Meaningful, Measurable Marketing

In the episode, Jen and Annalisa interview EbaNee Bond. Until recently, EbaNee was an entrepreneurial fellow at the University of Akron Research Foundation. A graduate of the university's mechanical engineering program, EbaNee recognized her love of creative problem solving and decided to take some time off to "unbox" herself and decide her next career move. EbaNee describes herself as a curious creator, champion of fairness and an authentic relationship builder. She's also exceptionally good at the customer discovery process, which was a major part of her role at the Research Foundation. 

EbaNee shares her aha moment in customer discovery, talks about the role of empathy in the process, and the importance of building something people actually want. She also references The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf.

Segments

What Are We Learning?

Jen: Think Again by Adam Grant

Annalisa: How I Built This: The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World's Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs

Small Business Shoutout

So Fresh Used Auto in Akron, Ohio, a black-owned, family-owned business

What Are We Drinking?

EbaNee: anything with ginger, including drinks from the Northside Speakeasy in Akron

Jen & Annalisa: Arsenal Cider in Pittsburgh, Ohio City, and other locations; Threadbare Cider in Pittsburgh; and Wigle Distillery in Pittsburgh

To be competitive in online marketing today, marketers must up their game in three key areas: user experience, content, and awareness.

In this episode, the Data Dames touch on:

User experience is now tied to more ranking factors than ever before.

How Google's machine learning has gotten quite good at figuring out user intent and why that matters for your content.

EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) signals and structured data.

Strategies for overcoming the "walled gardens" of social media and search platforms, including digital and traditional PR. 

Segments:

What are we drinking? Traverse City Whiskey Co!

Small business shoutout: Whitefeather Meats in Creston, Ohio

What are we learning about or what's bringing us joy?

Love is Stronger blog with author and philosphy professor Shelly P Johnson

Dogs (of course!)

Please don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and give us a review.

To be competitive in online marketing today, marketers must up their game in three key areas: user experience, content, and awareness.

In this episode, the Data Dames touch on:

User experience is now tied to more ranking factors than ever before.

How Google's machine learning has gotten quite good at figuring out user intent and why that matters for your content.

EAT (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) signals and structured data.

Strategies for overcoming the "walled gardens" of social media and search platforms, including digital and traditional PR. 

Segments:

What are we drinking? Traverse City Whiskey Co!

Small business shoutout: Whitefeather Meats in Creston, Ohio

What are we learning about or what's bringing us joy?

Love is Stronger blog with author and philosphy professor Shelly P Johnson

Dogs (of course!)

Please don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast and give us a review.

Google recently deployed Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to better comply with privacy laws and user demands, but at Data Dames, we don't think things will be much different. In this podcast episode, we explain why. Topics include:

Individual vs. group tracking

AI and machine learning

GA4 set up

Search engine business models

What Are We Drinking?

Bent Tree Coffee from Kent, Ohio. Locally roasted, Ethiopian Gugi is our favorite. Honorable mention to Great Lakes Brewing Company for its Conway's Irish Ale.

Small Business Shoutout

Lighthouse Ministries in Canton. They are deeply embedded in the community they serve and are starting Bethel University (BU) Canton. 

What are we learning? 

Annalisa: reading Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America 

Jen: trying out Clubhouse app

If you're thinking of redeveloping your website or building a new one from scratch, this episode of Meaningful, Measurable Marketing is for you. Jen and Annalisa interview Holly Pryce, a WordPress developer from the UK, about the pros and cons of popular WordPress page builders and website builders like Wix, Shopify, SquareSpace, and others. 

We talk about benefits of page builders, like low-code / no-code websites, drag-and-drop functionality, and speed to launch. We also talk about the disadvantages, such as inadvertent content loss, lack of usability, how easy they can be to "break," inability to customize, poor SEO, and the sheer amount of code. We hope this episode gives anyone considering a page builder or website builder lots to think about.

This episode was inspired in part by a great blog post Holly wrote last year, Should You Use a Page Builder on Your WordPress Website?

Small Business Shoutout

Independent Girls Collective. Since we recorded this podcast in December 2020, this organization has closed. You can now find Holly's friend Julia at aurawebsites.com. 

What Are We Learning?

Holly: React.js

Jen: advanced features of Google My Business

Annalisa: how to blend data sources in Google Data Studio

In this episode, recorded last November, we take our maiden voyage with interviews of professionals who deal with the day-to-day challenges and successes of marketing, sales, or customer service for small to midsize businesses. Our first guest is Denise Hobson, the marketing director of the Great Lakes Region of Visual Edge Technology, headquartered in North Canton, Ohio. Visual Edge was formed as a developmental startup in the wide format printing industry. Through many strategic acquisitions, the company has become one of the largest, value-added resellers in the office automation industry.

As the only in-house marketer for Visual Edge, Denise flies solo, an arrangement we’re sure many marketers can relate to. She started her marketing career as an accident, as she describes it, before the Great Recession of 2008, and in this interview, she shares a wealth of knowledge and experience about the complexities of marketing for many brands within a brand.  

We hope you enjoy this insightful interview.

Small Business Shoutout

Our small business shoutout in this episode is actually a nonprofit called Compassion Delivered, which provides meals for people in the Stark County, Ohio area who are coping with a life-threatening illness.

What We Are Drinking

Denise is drinking green tea, and Jen is drinking Kenay Kosabei black tea from Ohio Tea Company.

This podcast features an interview the Data Dames' first intern, Abi Shoaff, an English and creative writing major at Malone University, which is where we Data Dames received our bachelor's degrees. Even though there are references to Christmas-time beverages, the heart of this episode is timeless: writing is a critical skill for most careers, including marketing. In fact, Abi recently wrote a blog post about that topic.

We especially love Abi's way of looking at the intersection of design thinking, creative thinking, and strategic thinking. An added bonus in this episode for those who market to college-age students and young professionals: Abi talks about what themes and messages resonate with her right now.

Small Business Shoutout

Our small business shout-out this episode is an awesome coffee shop in Canton, Ohio, called Walkie Talkie Coffee.

What Are We Learning?

Abi: What am I going to take with me from this semester (fall 2020) and from this internship? "I've been looking into a lot of things that I didn't realize would be interesting until now. So I've been researching, like artificial intelligence, and different different thinking processes and marketing strategies and things that I maybe would have thought were boring before I looked into them."

Abi: reading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Annalisa: reading The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg.

Jen: reading Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls.

Book titles are linked to bookshop.org, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores—a cause that's important to Data Dames.

In this fourth and final episode of Yes Buts in Digital Marketing, the Data Dames finally talk about data! Specifically, Jen and Annalisa discuss the value of data analytics in marketing when you're able to collect statistically significant data. Find out what that means and if your business can benefit from it.

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What Are We Drinking?

This episode's mention of a noteworthy beverage company is for Western Reserve Distillers in Lakewood, Ohio (1:46).

Small Business Shoutout

This episode's shoutout goes to Cathy Culp Posner of Transition Consulting and Coaching. Cathy specializes in career and job transition coaching, executive coaching, and business and team coaching (3:19).

Resources and Tools Mentioned in This Episode

Google AnalyticsMicrosoft ClarityGoogle Analytics 365Adobe AnalyticsGoogle Analytics 4Google Tag ManagerAvinash Kaushik

What Are We Learning?

Writing poetry and making cocktails! (21:38)

Please don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and give us a review.

In the third episode of the Yes Buts of Digital Marketing series, the Data Dames (Annalisa Hilliard and Jen Carroll) of Data Dames Marketing talk about content and social media, including how they fit with messaging and SEO. The point? To help you decide if you should invest the time and money it will take to have success with these two tactics in competitive online spaces.

In a four-part series called "Yes Buts" of Digital Marketing, Jen and Annalisa cover four key tactics common in digital marketing that may or may not be something a small or one-person marketing team should add to their strategy.

Their clients frequently ask questions like, "Does SEO still work in 2020?" The Data Dames often respond, "Yes, but...you need to take certain things into consideration first." Those considerations are what the Dames will be covering in this series. Part two will focus on search engine optimization (SEO) in 2020, including the challenges of competing locally and nationally in search.