Beyond Keywords: The Advanced Digital Marketing Podcast

With all the focus on privacy these days, things like the CCPA, GDPR and the upcoming privacy charter here in Canada are changing how marketers handle data. Mix in Apple blocking most third party trackers from it's browser and others starting to follow suit and you have a recipe that could mark a huge change in how companies market.

No startups were built on metrics - but plenty have certainly been built from stories. Whether it's Gopro and Airbnb making you feel like an adventurer or Google making you feel for an email system, stories are an amazing way to both amplify your message and make your sales people's jobs easier.

I talk with Mark Evans, the principle behind ME Consulting and author of Marketing Spark, a sort of workbook for startups that will help them really amplify their messaging. The book goes over the power of story but also includes worksheets and more to get you started.

We focus far too much on data for our decision making. I get it, for the longest time I also did the same. The issue is that not all questions can be answered with numbers.

This podcast talks about empathy and why understanding your customers is far more important than any data point you'll ever get through your analytics platform of choice.

Every single digital marketing channel is getting more crowded with competition, more expensive and potential customers simply aren't clicking any more. Not only that, even email open rates and clicks have been dropping. 

So what's a marketer to do? 

I go over what I think the future looks like and then I am joined by Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Sparktoro and we discuss what can be done now and moving forward in digital marketing. 

In today's episode of Beyond Keywords it's time to take a BIG step back and figure out what the heck your customers actually want. I also talk to Matthew Hunt, the CMO of Powered By Search, a marketing agency here in Toronto that has built an "Intent Engine" to get the most our of your marketing.

Today I talk about marketing with no budget. I go over what you need to keep in mind in terms of laws, what you need to prepare before you go viral and some of the methods to reduce the time/budget trade off. 

The special guest for this episode is Diana Goodwin: 

Diana is the founder and CEO of Aquamobile, an on demand swim service that was featured on Dragon's Den and is currently operating across three countries. Here is a blurb from her LinkedIn that gives you some insight:

"In 2015, Diana won the $100,000 Telus/Globe and Mail Small Business Challenge. In 2014, she was awarded the Toronto Region Board of Trade Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award and was an Honoree for the United Nations Empact Showcase, which singles out the best companies started by young entrepreneurs. In addition to being profiled in Forbes, Inc., Success, Huffington Post, Techvibes, Mashable and The Globe and Mail, Diana has pitched on CBC's Dragon's Den."

Oh, and she bootstrapped her business from her own limited bank account at 19, talk about building a business with no budget!

This episode dives deep into two things: How you go about finding the right people when you're advertising and how to make sure you don't advertise to the wrong ones. The better you get at targeting the right people, the more return you'll get for each dollar and hour of time you spend. 

I talk about my disdain for keywords and what I mean by getting beyond them. This episode features Tim Kilroy, a former CMO, founder of agencies that sold for 7 figures and more.