and techniques for successful conversion copywriting, including problem/agitation/solution (PAS)
• Building partnerships and relationships with niche businesses; knowing your target customer and their pain points to offer solutions
• Providing value back to partners by understanding their business and offering services/tools to solve problems
• Building trust by educating and teaching customers how to do something
• Focusing on a new niche; it’s difficult to commit to going narrow

Links: 

• ReCharge
• Joanna Wiebe and Copywriting Formulas
• Jesse Mecham - YNAB
• MetaLab
• Flow
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]

Do you have a product or service that people want? Nothing else matters. Every major company started with a very specific customer, and every business has competition. The easiest way to win is to pick a more specific customer to serve. So, pick a target customer, and be very strict about it.

Garrett Moon, CoSchedule CEO, recently wrote the book, 10X Marketing Formula: Your Blueprint for Creating Competition-Free Content That Stands Out and Gets Results. Fortunately, Garrett recorded the interviews he conducted for the book. In today’s episode, Garrett’s 10x interview is with Noah Kagan of Sumo, AppSumo, and Briefcase. Noah continuously pushes the edges of marketing and growth. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Focusing on eCommerce has positively transformed Noah’s companies
• Growth Hacking and Marketing: How to find channels that have not been fully utilized or abused
• What has helped grow your business? Do what works; go back to the basics
• Favorite Growth Strategies: Determine what new marketing channels will work; and platform marketing
• Proactive Dashboard: Has to be controllable; you can’t be dependent on anything
• As a marketer, what is one thing you can stop doing today? What are you wasting your time on?
• Noah’s companies perform testing and validation on how they can get more traffic and on-site optimization
• Use content to grow your business; what’s unique about what you’re writing
• Social vs. search content; one is short-term, and the other is long-term options
• Process of understanding your target audience: Which customers have the highest lifetime value? Which have been the easiest for the sales team to talk to?
• Noah’s companies have made two major shifts when focusing on customers: Qualified sign-ups and content related to eCommerce
• Revisit pricing and customers; contact customers via the phone for feedback
• Segment your audience to understand them; but don’t do it too early
• Find a product you love, and let specific people in the world know about it; help people 1 by 1

Links: 

• Noah Kagan
• Sumo
• AppSumo
• Briefcase
• OkDork
• Noah Kagan on YouTube
• 10X Marketing Formula book
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]

A sales and marketing funnel is when people have an awareness of your brand and move closer to a buying decision. You want them to know, like, and trust you, so there is enough value for them to become your customer. What does your customer’s journey look like? 

Fortunately, today’s episode features Daniel McGaw, the founder of Effin Amazing and creator of UTM.io. Daniel is a conversion rate optimization and sales funnel expert. Find out about the magic you can get from links and how to increase Website and content conversions. What are the superpowers of what can be done with a link when shared online? 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Urchin tracking module (UTM) tags are bits of code you can add to the end of any link; it’s the only universal tracking method available
• Daniel’s product offers presets for teams to keep tags consistent
• Most entrepreneurs think about business in the wrong way; they focus on the logo, brand, mission, and other factors before they acquire customers
• Daniel thinks of business this way: Where is the demand? Do we have a customer? If we have a customer, then we have a business.
• How Effin Amazing got its name and gets a lot of attention
• Don’t ask for tons of information; just get an email address to optimize for leads
• Funnel Anatomy: Awareness, top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), bottom of funnel (BOFU), and referrals of the funnel (ROFU)  
• Daniel’s company uses the Velocity/Impact/Confidence/Easy (VICE) framework to map a funnel, which includes documenting information, developing strategies, and building benchmarks
• Evaluate your team’s skills and abilities to augment VICE scores
• Most marketers and businesses go wrong when they expect people to buy too quickly; and do not get enough email addresses - email is king and the lynchpin to success
• Learn more about your customers during the funnel stages, and try to educate them

Links: 

• Daniel McGaw
• Effin Amazing
• UTM
• Trello
• RealtimeBoard
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]

Successful marketing takes more than just running ads, publishing articles, and designing newsletters. With so many moving parts, running a successful marketing program can be elusive. So, use a thoughtful and simple framework to cut straight to the heart of what it means and what it looks like to get consistent results. 

Today, we’re talking to Michael Brenner, the CEO of Marketing Insider Group and co-author of The Content Formula. He shares his global perspective and the secret to success when it comes to content marketing. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Michael discovered that he had an aptitude for helping customers at scale
• Counter-intuitive nature of life applies to marketing; there’s a lot more to marketing than just advertising, which we hate and tune out
• We perceive marketing in the wrong way; it’s a two-way communication between a company and its customers
• What type of marketing works? Things that are not selfish, promotional, and interruptive, but aligned to what customers are wanting and what helps them
• Marketing starts with culture, and growth equates to the amount of empathy a company has for its customers, employees, and world
• Mission Statement: What is your purpose? Meaning? What do you achieve for the people you touch?
• Step 1: No matter what you are working on or what role you play in the company, always ask: What’s in it for the customers?
• Do less promotion in advertising and more content marketing or education
• Identify the amount of integration and interaction that occurs across the company
• Step 2: What’s in it for your colleagues? Marketing goes beyond the marketing department; it’s a collaborative and magical effort
• Step 3: What’s in it for the company? Conversions and ROI of content marketing
• Culture, empathy, and performance lead to effective and successful marketing
• Michael tries to do 2 things every day: Be thankful and show empathy (T & E)

Links: 

• Michael Brenner
• Michael Brenner on Twitter
• Marketing Insider Group
• The Content Formula
• Jim Stengel’s Grow
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]

Has your smartphone ever beeped or vibrated to let you know that something, some piece of information or message, is waiting, just for you? Without even thinking, you read, listen to, or watch, and become completely absorbed in it. How have these pieces gained so much power over our behavior and attention? How do software companies hook us, and what can marketers learn from this phenomenon?

Today’s guest is Nir Eyal, who says today’s smartest companies have melded psychology, business, and technology into habit-forming products. Nir is the best-selling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. He’s an angel investor and expert in behavioral design. He unveils some psychological principles behind some of today’s biggest, most valuable, and most frightening companies. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Skill of the century is the ability to cultivate focus
• Behavioral Design: Products that are most engaging and habit forming were built with consumer psychology in mind
• People use the Hooked model to engage with a product or service
• Step 1: Internal trigger (reason why you use a product - to modulate your mood, to feel something different; products and services cater to emotional discomfort)
• What’s the user’s itch? What’s their pain point that occurs frequently enough to build a habit around?
• Step 2: Action (the simplest behavior done in anticipation of a reward and relief from discomfort; technology shortens the distance between the need and reward)
• Lewin’s Equation: “People act in accordance to their personality and their environment,” which means the easier something is, the more likely people are to do it
• Step 3: Reward Phase (the itch gets scratched, the customer’s need is satiated, and their problems are solved)
• Element of Variability: Something of mystery, something of uncertainty
• Three types of variable rewards are: Rewards of the tribe, rewards of the hunt, and rewards of the self
• If you can form a habit, you can engage people with your brand through a community/content habit, and monetization is the result of engagement
• Step 4: Investment Phase (increases likelihood of the next pass through the hook by loading the next trigger and storing value)
• Content, data, followers, and reputation are ways to get users to invest in your product
• Companies should make a deliberate effort to understand consumers better; what makes people click and tick, so you can build services that they want
  

Links: 

• NirandFar.com
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
• Habit Summit
• Stack Overflow

How do you deliver traffic to your blog? How do you move from chasing an audience to attracting and keeping one? 

Today, we’re talking to Jeff Bullas, an internationally renowned speaker on digital marketing, including social media, blogging, and brand building. His mission is to help people win at business and life in the digital world through the art of storytelling. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Storytelling: If people forget what you told them, they won’t forget how you made them feel
• Marketers in different countries face the same problems; they all want more traffic and conversions
• How Jeff took a $10 investment to generate more than 25 million visitors
• Books and blogs that inspired Jeff
• Build credibility and create content
• Description of Jeff’s virtual team; how he avoids the office because it feels like work instead of fun
• Make your brand memorable
• Connection between storytelling, social media, and driving traffic to your blog
• Make your audience the hero of a journey; convince people that they are capable
• With traffic, you have to earn and own it to convert it to leads and sales
• Passion and purpose is not a destination, it’s a calling and journey
• Develop a daily routine that becomes a habit
• Where to start: Ask yourself, Why am I here? What’s my passionate purpose?

Links: 

• Jeff Bullas Website
• Jeff Bullas’ Blog
• Jeff Bullas on Twitter
• Jeff Bullas on YouTube
• The New Rules of Marketing and PR book
• Jeremy Epstein’s blog
• Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Workweek book
• HubSpot Blog
• Deep Work book
• Building a StoryBrand book
• Contently - The Storytelling Edge
• Todd Brown and Marketing Funnel Automation
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]

Does it feel like you are trying to herd cats? Managing your marketing that way is not strategic. Get organized to manage your time, help you predict how long projects will take, and plan ahead to get real results.

Today, we’re talking to Lindsay Scarpello, an organizational mastermind with a background in journalism. Marketers need to think like journalists. Learn organizational and time management skills, as well as how processes and workflows are imperative for success. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Lindsay’s role at OBI Creative, a research and communications advertising agency
• Lindsay’s employment background in journalism and marketing
• Build trust with customers through education and high-quality content
• Organizational skills needed for marketers to succeed
• Time Management: You can’t miss deadlines and must be willing to hustle
• Decipher and present data in a digestible way
• Find and implement tools to maximize your time; keep using what works for you
• Lindsay plans ahead to stay organized with her time
• Be aware of what’s going on by using To Do list apps, notebook, or other tools
• Build a foundation of organizational skills to boost results and be an investment
• Organization becomes a habit in your personal and professional life
• Spend time defining processes to be able to execute them
• Content Planning Process: Research, build strategy/create steps, receive feedback, and implement
• How to plan content ahead of time using rules of marketing
• Be tech savvy and have working knowledge of all Microsoft Office programs
• Know how your brain works and your company’s goals   

Links:

• Lindsay Scarpello
• OBI Creative
• Mary Ann O’Brien
• CoSchedule
• Wunderlist
• Evernote
• Microsoft Office
• Panda Planner
• HubSpot
• Buffer
• Flywheel
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected] 

These days, you need to create both a great Website and great content to rank on Google. 

Today, we’re talking to Brian Dean, an SEO expert and founder of Backlinko, about how to fuel your 10x content using his research method called the Skyscraper technique. 

Some of the highlights of the show include: 

• Black Hat SEO: Stuffing keywords and creating fake signals to rank in Google
• Google penalized sites using this strategy
• White Hat SEO: You don’t mind showing Google everything you did to optimize your site
• Backlinko teaches people White Hat SEO strategies
• SEO Elements: Keyword and topic research; create content around them
• Two types of keywords: Information and commercial
• Create and optimize content that gets the most searches around keywords/topics
• Differences between well-researched and not researched content and topics
• Provide one-stop shopping for all the information customers need
• Skyscraper Technique is a form of research to figure out what content will perform well:

1. Find a keyword
2. Search for keyword in Google
3. Create content better than what’s on first page of search results

• Ways to improve content - go bigger and better, curate, storytelling, and more
• Focus on quality over quantity; create less content, make it more valuable
• Common missteps when implementing “less is more” strategy and ranking

Links: 

• 10X Marketing Formula by Garrett Moon
• Backlinko
• Backlinko on YouTube
• Jon Cooper
• Tim Ferriss and the 4-Hour Work Week
• Google Keyword Planner
• Reddit
• AMP on iTunes - leave a review and send screenshot to [email protected]