Expand yourself for more by honoring awareness and creating change in your career and personal life with authenticity. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Tanja Barth (https://aha.pub/TanjaBarth), a business development facilitator, entrepreneur, and consultant to other entrepreneurs, coaches, and individuals who wish to create a life where they can wake up every morning knowing that today is the best day and it can only keep getting better.

With over two decades of corporate experience as a CFO and M&A Specialist, over a decade of coaching, and many years as a facilitator to people who desire to create change in their life, Tanja’s depth of experience to support people from different walks of life to make changes inspires many others too.

If there are areas in your life that are misaligned and someone told you that you don’t have integrity in what you do and you want to fix that now, consider reaching out to Tanja Barth by visiting her website, http://tanjabarth.com, and going to https://aha.pub/TanjaBarth.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Individuals — whether in business or not — who are misaligned and subsequently unaware that they are not being authentic should reach out to Tanja Barth. #Authenticity http://tanjabarth.com

* My role is to ask entrepreneurs, consultants, and coaches many questions about their businesses to find out what they really want to create in the world and what they would really like to show up in the world. #Authenticity https://aha.pub/Tanjabarth

* We do business with those we know, like, and trust as a component of integrity, vulnerability, and #Authenticity. If you are not getting the results you expect, do you know what the problem is? https://aha.pub/MitchellLevy

* There are multiple ways to look at a person in terms of how they’re showing up. My job is to listen to your responses to questions that will help me see if there’s misalignment in how you present yourself physically, orally, or energetically. #Authenticity http://tanjabarth.com

* After seeing and working with major companies in great detail from all around the world for over 25 years, I have an in-depth knowledge of the dynamics and what is required to make a business successful. Do you walk the talk? #Authenticity http://tanjabarth.com

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Somewhere around eight years ago, Martin Waxman invited Joe Thornley and me to co-host Inside PR, a podcast started by Terry Fallis and Dave Jones.

That was 344 episodes ago.

It was all pretty new back then. Podcasts were few and far between. It’d be at least three years before Serial was published, making podcasting a household name. At the time, it was just something for me to do with two really smart communicators who I got to talk to every week.

Then it began to explode. I mean, as much as a podcast about communications can explode.

A little more than a year ago—87 episodes to be exact—I added the Spin Sucks podcast. And then Chip Griffin and I added the Agency Leadership podcast last summer.

You could say I’m all in on podcasting, which is the topic of this week’s Spin Sucks show.

Should You Go All In On Podcasts?

The podcasting space continues to evolve. There are innovations, changes, and new opportunities everywhere, and we discuss some of them, including micro-podcasts, smart device audio, and greater interactivity with podcast content.

There are, of course, pros and cons of micro-podcasting. While most podcasts today are 10 minutes or longer, it’s important to figure out what your audience wants before you determine the length of your podcast.

How long do they prefer to listen? What type of content should you create? How much time do you have to devote to planning, recording and post-production.

Podcasts are almost all pull: listeners listen when they want to, usually while they’re doing other things. However, podcast listeners are loyal, and often have a listening schedule that you’re a part of so it’s not something you want to put aside for later. It should be under serious consideration for your 2020 plans.

As well, podcasting is starting to attract serious investment, which indicates that it is being seen as an effective communications medium that has the potential to generate a lot of revenue.

Smart organizations use podcasting as a part of their content strategy, generating value from their shows in multiple ways. In addition, podcasting can be an efficient way to generate owned media, and provide materials for shared media. And you can also repurpose your podcast into many smaller pieces of content.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to podcasts. Do your homework, survey your audience—and get to work!

Have Your Say

What do you think about podcasting? Other than this one, what are your favorite shows? Have you thought about being a host or a guest yourself? Where do you need help? Let us know in the Spin Sucks community.

Resources

2020 Communications Trends

Retain your employees by effective engagement and brand story tactics.  This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert, Ben Baker https://aha.pub/BenBaker, who has spent 25 years helping people communicate the value of their brand.

Through workshops and consultations, Ben works with his clients to help them engage, retain and grow their most valuable assets, their employees, and to build leaders at all levels.

If you’re a CEO or a VP HR with the responsibility to retain people in your organization, but your employee retention rate keeps going down much faster than you want, you’re going to want to reach out to Ben Baker at https://aha.pub/BenBaker.

Here are a few AHA messages from this episode:

* CEOs and VP HRs who painfully watch $100,000 walking out the door every time an employee leaves should see the work being done by Ben Baker at https://aha.pub/BenBaker. #RetainYourEmployees

* I’m one of those consultants who looks at things, holds you by the hand and says, “Let’s fix the problem.” I don’t want to just come in there, point a finger, give you a report and walk away. #RetainYourEmployees https://yourbrandmarketing.com/ @YourBrandMrktng

* We start by having a conversation with various teams to understand the pain points. Where is the communication or onboarding breakdown? Where is the culture breakdown? What are the things that are not going as well as they could? #LeadingAtAnyLevel https://aha.pub/BenBaker

* If you talk to various teams in silos, and then you bring all that info together, you get a pretty good view of the whole. #LeadingAtAnyLevel https://aha.pub/BenBaker

* It’s a matter of giving small teams the ability to sit there and have a conversation in order to see their point of view without having everybody over their shoulder all at once. #LeadingAtAnyLevel https://aha.pub/BenBaker

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Answer your ultimate why to achieve leadership and team growth. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Ryan Dohrn https://aha.pub/RyanDohrn, who is an Emmy winner and was recognized by Forbes.com with The Best of the Web Award for his business strategies.

Ryan teaches a three-step process that helps leaders and teams figure out how to break out of their uncontrolled activities and focus on what’s going to drive value to their personal and professional lives.

If you’re a marketing and sales leader who wants to achieve peak performance and team growth, you should consider reaching out to Ryan Dohrn by visiting his website, https://RyanDohrn.com, and going to https://aha.pub/RyanDohrn.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Marketing and sales leaders and teams that are not reaching their full potential, knowing that there’s so much there, need to reach out to Ryan Dohrn. #PeakPerformance https://aha.pub/RyanDohrn

* If you’re a marketing and sales leader and find that your team is struggling, you need to drill in and figure out what’s going on. What are the things that aren’t going well that you can eliminate? https://aha.pub/RyanDohrn #TeamGrowth

* A piece to achieving #PeakPerformance is to identify what your why is. Why did you start this business in the first place? Without the why, you can’t move forward. https://RyanDohrn.com @RyanDohrn

* If you want to achieve #PeakPerformance, you need to figure out what’s working and repeat it. You also need to identify what’s not working and figure out how to eliminate that from your life and business. #PeakPerformance https://RyanDohrn.com @RyanDohrn

* When you say a false excuse long enough, it becomes a part of your life and your normal. You then start believing it, then your team believes it. This hampers #TeamGrowth. https://RyanDohrn.com @RyanDohrn

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Level up your government marketing strategies through effective social selling tactics. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Mark Amtower https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower, a consultant speaker, business bestselling author, columnist, adjunct graduate professor, and radio host.

Mark advises thousands of large, medium, and small companies on all aspects of marketing to the federal government. He teaches effective, cutting-edge tactics that work in the Web 2.0 world we live in.

If you’re in the government space and realize that you or your firm is not doing an effective social selling strategy and need to level up your game, you want to reach out to Mark Amtower at https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Government contractors and businesses who are not fully using social platforms to effectively reach out to their target audience should see the work being done by Mark Amtower. #SocialSelling https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower

* I help companies and government contractors make sure they look good on all social platforms before identifying whom they need to reach out to. #SocialSelling https://federaldirect.net/ @Amtower

* Too many people think that if they plug in their resume, everything’s cool. But you should showcase and prove in social platforms why people should be interested in you. #SocialSelling https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower

* People get on social platforms, sitting and waiting for something to happen. But they don’t fill out their profile, put up a picture, or use the background screen. How can they expect people to be interested with them? #SocialSelling https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower

* I help government contractors build a subject matter expert platform so when they start doing social interaction, they can get to a destination that says who they are, what they do, and whom they do it for. #SocialSelling https://aha.pub/MarkAmtower

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

In this episode of AMP Up Your Digital Marketing, Glenn Gaudet speaks with Kira Mondrus, SVP of Global Marketing at Tricentis. They sit down to discuss the benefits of perpetual demand generation marketing and how it can help grow your business. You’ll learn:

* Traditional campaign-based marketing is stymied by its need to find customers at just the right time.

* Perpetual demand generation, instead, engages prospects with ongoing messaging that allows them to find you when they need your product.

* Perpetual demand generation requires a heavy lift at first in the way of audience research, content creation, and brand advocacy, but the ongoing load is much lighter than with campaign-based marketing.

 

 

The traditional approach to marketing has a major flaw: It’s time-dependent. You can get the best message in front of the perfect customer, but if it’s not at the right time, your effort is wasted.

“You could be running a promotion on a tire sale, but if somebody doesn’t have a flat tire, they have absolutely no reason to engage with you for your discount tires,” explains Kira Mondrus, SVP Global Marketing at Tricentis, a continuous testing platform for software providers.

But what if you could be there every time your customer has a question about tires? Surely, you’d be top of mind when they have the key question: Where can I replace my flat tire?

This ongoing engagement with the customer is called “perpetual demand generation.” Kira joined the AMP Up Your Digital Marketing podcast to talk about how she implemented perpetual at her previous company and how she and her team at Tricentis apply the strategy for a buyer-centric approach to marketing.

What Is Perpetual Demand Generation?

Compare perpetual demand generation to the traditional campaign-based approach to marketing. Campaigns are time-bound and, often, focused more on what the brand wants to say than on what the customer wants to hear.

“What happens when your Q1 campaign is over?” Kira asks. “If they’re looking for that particular answer in Q2, they’re not going to find you.”

With perpetual, you instead start with the personas you want to engage. “It all starts with persona and really having an acute understanding of who it is that you are selling to,” says Kira.

To identify personas, consider the following:

* Their pain points

* Interests and questions during the buyer journey

Then, examine how those pain points are addressed.

 

 

The deliverables to address the pains are the kinds of marketing you’re familiar with: things like content, events, display advertising, and digital marketing. Demand gen activities such as content, events, interactive campaigns, and direct response targeting bring in the leads that need to be sifted through and nurtured.

In the lead nurturing process, you can score, automate, measure, and reroute leads to qualify their status as a qualified opportunity for sales. Sales will then engage, qualify, negotiate, and ideally win the business.

But sometimes those leads are not quite ready, at which point an opportunity is delayed and possibly even returned to marketing. This is all part of an overall perpetual demand generation process.

Campaigns are the way marketing is taught, and the concept is ingrained in the work —  but the industry has evolved, as it always has.

Kira says, “It will take time to think of perpetual as the new norm, the same way that it took time to think about automation as a must-...

This week we discuss case studies — both ones we’ve written and others we like. The best case studies are really about the storytelling, having a solid narrative arc with a beginning, a resolution and a moral. They bring to life a hero – or in some cases an anti-hero – and describe the drama that led up to a crisis point and how the situation was resolved. The best ones are simple, don’t burden the reader with needless details and have a news hook that makes them compelling during the time surrounding their online posting.

David’s own story about the Avast CISO Jaya Baloo, who faced a security breach on her first day on the job, was instructive at showing the conflicts over how to respond to a breach and how to rally her staff to fix the problem, but it also provided insight into her personality and her leadership strengths. Paul’s story about the rise of Domino’s Pizza from whipping post to Wall Street darling starts out by describing customers who described Domino’s’ product as tasting like cardboard. It’s an unusual way to start a story but a nice narrative for a turnaround. The chain took control over its digital technologies and saw a 50-fold increase in its stock price as a result.

Sometimes stories – like Paul’s piece on J.C. Penney’s attempted turnaround – don’t bear the test of time. While Penney’s tried to restart its brand with members of a team that led the successful digital transformation at Home Depot, the story shows that sometimes hope is not the best marketing strategy.

And sometimes stories have anti-heroes at their core, as this piece that Kaspersky ran last year about the increase in the number of cities that have suffered ransomware attacks. It drew our attention as a reminder of how devastating these attacks have been, and why they continue to be attractive to hackers, using storytelling as a hook.

Finally, case studies can have a visual element, as this piece on rebranding cranberries for the millennial generation did. The folks behind marketing this seasonal fruit used the fascination that millennials have with taking pictures of their food to put together a nice social media campaign last Thanksgiving that moved what many consider a boring traditional dish into the spotlight.

One of the toughest things for agencies to get right is pricing. If it is too high, you scare away good prospects. If it is too low, you sacrifice the profitability and sustainability of the business.

Agencies and their advisers have come up with all sorts of creative approaches. Performance-based pricing. Value-based pricing. Equity-based compensation. It goes on and on.

Chip and Gini talk about some of the options, as well as the underlying motivations of both clients and agencies in seeking new models and approaches.

RESOURCES

* Pricing and sales question (Reddit)

[read the transcript]

Grow your business with strategic innovation to accelerate success and development. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Dr. Eugene Buff (http://aha.pub/EugeneBuff), founder and president of Primary Care Innovation Consulting, focused on technology scouting, commercialization, business, and management consulting.

Eugene has an M.D. and a Ph.D. in genetics and is a certified licensing professional (CLP) and a registered technology transfer professional (RTTP). He helps companies manage their innovative businesses and find and engage with proper partners and clients globally. Eugene’s clients go to him for deal-making, technology positioning and marketing, open innovation, and intellectual property management and valuation.

If you need a fresh outlook on how early startup failures can be prevented and what steps to take to find the relationship between your customer’s need and the innovation required, consider reaching out to Eugene by visiting his Twitter account, @EugeneBuff, and going to http://aha.pub/EugeneBuff.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Managers in charge of developing new technologies for their companies who don’t know where to look for new areas of business or how to recognize #Innovation when they see it should get in touch with Dr. Eugene Buff. http://aha.pub/EugeneBuff

* Many businesses can improve efficiency and increase revenue from knowing the risks and rewards of #Innovation. My guidance, being a registered technology transfer professional, can push your ideas for development. http://aha.pub/EugeneBuff

* Are you managing a mid-sized to large company, scouting for technology and professional connections? Let’s get in touch, and allow me to share my credibility in the field of #Innovation. Let’s talk. @EugeneBuff

* Does your business need to move with strategy advisement from someone whose credibility is built with clients from startups to Fortune 500s and universities? I’m your go-to guy to connect with, as my focus is all about #Innovative solutions. @EugeneBuff

* Discovery, invention and technology can be limited for many businesses due to lack of ideas, resources, and training. Do you need coaching from a licensed professional to drive #Innovation in your company? http://aha.pub/EugeneBuff

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.

Successfully write a book by understanding who your reader is. This episode features #ThoughtLeader and #Expert Judith Briles https://aha.pub/JudithBriles, a book publishing and marketing expert with 37 books that have been published with foreign publications in 16 countries. She has a depth of experience within the publishing and writing fields. Judith has connections with vendors and associates that will bring your book concept and vision to life.

As an advocate for authors, Judith knows publishing inside and out, from both the traditional and independent sides. She is passionate about helping authors overcome their fear of rejection and successfully write their book. Judith describes herself in two words: author advocate.

If you want to learn how to overcome your fear of rejection and successfully write a book, you should consider reaching out to Judith Briles by visiting her website https://thebookshepherd.com and going to https://aha.pub/JudithBriles.

Here are a couple of AHA messages from this episode:

* Authors who want to successfully write a book but are afraid of being rejected should reach out to #AuthorAdvocate Judith Briles. https://thebookshepherd.com @JudithBriles

* If you want to successfully write a book, the first step is to understand who your reader is. Do you know your readers? Only then can you supply the solution, relax, and start doing whatever is your thing. #AuthorAdvocate https://thebookshepherd.com @JudithBriles

* Not everyone is going to like, love, or agree with you. But do you know that there are millions out there who are looking for you? That is who you are writing for and talking to! #AuthorAdvocate https://thebookshepherd.com @JudithBriles

* What I do is try to find your core message and bring it alive. I can help you write it, gut it, or rewrite it. I can help you bring your book to life! #AuthorAdvocate https://aha.pub/JudithBriles

* I am a good listener and intuitive. I pay attention to the five senses and incorporate them into what I’m hearing my clients say, so I can start helping them write their book. #AuthorAdvocate https://aha.pub/JudithBriles

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, visit: https://thoughtleaderlife.com/.