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Hello everyone, welcome to the digital brand builder. Joining me today is Robbie Kalman Baxter and we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, and a subject, I need to know more about which is what brought Robbie on, and that is subscription models and what she calls a forever transaction with your customers, how do you grow lifetime customer value I mean this is such a critical skill for marketers if you’re in the SAS business or any kind of subscription business. You’re going to want to tune in and stay tuned into this so welcome. Robbie to the show.

04:34 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Thanks so much for having me mark.

Mark Fidelman  04:36

My pleasure. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself in 100 words or less.

Robbie Kelman Baxter  04:42

Yeah, I’m a subject matter expert and advisor on membership and subscription models, and I’m the author of the membership economy and the forever transaction, and I work for organizations to move to a long term relationship with their customers to enjoy recurring revenue.

Mark Fidelman  05:03

Wonderful. And so you’ve just completed your second book right. Yes. Okay, we’re gonna dive into that a little bit. But first of all, can you kind of explain what we’re focuses on, say, the subscription models or is it just SAS businesses or is it across the board or just kind of give us a kind of lay of the land of what you’re focused on.

Robbie Kelman Baxter  05:26

Yeah, well, I first got interested in in subscription pricing. About 1718 years ago when I was doing some work for Netflix, and I fell in love with their business model and the way they were so focused on doing one thing really well, the people they serve. That which is professionally created video content created in, with delivered with cost certainty in the most efficient way possible. And I saw how they stayed focused on delivering on that promise to their members. By continuing to add to their catalogue of content, improving their technology, and really not letting themselves get distracted by any other things that came their way video games or user generated content or anything else just doing that one thing really well. And as I was falling in love with that model, everybody else was too and they I started getting calls from people who said hey we want to be the Netflix of our space, whether that’s Software as a Service SaaS as you talked about, or media, you know, news, music, and then crazy stuff bicycles dental brain pain management products insurance. Everybody was trying to figure out how to be Netflix and what I realized was, you can’t be Netflix, but you can start to apply these principles that I can put into a framework, almost any kind of business can use to build recurring revenue with the people they serve that there were these principles that applied it was this new world this membership economy, and businesses could use those principles to kind of reach the holy grail which we all want which is you know subscription revenue Predictable Revenue direct relationship with the people we serve and tremendous loyalty. And so, I’ve worked with companies across more than 20 Industries. I’ve worked with brand new startups, with just you know a solopreneur. I’ve worked you know with with with fan clubs and influencers and I’ve worked with digital natives Survey Monkey, you know, LinkedIn and then I’ve worked with really big traditional old line businesses consumer products, retail heavy equipment you name it somebody wants to join the membership economy.

Mark Fidelman  07:47

Can any business join this membership economy or is it is it really limited.

07:54 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

The only things that I found that don’t really work are businesses that don’t need sales and marketing, so if your last gas for 100 miles or you have the patent on a drug that is going to save certain people’s lives and they have no other choice. You know you can treat your customers terribly and not work on a relationship at all because they’re going to find you, and they’re going to use your services. But even those businesses run the risk of being disrupted by a substitute that has a better model and is more customer centric. But for those of us that are you know marketers working with with businesses any business that works with marketing any business where the customer has choices to achieve their goal or solve their problem, those businesses can benefit from the principles that we’re talking about.

Mark Fidelman  08:48

Okay, so let’s, let’s then start now that we have the overview let’s then start from the beginning, and I’m very curious as to how Robbie if you’re brought in to help some of these organizations or maybe you have some examples from your book. How does somebody really decide on what their membership program is going to be. That’s the first question, and then followed by okay you decide what it’s going to be, how do you decide on how to price it.

09:13 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Yeah, so the first thing you want to do is think about what is your forever promise and who are you making it to. So those two questions, go hand in hand. The promise is, what is it that you’re going to do on an ongoing basis for them that justifies their loyalty and engagement and willingness to pay you on a regular schedule. So it’s kind of the difference between I’m going to sell you a blazer and I’m going to make sure you always look appropriate for any professional occasion, right there’s, it’s a different way of thinking about what you do for your customer. So you want to know what’s that promise and then who is it for so in the world of clothing is that for you know is the promise about professional or is the promise about looking stylish or is the promise about variety ease convenience cost savings. So you want to really think about who is this person and what is the promise you’re making to them. And then you want to think about what is the goal that this membership is going to serve for your business. So is this about what is what is the challenge that you’re facing Is it about the revenue, or is it about deepening the kind of marketing relationship that you have with your customers a lot of membership models or need for deepening the relationship, so that when a lumpy purchase needs to be made, you’re the one that has the release. So those are kind of.

10:46 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

What is it that you’re delivering what is the value you’re delivering. And then, you know, you get into pricing.

10:54 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Right. Oh, yeah, so do one. So,

Mark Fidelman  10:57

yeah, I’m sorry. We’ll cut this part out, but why don’t you talk about pricing so for, for example, you know, I’ve got a course that I’m trying to figure out pricing for, and I want different levels, and I’m not calling a membership but I’m thinking rethinking that based on our earlier discussions. So how would you go about determining price for something like that or you can get into, you know, products product pricing I know Amazon’s probably studying this to death, and they’ve got subscription models for just about everything. But, so, you know, first a service and then a product, how do you determine price for those things.

11:36 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

So let’s say that you’re that you’re trying to price for a service let’s say that you’re a solopreneur subject matter expert or celebrity, and what you’re really charging for what is the forever promise that you’re offering and maybe if that’s about. I’m going to teach you how to be successful in digital marketing. So you want to think about, well, who is that for Who are you going to help be successful in digital marketing is this for an individual, that’s trying to build their, their independent personal brand, or is this for you know a fortune 50 company so you really really want to get clear on who you’re doing it for you want to understand what is the value of providing this benefit forever. And then you want to kind of work backwards like what I always suggest to my clients is triangulate between what is your actual cost because you want to cover your costs and make it worth your time. You want to think about what are the substitutes what are the other alternatives that somebody would have to achieve that same goal. And you want to think about what is the value to that member of providing you know whatever you’re the access to your to your services. So those would be kind of the three things that I would use to come up with a price. The other thing that I would keep in mind is what is the goal of this offering is this something that you want to do to kind of bring everybody into your community you want to build a footprint, you want to kind of lock them into your community, in which case you might care less about optimizing for profit or is the whole shebang so for example Netflix, they only make their money from the subscription. Right, so, so they can’t give it away. On the other hand, LinkedIn, gives away a tremendous amount of value. Because if we weren’t there, the non paying members of LinkedIn weren’t there, there would be no value for the recruiters and the job seekers and the sales people that are paying the higher level subscriptions. So it’s really important to understand your, your model, and where the revenue is coming from you out you know you asked about Amazon Amazon’s model of membership amazon prime. You know, there’s been a lot of, you know, a study done on that and the revenue that they generate from it. But, you know, the biggest value that they get is not necessarily the revenue from Prime, it’s the behavior change that it drives once you sign up for Amazon Prime you buy everything from amazon prime, and then you start to use the other services that you didn’t initially sign up for, but they come with prime and you start to get exposed to that so things like using your Kindle. You know, the free books that you can get from them, the three storage you get from them. Yeah, the video content you get from them the music you get from them. And suddenly, their footprint they own you you’re you’ve made them a habit, and having that having that relationship to the customer gives them permission to sell a whole bunch of other things.

Mark Fidelman  14:49

No, I love, I love these big holes I’m, I know that a lot of people listening are gonna wonder well you know I’m not Amazon, and I’ll have other services to offer. Is there something. And I don’t know if you want to pick a retailer who’s really struggling right now. If you don’t know this It’s May one 2020 we’re in the midst of, kind of a depressing situation that you’re probably all aware of. And if you’re listening from the future. A lot of retailers are struggling, and some of them are if they’re not they’re not essential but not even in business, so they’re trying to figure out how they can pivot and change your business model so my question is okay if you’re speaking to those people. How would you advise them to create some sort of subscription or membership program.

15:36 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Absolutely. So we’re already seeing some, some early adopters and innovators. When you want to do like let’s say that you want a toy store, a local, you know, local toy store, you might build a direct relationship with your neighbors, where you deliver toys on a regular schedule that align with the child’s maturity level, you know so different different gifts. You might also say for members of our store so that’s kind of one model which is sort of the subscription box model, where you get, you know, a new product periodically and maybe you overlay that with insights about the value of play, how children, you know, are developing, you know kind of what you can do as a parent or grandparent or a good friend to support your child’s growth and creativity, that would be one model, another model would be what I think is very popular right now is that the premium services model, which a lot of retailers are adopting kind of following in the footsteps of Costco, but it’s a model where you say you pay a fee because this is a store that you know you’re going to use a lot. And so you get better value and better service for being a member. So this is where you know you might say again if you’re at the toy store, you might say well if you’re a member of our toy store, you get free wrapping. You get notified with, you know, when certain things go on sale, you have access to a toy concierge so you can call up and say hey you know I have a 10 year old birthday party. I need to present Can you, you know, help me pick something rapid and drop it off in my house, for example, that kind of service level of the Restoration Hardware is doing something in that space right now CBS is doing something in that space right now, different benefits of course Restoration Hardware it’s more about getting decorating advice. Access to swatches without having to put a deposit down and pretty large discounts, in exchange for your hundred dollar fee to be a member, and, you know, another example CDs where you get discounts on certain products you get kind of jumped a line at the pharmacy which is a big deal, especially right now. So thinking about what is it that you what are the problems that your members are coming to you for that you’re not quite delivering on. Right. And why do I go to the toy store I go to the toy store because I want my kids to have, you know, fun developmentally appropriate stuff and I want family games and activities that keep us connected. Why do I go to the pharmacy, because I want to stay healthy or get back to my optimum health and I want expertise, and I want it to be no cost savings. So how do you build that into your membership.

Mark Fidelman  18:28

Great advice. So, okay, and I know you can go on and on this subject and I encourage you to read Robbie’s book, and there’s gonna be more examples there. But let’s Let’s now move to the next phase which I assume and let me know if I’m missing a step. So you’ve got the idea you know what you’re gonna do, you got the pricing down. Now it’s like okay how do you deploy this and get the word out.

18:51 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Yeah. So if you’re a going concern. Let’s go back to this, you know, kind of marketing expertise example you’re going concern you have real clients. You’ve, let’s say that you’ve picked a segment of your real clients that you want to serve through your membership. The first place I would go is to your actual clients that are actually getting something that is pretty close to what you’re going to offer so in other words they’re the ones that are already availing themselves of all of your services, they’re the ones that have kind of verbally said to you. Just tell me what I need to do, and I’ll do it because I trust you and I know you understand this space better than I do. They’re going to be the easiest ones to sell this to because you’re almost doing this already, and that’s going to be a good place, Derek, and to see how the membership works, what your actual costs are, you know, for example, a lot of service membership say one of the benefits is you have access to call me whenever you have a question, and people are often really scared, I offer this actually for, for, you know, my, my business I have, you know, unlimited access to me and when I first started doing it I was really worried that people would abuse it, they don’t, they really don’t. But But when you’re trying it out you wanted to see and make sure are people abusing the services, what are the actual costs I’m incurring. How is it working is it deepening the relationship like I hoped, is it doing the things I had a hypothesis about what this was going to do for my business. I had a list of hypotheses, how many of these are actually true so you start there. Once you know that somebody’s doing this gets value, it’s profitable for you. And it engages them for the long term. That’s when you want to turn on your loudspeaker because you know that the, you know, if you can bring them in, they’re going to stay and be very profitable and be very happy. So that’s when you start working on, what is your, I always think of it is your trigger benefit or your headline benefit that gets somebody to join. And once you know that, you know, then you can work your way basically you’re working backwards up the funnel. You start by saying if somebody joins are they going to stay. That’s the first thing to test, then you say, How do I get them to join. If I have them in front of me. So forget the kind of marketing piece if I was in sales mode hand to hand combat of sales. How would with with this confidence that if I had a prospect in front of me. I could get them to sign up and that they’d be happy. The answer to that is yes, then you say what are the ways that I can bang the drum and build awareness to bring those people, to me, and you’re an expert on that so I’ll leave it at that.

Mark Fidelman  21:29

Yeah and you know I’m kind of going through that right now. If you look at the best in the business for what I’m doing in terms of courses. What they do is a long lead up a kind of a launch, and they work with influencers and keeping a very short here but they work with influencers to help build anticipation. And they, they build exclusivity and they say it’s only open for a few weeks and all that these, these tactics I find manipulating, but you know I’m so deep in the business that I understand what’s going on. A lot of people feel like they don’t want to lose something, so they know there’s only a three week window to join that you know particular course or mastermind, you know, they get they get this anxiety about it and they sign up and when if they thought about more maybe it’s sad maybe the timing isn’t right for them. But

22:17 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

here’s the thing. That is great, bringing people and giving them you know a sense of scarcity and and prestige to join something, those things are great in a membership model when you have a subscription, the way that you benefit it’s not a transaction that happens one time as a transaction that keeps on happening. So, you have to before you do those things before you reach out to your influencers before you, you know, start, you know, sending out the signals that this is a scare

22:50 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

they sign up for that first month, they’re the right person to stay forever.

23:03 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Join and then they leave, because it’s not a fit for them. So that’s why I’m sort of suggesting that you make sure first that your offer has a very very long life cycle, before you invest in those. Those acquisition tactics those awareness and acquisition tactics, but they can be like those tactics work great at getting people in the door which is, which is really powerful.

Mark Fidelman  23:27

Okay. And I agree, I mean there’s so many acquisition tactics that that I mean that’s your right that’s what I do is I figure out what’s the best one for what you’re trying to do, whether it’s a subscription model, or whether it’s you know something else. There’s a variety of different things that you can do in order to maximize the top of the funnel type activities to bring people in and it really depends on what your subscription or membership model is there’s not one size fits all you really got to be strategic about it and then educate people as to, you know, why should I join a subscription Why should I. Why should I do this or that you gotta, I’ve already touched on a lot of reasons why. But you have to make it so plain and obvious to them they say yeah, it’s a better deal for me, and I don’t think not anymore.

24:15 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Yeah. And once they join you as the, as the business owner. Subject Matter Expert the influencer, you want to really think about what is it that I can provide for this person on an ongoing basis, how, how am I going, who is the person that’s going to stay with me for a long time, because it’s so much easier to generate revenue. If, if your customer stays with you than it is if you have to keep going out and finding new ones.

Mark Fidelman  24:46

Yep. Great. Totally agree so let’s Let’s now move to kind of a post acquisition phase let’s say you get them on a subscription model or membership model. How do you keep them there. What are so do you have some specific examples, or some

25:02 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

very specific. Yeah. So, and again, I encourage people to think about this before you put on your loudspeaker before you reach out to your influencers before you do your marketing campaigns to bring people in. You want to make sure that if you get them, they’re going to stay so that involves what I think of as engagement metrics and engagement features. So these are the features that are going to make somebody say, Hey, I came for that pitch I came for that one thing that they were marketing, but I’m staying. Because something, whatever that is. So for example, I might join a committee like an expert community because I want to learn, you know, the five ways I can use video or the you know whatever the specific things, and then the reason I stay is because I say wow you know everything this person teaches me about marketing is something that I haven’t heard anywhere else. This is actually a really good place for me as a marketing practitioner to stay ahead of the curve, it’s my secret weapon for new and emerging trends in the digital world that’s very different than I have this very specific task around what we’re going to do this month around video. So I come in for the trigger I stay for that bigger reason I might also stay another hook that keeps people for the long term is the community itself, which is the people under your brand umbrella that have similar goals and help each other they’re actually creating value under your brand. They’re, they’re part of the product. So for example if there’s a whole group of people and we’re all marketing leaders that are organizations, and we have this opportunity together under the umbrella to talk about our digital marketing strategies. How amazing have people that have the same vocabulary and have sort of been learning from the same expert to be sharing our real world successes and challenges that becomes part of the value and then I say, you know, I came for that course that I’m staying for this community of trusted colleague. So that’s really how you want to think about how you keep them. And the other thing I would say is, especially in the world of subject matter experts and thought leaders. One of the things that you want to do is balance between your current members who are pushing the envelope on what you do next. Kind of like, okay, I’ve, I’ve absorbed all the expertise you’ve taught me. What’s next, you know I’m doing all the things you said what’s the next thing what’s what’s coming around the curve, you want to always stay a little ahead of your best members. On the other hand, you want to think about tomorrow’s members and see what is, what are their choices right now, what are their challenges and am I rolling out the welcome mat for them, because if you have a really successful membership. The risk is you focus too much on today’s members and forget about tomorrow’s members and even make them feel like outsiders when they join. And, and what ends up happening them is they look for an alternative or they create their own alternative.

Mark Fidelman  28:07

Okay. And. Okay, so if. Is there something you put in place to kind of measure the success of each of those things is there. How do you know things are going well or not going well are they benchmarks. Okay. The

28:24 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

first thing is, most people, if you have a monthly membership. Most people quit after the first month. Vast majority. And then the second month is a little bit better and the third month is a little better, and usually in most businesses by about the fourth month it levels off, and then people stay for whatever the duration is at the value of membership so in Netflix’s land it might be three years or more. I was talking to somebody the other day who runs a program to help solopreneurs start their businesses. He was finding people were dropping off at seven months, so you want to understand the true customer lifetime value you especially want to track onboarding to make sure that people are doing the habits of your best customer so in other words when they join. So for example if one of the benefits initial benefit is joined to take the class, but you know that the reason people stay is because of the relationships they establish while they’re taking the class. You want to make sure that they’re establishing relationships so you want to start figuring out what are the engagement metrics to track that tell you that somebody is making your offering or your community, a habit. So you want to track those engagement metrics, and you want to really understand retention retention is not very sexy. But it’s super important and very lucrative if you understand why people are canceling their memberships, you can fix it. And you can fix it and lots of different ways you can fix it by communicating the value, better in the first place, you can fix it by onboarding members, better if the reason is that they joined, they had all these high hopes but they never figured out how to become part of the community or how to access your catalogue of content or they never made time to access the content. You can kind of provide breadcrumbs to get them there. If the reason they’re leaving is because they’ve consumed all your content and believe you have nothing left to teach them. You might want to add more content, but tracking retention is probably the single most important thing you can do to optimize your long term lifetime value.

Mark Fidelman  30:25

And there’s all sorts of charts and graphs and there’s a certain level that you got to keep signing people up at versus people canceling or else your, your situation you get into trouble. I mean, I have a lot of data experts that have given me those those charts and graphs and for the purposes of this podcast we’re not going to go into them. I might have them on later to kind of explain it but it’s really critical to kind of monitor monitor that and make sure that you’re above the line, else you’ve got a failing business over time. And like you said if you might if you’re monitoring that you’re being very communicative and you can make the adjustments, you can you can change that trajectory. So, yeah, very, very well said. Is there anything that we haven’t covered Robbie that we could have covered that people in this podcast or listening to this podcast should know I know you’ve got a book that goes far deeper into all this stuff but is there anything at a high level that we can give to the listeners to create a better subscription program or membership program.

31:27 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

I think the one other thing that I would want to share is that, for better or for worse, you know, five years ago when membership economy came out, I wrote it because it didn’t see what I was seeing, they didn’t see the power of subscriptions and membership. Five years later that is not the problem anymore. Everybody understands that subscriptions are really valuable and important, but they’re not necessarily executing in a way where the product offering justifies subscription pricing where the offering is actually something that is for the long term, and provides ongoing value and consumers and businesses alike are getting much more sophisticated about subscriptions, and there’s some subscription fatigue out there. So when you introduce a new subscription. The good news is that your customers prospects are going to understand what a subscription is they understand how to be billed for it they’re willing to do subscriptions, but they’re also going to really want to see that you’re offering justifies subscription pricing so I would just encourage you, before you go out there with a subscription. Just ask yourself, Is this something that makes sense, like what is the reason this is a subscription and not something that you can purchase outright.

Mark Fidelman  32:47

All right, good. I mean this is so valuable if you’ve haven’t listened to this again I encourage you to do it. The other thing that you should do is buy Robbie’s book we’ve got two final questions Robbie. And I asked everybody, this. And the first question is what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend. I could tell you that you told me stream yard. Earlier,

33:12 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

just gonna say stream yard I just, you know, I’m LinkedIn live beta tester so I’m one of the first, I guess, 500, people to have a live on on LinkedIn. And I’ve been using stream yard as a way of, you know, sharing my live streams both on LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube so that’s been that’s been something that I’ve been really having fun with.

Mark Fidelman  33:36

Okay. And our second question is who’s influencing you today in marketing.

33:43 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Well, today it’s you. I mean, candidly the conversation we had about how to think about video in my own business is very powerful and really thought provoking for me to think about very practical ways that I can be incorporating I always talk about how you package value. I have this expertise in subscriptions in membership and business models in strategy. And I packaged it as a book I’ve packaged it as consulting I packaged it as keynote speeches. And I’m starting to do more around packaging and video and candidly I found you did not pay me because Mark did not be shocked, but what he is teaching is actually something that I really need to learn at this moment in my career.

34:30 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Yeah, I,

Mark Fidelman  34:33

I would encourage everybody really to take a look at and I’m gonna be doing a lot of free stuff. And, but if you want to get the next level if you really want to turn video into this video sales funnel and really move it to the next level and where you’re not breaking breaking the bank, I mean you can I mean you can spend a lot of money if you’re a corporation, but you can also do it from home if you’re a solopreneur and you have a good idea. It’s, there’s no better medium, and I’ve what all I’ve done is combine it with a sales funnel, we figured out how to combine these videos with sales funnels on nearly every channel, and show you how to do it very very inexpensively and lead to a high ROI sale, again if your product or service resonates with your target audience so. All right, Robbie so wonderful conversation. Where can people find you and buy your book.

35:26 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

My book anywhere Amazon Barnes and Noble, your local indie booksellers who probably need your support more than ever. Books really easy to find it’s in, it’s in Kindle it’s an audible print it’s going to

Mark Fidelman  35:40

be in multiple languages, give everyone the title again.

35:42 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

It’s called the forever transaction, how to build a subscription model so compelling, your customer to leave. And you can find me on. Robbie Kalman Baxter calm, his website there’s tons of content there. you know, print, video, audio, lots of goodies and, and you can find me on all social media, mostly LinkedIn and Twitter.

Mark Fidelman  36:12

Wonderful. All right. Bobby thanks again for joining us on the podcast I think you know in a couple months you should come back and talk about perhaps what we’ve combined together because we’re going to work together, going forward, and would be interesting to kind of combine that element that you’re talking about in terms of subscriptions and memberships with a video sales funnel, it could be quite interesting.

36:37 Robbie Kelman Baxter 

Really interesting.

Mark Fidelman  36:39

Wonderful. Thanks again and. And we’ll talk to you soon. All right. All right, I’m gonna cut out that ending, no one like we’re getting off a call or something.

How To Build A Compelling Subscription Model Business
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HOST AND GUEST

Mark Fidelman and Owen Video

Mark Fidelman  00:03

Welcome to the digital brand builder podcast where we bring you the best growth strategies from the world’s experts to help build your business faster. And now, here’s your host, Mark Fidelman. Hello everyone today I have a very special guest. His name is Owen video. Oh, and can I reveal your real name?

00:28

Owen Video

There’s no point in revealing my real name because no one will be able to pronounce it.

Mark Fidelman  00:34

And he and I are going to talk about how to use video to build awareness. And you know, if you’ve been listening and watching me on YouTube, this is one of my favorite topics building awareness building sales videos, the way to go. There’s nothing that touches it now. It’s not easy. And that’s why I brought one on the show to tell you how he does it for his clients. So well. Welcome to the show. Oh, and can you tell us about yourself in 100 words or less Yeah.

01:00

Owen Video

I’m a YouTube strategy coach. So I help brands and I help thought leaders launch a content strategy on YouTube. And we walk you through the whole process of, you know, what videos should you be creating? How do you create them? And then how do you attach them to a business objective like growing a network generating leads, and of course, generating revenue. And so we help you with all of that from soup to nuts. And I’ve been doing this for a long time. You know, before I got into YouTube, I was working in the television and radio space, and we were creating shows there as well. And so it was a real joy for me to be able to get out of old media and jump into new media where, you know, it’s like a duck in water for me. Wonderful.

Mark Fidelman  01:39

But then, you know, I’ve always wondered this, and we’ve known each other for several years. How did you start? in video? Why did you decide, hey, wait, why did you wake up one day and say, you know, I’m going to do more on video?

01:52

Owen Video

Yeah, it’s a great question. Well, I’ll tell you, it really goes back to 1989. And I was, you know, eight or nine years old. My My family was not wealthy by any means. But that year, we had two big presents under the tree. One of those presents was a brand new Nintendo with Mike Tyson’s punch out. And you know, Mario World I think was was sort of the thing. But the other big gift was one of those VHS cassette tape players, video cameras, you know how you put the whole beat VHS sort of inside the thing and your dad’s are toting these things around like the, you know, the little league games and why they record my dad would record two hours of Little League that we would never again watch, you know, but you weren’t allowed to touch the tape either like that. That tape was family videos. Well, I played with Nintendo for about 15 seconds, but I played with the video camera for the next 15 years. And so, you know, all through my life. I’ve been playing with video cameras in high school, I was part of a comedy troupe that we created called the pen tablet. And what we would do it actually comes from so I married an axe murderer which is sort of this old, you get you film but you know, we would do comedy sketches and we would record them and then we would give them to the school to play at the assemblies and stuff like this. And so, you know, I was big fan of Saturday Night Live kids in the hall, um, Second City, you know, and and so I really loved video. And when I graduated, all of a sudden, everyone had to go to college. And I was like, What? What are we supposed to do? So, I didn’t apply for anything. And so I got a job in sales. I was in sales for 10 years, got into marketing and and it wasn’t until the stock market crash of 2008 that I was like, you know what all of this is garbage. I’m gonna take my video camera and do what I love in an industry that I love. And that’s how I became own video.

Mark Fidelman  03:46

Well, you know, it’s fascinating. We fall two different paths to video. I mean, your history is much longer than mine. I’ve always I’ve always been a little shy to be on video. And so I started getting trained in presentations and it took me You know, 567 years and going out and around the country and actually some of the world and doing presentations that I got comfortable with myself on camera and started doing some video here. Yeah, but it’s interesting your past so you’re kind of, you know, born into this. So, a little bit would you say?

04:18

Yeah, I think that it’s a natural part of my DNA you know, even as a kid I remember watching commercials and then trying to mimic the facial expressions of the actors in the commercials I’ve very clear memories of doing this by the way, you know of sitting watching some of these these shows and going like, I wonder if I can look like I’m about to cry. I wonder if I can look like I’m really excited. So I remember sitting at the table you know, when I used to drive my mom nuts you know, cuz my mom’s prescription drug addict, she did not at all want to entertain the idea of anyone being successful in our family except for her. And of course, you know, that was all part of the the prescription drug delusion, you know, but I would sit there at dinner and I would be like, I would be like, Wow, this is great and It’s nutritious, too, you know, and I would start to sort of do these things I heard in commercials and it just drove the family nuts. But even from an early age, I, I knew I wanted to be presenting. And as a young kid that that sort of manifested is to commercial I grew up in LA. So it’s like, I want to be in commercials. I want to be a movie star. But there was a real you know, there was a real moment for me. I think it was right around 2122 when I recognized a lot of the the drugs the adultery and and the the sort of idol chasing stuff that happens in Hollywood, and I was like, Okay, I really like to perform, but I don’t want to be a part of that community. Yeah, and that’s a Believe it or not, that’s when I went into a couple years of darkness, drug juice, myself and alcohol addiction, because I was trying to find my place. You know, ironically, I didn’t go into Hollywood because I didn’t want to do drugs. And instead I got depressed because I wasn’t in Hollywood and started doing drugs. But that lasted just a couple years until until I got it. job at a radio station and when I was at a radio station all of a sudden you know I was producing again and I was out producing everyone else and the reason that my ads were out producing everyone else’s ads is because we were telling stories and we were taking the viewer on a journey and that’s that’s a talent that I’ve been able to apply to Facebook Live to YouTube live to video ads, and now on to YouTube channel growth which is by far the most profitable route for any personality any brand any business okay? The the organic traffic that you will get from a YouTube channel far outperforms any ad campaign. Right five grand a day. I’m not saying don’t do ads, I’m just saying you’ll you’ll you’ll get the same amount of impressions at a fraction of the cost on YouTube. So you get your lead gen but but you know what also starts to happen. Mark is you become a person of influence Tony You know that I had cancer a couple

Mark Fidelman  07:01

years ago, right?

07:03

Yep. So during cancer, chemotherapy, I would sit on my couch, and I would watch YouTube videos and infomercials and I’m sitting like trying to crack the code, you know. And what I noticed was is that I’m watching these episodes of Frasier Frasier became my favorite show when I was on chemotherapy. And I found myself like really loving Frasier and I remember telling my wife at dinner, you know, I think if Frasier met me, I think he’d liked me. And my wife says to me, you mean Kelsey Grammer. And that’s the power of YouTube right there is that I had spent so many hours watching this actor, I actually thought I knew him. And that parasocial relationship is what YouTube is all about. And so when your brand when your company goes out there with a show, not a series of advertisements, okay? And you were like, hey, today, we’re going to advertise this and say, we’re gonna advertise that that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about if you have a stroller company, then you have a stroller show. If you have a vitamin company, and you have a Vitamin show, if you sell physical therapy, then you have a physical therapy show on YouTube. And what happens is, people start to generate relationship with you, they feel like they know you, they can trust you. And because of that you become the expert to them in your topic matter. And that’s the goal of YouTube.

Mark Fidelman  08:18

You know, it’s so funny. I mean, you word for word could be, you know, I could be in unison on this. There’s one thing I do want to bring up that I just I know he believes this and, and I I also do but you know, the thing about ads, and you can do video ads, you can do any kind of ad and it’s on Facebook, it’s on Google, it’s on. You know, any platform you can imagine. But once you stop paying for those ads, all that goes away, done with YouTube videos, they live on forever.

08:47

I mean, they do they do, they’re like Mustafa and the Lion King, you know, he lives in you. But to your point, you know, ads make you a commodity. You know, ads make you a fork. Right everyone’s got forks. Some forks are better than other forks. We got some Forks Over at Walmart for a buck like a buck for three forks. But we also got forks for our anniversary. And these forks, like curved for the human hand and everything and, and it’s it’s a better fork, but still a fork, you know? Yeah. ads make you a fork, you’re just another person slang in another product and for the means of profitability and growth. They serve a purpose. I ran ads for a long time, and we did ads for a long time, we have a whole course on ads. But what I found was this is that the moment that you stop producing that ad to get in front of people, you’ve done two big things. Number one is you’ve branded yourself as a commodity. But number two, you have also trained your audience not to look for you. Okay, your audience is now used to if they see you, they’re going to see you in a newsfeed somewhere. There’s nothing in them that says I’m going to go to YouTube. And watch Mark’s new show. And that’s where we want to put our clients. We want you to be in a place where your client is going, Hey, what is ABC up to this week? I would love to check in on them and they know that it’s YouTube. Why YouTube? Well, because on YouTube, they’re going to watch you for five or 10 minutes. They’re not gonna watch you for what’s it How long does it take to double tap on Instagram? Like a second and a half? Yeah, you know, you just don’t get the view time that that you get on other platter you get so much more view time then you get another platforms and so that’s the all of those reasons are why, you know, I don’t say don’t do ads, but I would say like, you know, build organically on the side while your ads are running. And then you’re slowly like starting to like fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows fewer and fewer ads as your organic grows. And next thing you know, I’m you know, you’ve got a show on YouTube that is not only selling products, but also branding you as sort of an entertaining presence in the space. That’s a really important place to be

Mark Fidelman  10:59

totally I totally agree with your produce a show on Youtube don’t produce a series of ads, it makes perfect sense and it’s exactly what I do with my clients. So let’s move to clients. Yeah, and I’m a big proponent of using video to build a brand and you get into that and you work with brands to do just that. So what are the the I know you’ve done some content around this I’ll put links in the in the show notes what what do you tell brands? Or what do you tell corporations companies individuals on how to use video video to build their brand?

11:33

Yeah, it depends a lot on what the brands doing right now. And and that that I think is so key is what are you guys doing right now? And then how can we lay your video on top of this to one day be your primary, you know, primary source. So I’ll give you an example. We were working with an energy company out of Texas right there fortune 500 company and they’re number 200 on the s&p. So big company, no doubt and they had on the ground sales team. Okay, aka door knockers. So in in there, there’s like seven cities that they were really focusing on with door knockers, what we decided to do was to support their on the ground sales teams with an entertaining show called power, your passion. And the good thing was an energy company, right? And they came to us and like, hey, what kind of stuff can we do around like our you know about energy? And I said, Well, look, it’s not about it’s not about the energy bill or the kilowatts per hours, they kept coming at me with like kilowatts per hours. You know what I mean? But kilowatts per hour is amazing, you know, and I just get, I just can’t imagine mom pa can’t sit around a table talking about kWh, you know, so what we decided to do was we talked about not the energy price, but what the power in your house does, it powers your electric guitar, it powers your arm, your blender, it powers your computer, where you make graphics, it powers your cell phone, or you’re making tic tocs you know, energy powers, your passion and so what we decided to do was to create a show called power, your passion where we would interview thought leaders in various different industries and it would be more entertaining, brought to you by the energy company, so that when the door knockers came to your house, there would already be brand recognition with the name of the company. And that was very successful with us that client they with us for four years, because of the success of that of that campaign.

Mark Fidelman  13:27

Okay, so, when you look at step one, step two, step three, yeah. What do you what do you tell brands to do? I mean, what’s the first thing do you even need video? How are the

13:39

Yeah, every everybody needs video. And here’s why. Because the people not watching video are not going to be a large consumer group in the next 10 to 15 years. Okay, I’m a very future focused guy. I understand that. I can get business today from a certain demographic speaking a certain way making certain kinds of videos, but I’m also very aware that there’s this up and coming generation that has grown up on YouTube. And this is really important Mark because you and I, we didn’t have YouTube as kids. We didn’t barely have video games. You know, I look at the handheld video games that you can buy at the department store now and and they’re the handheld games are better than our desktop systems when we were when we were kids

Mark Fidelman  14:24

on our YouTube was the flip books that

14:29

I remember making those out of post it notes when I was a kid, you know, my dad, like, those are my post it notes, you know? Now I’m teaching my kids how to do the same thing with my dad’s post it notes so it’s the journey continues. But you know, there’s a certain way to talk to people that didn’t grow up with technology, even though we’re all immersed in it now. Okay, there’s a certain culture. We understand Seinfeld jokes, like we understand, you know, Reagan jokes, right? But there’s this whole new consumer marketplace. That doesn’t have any connection to any of that. And what I see brands doing is word is like brands are trying to hire younger people, but then forcing them to speak older language, when instead the brand needs to really embrace this younger, this younger demographic and figure out how it works. Okay, so that’s sort of a preface. First of all, I’m always thinking towards the future. Now, every brand is a little bit different because everybody monetizes a little bit differently. Sometimes you just want awareness sometimes you want exposure, direct response, sometimes you’re launching a new ancillary brand. There’s all there’s all of these different things that can happen but the very first and foremost advice that I would give is what is the core benefit or value that your product provides to people I’m not talking about a product I’m nothing about a service right? So if you’re a stroller company, and you sell 4 million strollers a year you know I’m not it’s not about you know, the the durable two ply plastic with with unbreakable, unfavorable upvc plastics, right? It’s not About that, it’s about the convenience of being able to take your kids to SeaWorld. Right. And so we would build a show around the benefits of what it is that your your product is selling, and create a show around that. Now, that would be sort of our platform content on the back end, we want to see okay, now, are there some product tutorials that we could be making here? Are there some, you know, website tutorials that we can be making to help your customers better, you know, be better customers, you know, a down the way and, and if that’s confusing, let me break it down into one quick little little sentence here. It really helps to have more than one type of content that you’re uploading to YouTube. We call this silo strategy. And what that means is this is, you know, if your business is a table top, then your YouTube videos are the legs that that keep that tabletop afloat. And so maybe you have you know, one video a month you uploaded sort of a show it man. It’s like a talk show about strollers. But then maybe you have two videos a month that are actually tutorials on how to open and close the stroller, you know for daily routine activities. So those videos again, they’re not those are not going to be explosive, they’re not going to be huge, but those are videos that are available to your customers, they can be embedded into your website, they can be downloaded and re uploaded onto Facebook and onto Instagram if if necessary. But you’re now building this multifaceted sort of YouTube channel that dry brings people in in a couple of different ways. We call those the we call that the p3 content strategy. So it’s you know, pull content, which is bringing people into the channel push content, which is where you’re you’re kind of pushing out content that they need to know and then there’s power content and power would be sort of your you know, your your your live stream Q and A’s or maybe you have like a special guest speaker the CEO is going to come on and Doing a dress POW is your sort of like once in a blue moon, big, you know type of content that that you’re going to invite your list to and everybody to come into. But a good YouTube channel should have a mix of those three things.

Mark Fidelman  18:11

Okay? A great intro to, you know what their brand should or how a brand gets started and working in specifically on YouTube. I do want to ask you, though, about other channels, and I’m a big believer as you are and my experience is exactly the same YouTube is the place where you should build the foundation careful, because you know, YouTube has been changing the rules and who knows what’s gonna happen with them in the future. You got to be careful. But what are some of the other channels that you use? You know, video on for me, it’s LinkedIn. I don’t even waste my time on Facebook because it’s the reached unless I’m doing an agreed.

18:49

Yeah, agreed. You know, I might upload something to Facebook. If for an event, I might do like a live q&a and we do live workshops on Wednesdays and we do okay. on our YouTube and our Facebook, which I normally don’t recommend, but because of the nature of the of the event, our goal is just to engage our audience wherever they might be. Yeah, okay. But that’s the only time we do a cast, right? Normally, it’s like we’re either one or the other. Because why would somebody come to YouTube to watch you, they can just watch you on Facebook, right? So there’s something to be said about that. So we we sort of Avoid Facebook, unless we’re running a campaign on Instagram is where we repurpose our YouTube videos. And it’s also where we engage daily with people from the YouTube channel. So I believe that YouTube and Instagram go hand in hand because it is so consumer heavy and because, you know, Facebook is the marketplace. It’s nonspecific, it’s everything. It’s 2d, fruity. It’s everything is on Instagram is like video and high quality pictures. Plus, you can’t post links, and that’s really that’s really positive, naturally, believe it or not, because it doesn’t become spammy. Right? And so what we do is we’ll post the video on YouTube and then two weeks later, we’ll post a And edited version like a three minute version on Instagram

Mark Fidelman  20:03

one enough the whole thing

20:06

why not the whole thing?

Mark Fidelman  20:07

Yeah, why not put the whole YouTube video on Instagram to be

20:11

number one watch times do you remember the last time you watched a 10 minute video on Instagram? No. Yeah, you know Me neither time. Okay, yeah, and you know that it’s called TRT, right, the total runtime, you know, three minutes when I, we actually shoot for under three minutes. So it’s like it would be like two, two minutes and 54 seconds. Yeah, and and that having that two in front sends a very clear message to the viewer. It’s like, Hey, you don’t have to invest much time here. You know, and and that gets them to watch 30 seconds of the video, right? I look at a 10 minute video. I’m not even watching the first 10 seconds because like, I don’t have time for this. So, to answer the question, why not the whole thing is that, you know, platform, people purpose. These are some of my guiding friends. Suppose on a platform, you upload content that’s appropriate for the platform, YouTube 10 minutes is appropriate on Instagram not appropriate, it’s gonna be more like a one minute two or three minute thing. So that’s what we do. Furthermore, if they can get it on Instagram,

21:18

then why would they come over to my YouTube channel?

21:22

And the YouTube channel has to be unique. We have a very YouTube first presentation, right where it’s start on YouTube and repurpose from there where I see a lot of brands specifically and bigger companies using YouTube as their trash dump. Right? Hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna put content on Instagram. I’m gonna put content on Facebook and then I’m gonna dump it all on YouTube. I feel it’s very disrespectful for the YouTube viewer. Because think about this. I’m going to go on Instagram as an example, to see what’s up, right? I don’t like see what’s going on. I usually check Instagram for my memes you know and check check what’s wrong. Plenty in the space. But I know that I’m going to spend about five to 10 seconds on a on a meme and then move on to the next one. Agreed? Yeah, we’ll see where I’m coming from. Right. So on YouTube, it’s different, cuz there’s only one thing you can do on YouTube. And that’s watch videos. So whenever anyone opens up their YouTube app or clicks on a video from Google, there’s a mental thing that says, I’m going to watch this for two minutes, maybe 10 minutes. And that’s the psychology that you want to tap into. Right? You don’t necessarily want to be a part of this. Maybe I’ll watch this if I’m interested culture. You want to be a part of this. Hey, when you’re ready to get fed real content, come over to YouTube and check us out. Huh?

Mark Fidelman  22:46

Okay. I think I like that philosophy. I’ve just been posting the entire video on on Instagram and I don’t have the data to show how long they’re watching. But I think you’re right. I mean, they more more often than They’re going to stay. And I think the data back backs us up on YouTube than they will on instagram instagram there for fleeting second. Yeah. And they might watch your video if you stay very, very interesting.

23:11

And everybody’s on Instagram, right? Like, not everybody is on YouTube and that that’s why I think it’s such a great it’s such a great opportunity. I

Mark Fidelman  23:17

think YouTube people are going there because they discovered you on a search result too. Yeah, whereas Instagram you’re not really searching for a specific answer to your problem and I’m speaking as a marketer

23:28

Yeah. So I think you’re right you know, there’s there’s all of those things that you have to consider before sort of just developing your plan I would rather that you you know, any brand focus their real energy on YouTube and then sort of use the the other platforms like Instagram like Facebook as support platforms, right. those platforms are designed for customer service for maybe ads like Facebook, we are this great place for ads. That’s what it is. And and Instagram is Great place I think for relationship building. Right? Now you want to talk about, you know, creating impact. You might want to throw Tick Tock in the mix because man, I’m gonna get to that. I have never seen what I’m seeing happening on Tick Tock. Anyway, that’s that’s exciting. I wanted to move first to LinkedIn, because that is suppose Yeah, Lauren.

Mark Fidelman  24:21

Yeah, and I’m trying to figure it out. So far, I’ve had one or two videos that have done really well because they had you know, kind of these controversial subjects in them. Or I did something funny that I also did on tik tok. So what is it that we can learn from people like Shay robot them and others that have been successful with LinkedIn video? Yeah,

24:42

you know, I’m not anti LinkedIn video. But I’ve been playing with LinkedIn video for quite some time and you know all upload a six second video of me over at the new station, right? I do this weekly recurring or this monthly recurring section on the news, and that video will get 2000 views. But then I’ll post a video With like an in depth analysis of the YouTube algorithm, and I’ll get 17 views on it. And so I, here’s the challenge that I posed with LinkedIn video is that do business people really care about your LinkedIn video? Because what I’m seeing is, is the same video that’s successful on LinkedIn is the same video that’s successful, sort of in the viral community, right? It’s going to be pretty girls. It’s going to be girls wearing costumes. And yes, people are doing this on LinkedIn. Why? Because it works on Instagram stories. So they’re doing it here. And and and people are following them. How much revenue is coming from that? You know, I just don’t really I don’t really know. And and my question is like, is that the brand you’re trying to build? And that’s where I challenged the LinkedIn video scenario. Because on LinkedIn, you can only go as far as your peoples people, right your networks network. That’s as far as You can go whereas the moment you upload that same video on YouTube that goes out to the whole world it’s available to the whole world has viral potential and so you’re you’re you’re capping how far you can go on on LinkedIn by focusing on LinkedIn solely now I say this because people like Shay robot them who’s doing fantastic work on LinkedIn video right? She’s getting you know 23,000 100,000 views you know, per video, but my question is, would it would you um, the the bearded overweight you know, 4555 year old male be as successful as Shea row bottom, the cute perky, you know, 30 something millennial? My, my guess is No, you won’t be and that that may be hurts, right? Because we’re supposed to live in this place where nobody has it. We’re all vanilla and there’s no such thing as boy and girl and that’s garbage. Right? Like it matters how you present the most successful people that I know on LinkedIn are doing Things that the average business wouldn’t do on LinkedIn. And so you have to really think about like, Is that is that a place that’s worth it for you Now on the flip side, you take a guy like Beryl Solomon not sure if you’re following his work I really enjoy his work 11,000 views on a video in like an hour or two and it’s all business all business. Okay, really, really strong. I don’t know how much business he’s actually getting from the video. I’m not aware of that. I would assume it’s some, but I saw his video yesterday and I go, why aren’t you doing this on YouTube?

Mark Fidelman  27:33

How do you know he’s not? Did you check?

27:35

No, well, he reached out to me, but I don’t want to I’d like to do far into that. But no, we we I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn looking at LinkedIn Video Creators I follow their hashtags and and and looking at who would be a good fit for for YouTube and it’s not everybody if I stay somebody you know, sort of dancing prancy on on LinkedIn video and do kind of Hey, look at me, look at me stuff like that. That’s not it. You Someone I want to take on to YouTube. But when I see someone like barrel Solomon who’s got this like really strong message and he really stands his ground, the guy wears a yarmulke he talks to He’s like, I will not be available for Shabbat. You know, he’s, he like takes the same not afraid to live the space. Like that’s the type of thing that will do well on YouTube, not because it’s faith based and not because it’s it’s aggressive, but because he’s himself, right. And if as a brand, you can create a video strategy that really like communicates the value of your brand without being so we love every money, and then there’s nobody that can be a good fit for our product, like you’re going to do very well. On on YouTube. Yeah. So LinkedIn, I think is a good breathing place for tomorrow’s on YouTube leaders. But I was telling you before this call, like, we’re actually trying to step back from our LinkedIn presence because here’s the thing. Let me tell you guys this, it does not help to talk about YouTube on LinkedIn. So instead of we’ve tried this right, we’re Hey YouTube tips, YouTube tips, YouTube tips, people on LinkedIn. aren’t interested in YouTube tips. So instead what we’re doing is we’re changing the conversation to lead generation. Right? more business growth. Yeah. And then in the video we’re leading them towards towards YouTube. Right. So I think a lot of it has to do with your, your your framing, like the argument that you’re framing for LinkedIn video. And then of course, you know, how good is the video?

Mark Fidelman  29:23

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, very well said. I mean, that’s a good tip for LinkedIn. Don’t talk about YouTube because people don’t care. They are interested on LinkedIn, in learning how to grow their business.

29:34

Well, yeah. And and a bigger thing, like don’t talk about strollers either. And again, this is also again, I’m not a LinkedIn expert, but this is what our data has shown us that the conversation on LinkedIn has to be business related. So if you’ve got if you’ve got a stroller company, you know the conversation is not about like how to find a better stroller. The conversation is on is is how to bring your family I how to run a Better family business. You know, and then bringing the stroller into that conversation. Are you with me on that?

Mark Fidelman  30:09

Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. And that’s why we’re on LinkedIn.

30:13

I think LinkedIn, you really got to find your angle but but going on LinkedIn, and talking about SEO, some of my good friends are SEO magistrates in this country. Like if I said their names, everybody would know who they are, if they’re an SEO, but I see their posts on LinkedIn, like six, six likes, right to comments. And the comments are from staff members, you know, so on LinkedIn, you really have to you’re really limited in how you can present your case. And I think that that’s a good strategy, but it’s like now you’re talking about like one strategy for YouTube. Another strategy for LinkedIn or like Instagram thing can be overwhelming. And my good friend, Brian G. Johnson, who’s an amazing YouTube artist said, he said, Oh, and you put all of your energy into all of these videos and He says I make one good video. My one good video on YouTube will get more views and watch time then all of these little Instagram clips, LinkedIn clips and all this other stuff. And he’s absolutely right. And that’s why you take a you put your energy into YouTube. And then you filter that down through all of your other platforms. And that’s that’s how you you win because even on the other platforms, they know you’ve got a YouTube show, and that’s where you want them going back to.

Mark Fidelman  31:28

Yep. Yep, very well said. Well, let’s move on to LinkedIn. I know we could do, we could do a whole episode just on LinkedIn. So sure, maybe another day, once I get. I’m just trying to unlock this and I’m studying people like you are. And maybe we’ll have you back on for just just about LinkedIn. Let’s go to tick tock now. I’ve been watching some of your personal tic tocs. I mean, the funny, they’re great. I just don’t know how you’re going to tie this to business and maybe you don’t give a crap about business but for me, I’m always looking out for the marketer, looking out for myself. I’ve produced one video that was pretty funny caught a little bit of a tailwind. It was basically me pretending to go back to restaurants. And yeah, I had a little Roomba Deliver me my meal. I did all my

32:17

things I love about you is that you’re you’re you’re an intellectual guy. You’re like me, right, so we like to talk about higher level things. Um, but we can also throw spaghetti at the wall. Yeah, and and have a food fight.

Mark Fidelman  32:30

Food fights on Facebook. Anyway, let’s go. Let’s go back to tick tock. What is your plan for Tick Tock?

32:37

Yeah, that’s really good. So right now I am like the Wolverines on on Tick Tock. So Wolverines obviously comes from Red Dawn, and it was that band of American students that that were going to you know, fight the the Russian army. So you know, I’m sort of in espionage on Tick tock, and the reason for that is that in 10 years, the audience on Tick Tock is going to be the The audience that we’re trying to sell to, and what I see happening right now is I see brands, you know, working very, very diligently to sell the 30 something 40 something client and and above. Okay, we know how to sell that client. Right everybody that’s that’s, I think even 30 above, maybe even you have 30 above maybe grew up without cell phones. Okay, when they were born, there was no cell phones. There was no YouTube right by 1990 Oh, yeah. So what, what? We know how to sell those. We’ve been selling to those people for decades, okay, but this big thing happened. It’s called cell phones, the mobile revolution, YouTube, all of this stuff starts coming out in the 2000s. And we have not put any effort into knowing how to those kids how those kids communicate. In fact, what I see is I see a whole bunch of whippersnapper conversation right those whippersnappers who cares. I don’t give a rat’s patootie about these kids. These kids don’t nothing, given their rights away, took our jobs. You know, all these grumpy, grumpy, grumpy grumpy, I hate that. That garbage, what I’m doing on Tick tock, first of all, it’s a comedy outlet for me, I told you earlier, I fancy myself an actor. So I’ve always want one of my good friends, David Lopez made it really, really big on YouTube with his comedy. And and I had a chance to do that with him. And I chose to be more business focused, I watched him become a multimillionaire on youtube comedy. So there is definitely an outlet for me to do some of the comedy that I didn’t get to do earlier in my career. But the big reason that I’m even focused on it is because I am trying to learn the customer of tomorrow. The customer of tomorrow can absorb an entire story in 10 seconds. And when I say story, I mean, if you can give them a 10 second version of Little Red Riding Hood belt, they’ll consume it, they’ll understand every minute of it. They talk, they they process faster than we do. They use different words than we use. They’re listening to different music like and I actually feel bad for him because I grew up like 90s alternative rock Nirvana, Foo Fighters, you know, and even we A lot of hip hop coming out in those days to POC and Bone Thugs like I grew up on a good music. Yeah, everything today seems just like so bubblegum agenda driven stuff like it’s, it’s, it’s sad but my point is they’re listening to music we’re not listening to I couldn’t even name an artist on one of their on one of their top 10 lists. But here’s the thing that I do know is I’m going to learn it and I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to I’m going to be able to welcome those people as customers as they get into their adult lives. And so I am on Tick Tock and I think that everybody should be watching Tick Tock and understanding where the marketplace is going when it comes to visual media content.

Mark Fidelman  35:38

So here’s some criticisms I have for for Tick Tock and the same with Instagram until they introduce swipe up stories. How do you as a marketer, link out of tik tok howdy in Snapchat, I still don’t recommend Snoop Dogg.

35:52

Great Again, you know, this is okay. So we’re talking to marketer conversation and for your audiences, all marketers to my audience to I love the marketing plays not not everything can you imagine like, hey, well what’s the click through on a billboard? Yeah, right what’s the click through on a TV commercial? Now, in a lot of those cases you might have, you might have a phone number attached to it or you might have a website attached to it that’s only on the Billboard or whatever, but not necessarily a direct response sort of mechanism, right? It’s more of a brand awareness thing. And, and I think that’s what that’s what Tick Tock does is it it gives you a ton of brand awareness and it puts your mind or puts you in the minds of I mean, hundreds of thousands if not millions of young people, you know, tick tock, you go you get big on Tick Tock Yeah, I’ve got a video doing half a million views on Tick Tock. I never had a video do that on on on YouTube. So those young people are familiar with my work. And so when I transitioned into, you know, oh, and video has a tick tock school well I’m pretty well positioned when you agree.

Mark Fidelman  37:02

Yeah I mean your angle makes a lot of sense and but I haven’t seen a lot of like the big brands on tik tok yet maybe I’m just not as well versus you are like the McDonald’s.

37:14

No, they’re not but McDonald’s amount of really need to be on Tick Tock You know, they’re they’re actually McDonald’s has eliminated their dollar menu and everything and so they’re actually working on on an older demographic. It makes sense to me that McDonald’s is not there. But I get your point. And let’s go to the stroller example. The reason that we’re not seeing bigger brands going to tick tock is because everyone’s obsessed with ROI, right? Yeah, and that’s good. It’s a good thing it’s a healthy thing right to be obsessed with ROI. But But that’s not what Tick Tock is yet. Now. On Tick tock, you do have a couple different avenues. brands are able to advertise on Tick Tock. And the advertisements on Tick tock, I find are some of the best advertisements on the web, because they usually feature somebody using the products Right. I mean, I have I love

Mark Fidelman  38:01

on Snapchat that act the same way and I just haven’t seen a tick off with marketers yet. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out what Tick Tock is, yes, there’s ads, but are they effective? And are they tears?

38:10

Yeah. And again, I my whole thing is like why pay for ads when you can have organic right? And I believe in that now, once again, we don’t sell we don’t run ads. It’s just that our thing is organic. And so I would actually convince the brand not to be doing ads but instead to be growing in organic tik tok sort of presence. So imagine, you know, a stroller company. You know, creating a tic tock tick tock is a lot of sort of, like you’ve got a beat and you’re dancing to it, you know, but what if you had a stroller and on the beat, you were sort of like pointing to another, you know, another feature of the stroller. So it’s like bom bom, bom, bom, bom bom. You know, you’re pointing to a different thing. And every time you point like a feature pops up, you know, it’s little things. Like that, that that make tic Tock So, so amazing. I’ve got a friend on tik tok right now. She has a show about dogs on YouTube about her Snow Dogs or Huskies. And on Tick tock, all she’s doing is saying watch how fast he comes in the house and she’ll go outside she’ll call him. He’ll run inside 30,000 views. Yeah. So imagine having a stroller and again you say everybody take a look. Take a look at this phenomenal stroller feature. Groom and the stroller you know and boom, that’s the video you show the canopy you know, come at the Margarita baby. Big Margarita holder in the in the in the stroller. You show that and then the TIC tocs over Yeah,

39:40

I so easy to do.

Mark Fidelman  39:42

If I were gonna suggest to the stroller company something to do. What I would do is I create a contest and say look $5,000 to the person that develops the best roller video using our stroller so good. I think once you get a bunch of people doing it because you know on Tick tock, everyone’s copying each other’s company. new dance routines to the same music. I mean, it’s brilliant. That way you can see variations of different. I don’t know what they call them memes, video memes or themes or something

40:08

talks on tik tok to this point because it’s very unique to the platform. Because what you do is you can they, anytime you upload a video to tik tok, like the audio of that video goes into a database and so I could actually pull audio from somebody else’s tic Tock and then lip sync to it or mouth to I think we’re seeing a lot of that happen as well. We’re seeing a lot of people reenact like friends, sequences and stuff like this, which is not my thing. Yeah. But again, that’s how you pull your strategy right on. You could you could be doing Malvin pieces of videos where people have strollers in them, you know, different movies.

Mark Fidelman  40:47

Yeah, you could be the strollers talking. So put your baby in this in this in their stroller and have them say something and there’d be a big contest. So

40:55

I got a lot of grief for going on tik tok. I was like, Hey, you know, my Tick Tock just just Did this amazing thing. Um, and it’s like, well, where’s your ROI? You know, where’s your money? I had a whole bunch of people just screaming at me on Facebook. I don’t remember this post, but but my thing was like, look right now I am not trying to capitalize on a market I know nothing about. I don’t really know much about the 14 year olds today, like news. I got a 13 year old in my house right now. I don’t understand what he’s saying half the time. Right, you know, but I’m going to learn them. I owe it to my kids to learn them and I owe it to the future of my company to learn them. Yes. So, right. I’m, I’m on tik tok right now to learn it and to figure out what’s going on. And I’ll tell you, I’ve adapted pretty well. I made about 10 videos that did nothing. And then I made one that that went half a million, and that has fed all the past ones. So I watched all my past tic tocs double in views, because of they would go to my page, and then they’d watched all the other ones that I’ve made.

Mark Fidelman  41:55

Yeah, and that’s what I like about you. You’re not afraid to jump in. I do the same exact thing. Just jump in and learn it yourself. And fail, fail, fail, fail and finally figure it out. That’s what I’m doing with LinkedIn right now. And that is the way to learn it. I would say I think a lot of a probably received a lot of skepticism on that Facebook post because I remember Gary Vaynerchuk you know, touting Snapchat, I mean, just over and over and over, and I did a video on it, why Snapchat is not a good fit for marketers. I still stand behind it. I think that’s proven out. And I think people start to see that and they’re like, I don’t understand. You know how tik tok can benefit my business yet, and I’ve seen people like Gary touting things before and it didn’t work out now, Gary, for the most part, it was just shit inside out, right? He’s He’s very, very good, but he got Snapchat wrong. And then some people are probably looking at it the same way. It’s like I get on tik tok. I see a bunch of funny videos. I don’t know how it relates to my business or how can help my business. Somebody like you that’s getting in there and exploring, I think, you know, in three to six months, you will tell us this is how you capitalize on it.

42:57

Yeah, a great point. Um, you know, It’s not all I think what happens is we love to like the new thing is the stupid thing right? I always new thing is stupid, right like that there’s kind of like that that problem in marketing today when really it’s like okay let’s see if this new thing is gonna go anywhere. You know Gary Vee obviously has is an investor into Snapchat he’s got a lot of reason to to promote it but I’ll tell you I was on Snapchat for less than a year and and I just knew it wasn’t gonna go anywhere. And from what from where I stand today. I know there’s little pockets that still use it. But from where I stand today, nobody is talking about Snapchat. Yep, any type of meaningful way. Right? And so I think that we were right on that side tic tocs a little bit different tic tocs more like vine, and Vine was huge and introducing new creators to the space and so that’s where I think Tick Tock is gonna go.

Mark Fidelman  43:47

Okay. Yeah. And I look forward to hearing more about it. Because, you know, if you get in early, like, you know, some of the brands suit on Instagram. Yeah, they made some brands. Oh, yeah, it’s just took off.

43:59

I think that should be the Goal, it really shouldn’t be. It’s like when a new platform comes out, you got to ask yourself, Is this the way is Could this be the thing? Could this be the platform that that gets us that that extra lift? I know for me, you know, I don’t want to be doing consultant work for forever. I don’t think anybody wants to do the one thing forever, right? Like we want to grow, we want to bring on coaches and coaches can start consulting and each one teach one and then we want to be in more production, we want to be in a place where we’re producing 12 YouTube shows a year, you know, that are getting millions of views. And so, you know, as as we look at these new platforms, we look at them as creative outlets to say, Okay, let’s see, can we make people laugh and like us on this platform? And then when we do that, then how can we sort of start delivering messages to them? Right, and that’s where I Excel right? I’m a message maker like I I remember watching Saved by the Bell, early, early on in my life, and there is a whole episode about subliminal messages and it that stays with me to this day. Of course, I’m not believing or advocating and subliminal message But the art of communication right before someone’s gonna buy from you, they have to like you and so I’m getting them to like us on tik tok. And through those relationships, I mean, most of the people liking me right now are ages like 10 to 14. Okay? But when those guys are 20 years old, they may not be following me on tik tok anymore. They might be following me on youtube or somewhere else, but I will have earned the right to ask for their business. And that’s what I’m trying to build now on Tick Tock. Right.

Mark Fidelman  45:27

Okay, excellent. Well, I could go on and on and on. But we’ve got to wrap things up. And we do that by asking two final questions. Number one, what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend right now?

45:43

Alexa, voice control everything. My whole house is on Alexa. Not only that, my kids. My kids moral and educational upbringing is programmed into reminders in Alexa now, we could have a whole conversation about Alexa is following you everywhere. And And here’s my belief mark is that if if the government wants me they’re gonna find me. So I have Oh, and had an Alexa and he was taken away by the police. Like no one was taken away by the police because he’s a rebellion leader a lot, you know, and lit a Molotov cocktail in a liquor store or something. You know what I mean? Of course, I’d never do that. But you know, they’re gonna find you they want to find you. I love Alexa. Because you know, my kids check in with Alexa. And they go Alexa. If I say it there, she’s gonna start but I’ll say Alexa start my day. And Alexa recognizes the voice it knows it’s James. So then James will get his schedule from Alexa, which we’ve pre programmed into it. And then and then that starts his day. It’s the same with with us in our business. Our studio comes on with with Alexa a goes off with Alexa Alexa reminds me to do voice warmups. Alexa keeps our business running smoothly. I don’t even use my other servant robots. Siri, I don’t even use her anymore. But Alexa has enabled us to do so much including with the new Alexa video. You can now just like watch your competitors video. With a with a voice command. So I think that Alexa, we’re only scratching the surface of what this thing can do.

Mark Fidelman  47:05

Yeah, and I’ve talked about that. I’m gonna have somebody from Amazon on pretty soon to talk about how marketers can take advantage of it. That’s a whole new thing I haven’t even began to take a look at but I suspect the things that we can do,

47:18

I’ll tell you, Gary Vee talks about it. And I’m like, I’m a very reasonable Gary Vee guy. Like sometimes he says things I like sometimes he doesn’t like I’m not one side of the, but he talks about, you know, voice technology, and I’m recognizing it for me, like, I watch videos at video time in my day, right? But otherwise, even when I’m watching a video, it’s just kind of like on my iPhone stand, and I’m listening to it while I’m doing other things. So I really like voice technology. And what marketers need to start doing is how can you create an Alexa skill that can become a part of your customers daily routine. So Case in point, the stroller company if you’re a straight drover company you could be putting together these, you know, two to three minute sound bites on workout tips, fitness tips, child safety tips. And when a person says you know, Alexa, start my day or Alexa, you know, read me my news. Your skill can be in there and saying, you know, in your childhood Tip of the Day is is you know, make sure to do blah, blah, blah when you’re doing blah, blah, blah. This brought to you by ABC Schroer company wishing you a great day.

Mark Fidelman  48:30

Yeah, I are, you know, it’s everyone’s inside quarantine. Here’s what you can do with your child to keep them active and healthy or something like all of the above. I think

48:39

we need a stat like Alexa is a mini podcast, sort of Portal and the way that it’s set up is ideal for marketers and my advice to marketers is go get three I mean it get three of them. I have maybe like five or six Alexa’s in my house. I would get three of them so that you can see what their their combined capabilities are and and Just start playing with that and see what ideas you come up with.

Mark Fidelman  49:02

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I’d love to see how you set that up offline or maybe another show.

49:09

Anytime I almost started a channel, my mentor told me not to I almost started a channel on on life automation, because I’m so in love with what Alexa Did you know, I was a cancer survivor. So during cancer, I had to automate everything. And I learned so much we didn’t have Alexa at that time. But I got Alexa like two years later. Yeah. And it’s like, wow, like so much stuff that we can do. So I love Alexa for that for that reason. Wonderful.

Mark Fidelman  49:32

All right, a last question. Who is the most influential who’s influencing you the most in marketing today?

49:39

I think Ilan musk? Yeah. without a shadow of a doubt. The guy is a visionary. He doesn’t give a hoot Yeah. about you or or your position. You know what I mean? He’s gonna build his thing. And I I love that. I mean, this is literally a guy building rocket ships to the moon. commercial space wires. I love what Elan Musk is doing I love his defiance on and I love the way that he got Alameda County to, you know, he said I’m going to open up my shop. I’m putting my people back to work and I don’t care what you what you guys say. And then Alameda County they go Okay, all right. Well, okay. So I love that let’s let’s all build businesses so big that it just doesn’t matter what the haters say. I really love the way that he engages with people on Twitter. I think that’s the way to build a personal brand. I love the way he regrow his hair. I don’t know the story behind that. I do know that you’ve probably seen the pictures that he was sort of balding before he became Ilan musk and then head full of hair. I love that he saw that I’m going to be a world famous visionary. So I need to look the part and he did that. I love that. I love that he has five kids. Um, I love that he named his kid What did he name like x one. It was a excel formula or something I love. I love it. I actually asked my wife, okay, this was maybe 10 years ago. I said, because we read this article just a couple days ago. And I said, Did you see what Elan musk named his child and she rolled her eyes and she goes, we’re not naming our kid a number. So when my son Jamison was born, I wanted to spell it on JM e seven o n. Hmm. And the reason I wanted to do that was to just like, recognize where we are in the world in terms of technology today. And and she said, No, if you’re not going to do that, so we didn’t do that. And so it’s awesome to see like, Elon Musk did that. And I think for very much the same reasons. And to know that we were sort of on that same wavelength is is really cool. And so you know, I think that even though he’s not a marketer, per se, I think that the way that he lives, breathes and works is something that we could all learn from.

Mark Fidelman  51:57

Yeah, especially on the branding side. I mean, the way he’s branded himself For me personally and with his companies, no question,

52:02

and he hasn’t done the whole, like, I’m too busy to talk to people thing. You know, he also hasn’t jumped on the politics train, you know, Trump gave him a a nod on on Twitter the other day, and and he said, Thank you, you know, and it wasn’t like that it was just a polite response. It wasn’t like, Oh, you know, shut off your stupid bag. And it wasn’t like, Thank you, sir. Let’s build a wall. You know, it was just thank you. And again, the two words that we could all learn from is, you know, being likable and respectable, you know, so much about the way Ilan just carries himself that I’m a fan of and I think that more thought leaders were to do this, you know, instead of being like, I’m too busy to talk to my people, be more engaging and be more human with people. And I think it’ll go a long way.

Mark Fidelman  52:52

I completely agree. I mean, and he’s a good example of how to do that. There’s several several others but just recently, just He’s handled this whole COVID crisis. I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. So just to wrap up, one thing I do want you to do if you’re listening is if you are interested in getting a free course from Owen, go to the video marketing school.com and also Oh, and how can people get a hold of you if they want to ask more questions about I think

53:22

the video marketing school comm is probably the best way to you know, enter our funnel but if you want to just reach out to me and say What’s up, use Instagram, we’d love to hear from you there and we can start a conversation I’d love to know like what about this interview was intriguing or what particularly stood out or even what you most disagreed with? One of the highlights of my day is is just engaging with people on Instagram and finding out what’s what the buzz is in the marketplace. So I would love to hear from any of our listeners that are checking this out today.

Mark Fidelman  53:52

And where does your Instagram handle

53:54

at Oh in video, you can find me everywhere on the web at AU and video for

Mark Fidelman  53:59

that. So one and we’re gonna have a follow up because there’s a couple things I can’t

54:03

wait. You know, I always enjoy our time together.

Mark Fidelman  54:06

My question

How To Use Video To Build Massive Awareness
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Mark Fidelman  00:03

Welcome to the digital brand builder podcast where we bring you the best growth strategies from the world’s experts to help build your business faster. And now, here’s your host, Mark Fidelman Hello, everyone, welcome to the brand builder podcast. Joining me today is Aaron Iseman, and we’re going to talk about how to increase your social media engagement on every post and Aaron has promised me he’s going to teach you how to do that. So I’m very interested in that. I mean, he’s got a sports background. He’s worked with tort Turner sports, Bleacher Report and the NFL. So there’s a lot of engagement there and I want to see how we apply that to our own businesses. So Aaron, welcome to the show. And can you give us 100 words or less a bio about yourself?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 00:56

Thanks very much for having me on mark. A little bit about myself in I’ve spent the last six plus years doing sports social media, specifically for big companies, like you mentioned. And yeah, I’ve just continued to use my own businesses social media consulting business that I built up over last year. So that’s kind of the short bio on me.

Mark Fidelman  01:20

Okay, and what did you do? Exactly? Did you help people in sports? Did you help businesses tell us what you did to get this experience?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 01:29

Yeah, right out of college. Yeah, after graduating in 2013 2014. I got a position with the with Turner sports in Atlanta. I’m originally from Los Angeles and went to college in the Midwest and then moved to Atlanta for my first position. And it was a social media editor role for Turner sports to run NBA on TNT and NBA TV social media, along with about eight other colleagues of mine and we’re all very young recent group. Graduates as well. And that really kick things off for me. And from then on, I’ve ran, whether it’s NBA TV NBA on TNT, March Madness, PGA social, as well as Bleacher Report and NFL Network social media. So it’s been at least five big channels over a million followers each that I’ve run over these last six years. You

Mark Fidelman  02:25

know, there’s going to be a lot of people that are skeptical about all of this given, you know, more and more of social has gone to paid because, you know, they’re either limiting the reach of these posts, or there’s other things going on with the with the algorithms. So tell us what you do, you know, and maybe lay it out. Tell us what you do to maximize organic social media engagement.

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 02:52

Yeah. First off, it’s understanding brand analysis, who you are, who is the account Are you trying to post things of that nature? Like auditing your past social media posts, seeing kind of what’s done well for you and your account, what needs to be improved? Those types of things, then one of the three pillars that I think I think it’s important social media is content, strategy and analytics. Content is king to me. And it Bill Gates wrote about this about 20 plus years ago, content is king. And it’s all it’s worth read for anybody. But at the end of the day, what you’re posting is important, and who you’re posting it for, are those questions that you need to be worried about. So I’ve learned over a period of time that it matters. What types of these content buckets I learned at Bleacher Report? Are you hitting? Are you hitting the the the trending topics? Are you hitting the personal topics? Are you hitting the you know, the puppy topics or whatever it may be, or the cooking or the personal stuff that people like to engage with? Do it or you hidden the business topics are important about what your business is all about how you want to be perceived on social media and the What do you want to drive? Do you want to drive sales website traffic? But yeah, organically, you really want to worry about content, what you’re posting those types of things. Strategy is why am I posting? Where is it being posted to what platforms and those questions that are very important to how you best strategize for the account and be very intentional with the strategy to make sure that it’s you’re effective with what you’re posting and why you’re posting it, and where you’re posting it. And even when you’re posting are very important questions. And then finally, analytics. If content is king to me, analytics or queen, it’s it’s important to understand the numbers of your account, what’s doing well, what’s not doing well, what needs to be improved upon. And overall, what can you do on your account that makes sense to really have success over a period of time, so If you’re not understanding your numbers, and you’re not understanding how to rebuild that strategy that can grow your accounts organically. Those are the times the three big things I always stress to my clients,

Mark Fidelman  05:10

okay? And when you’re looking at, let’s say Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, and the algorithms are constantly changing how I know you look at all the data, I know you do all that, but how are you ensuring that the each of these posts get additional engagement above and beyond what the average person gets?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 05:31

Yeah, you know, so for me, it’s, it’s, you know, you’ve got to always play and maximize around the algorithm, knowing what updates and changes are happening and the algorithm to really best succeed on social media like you talked about. So a lot of it is going to be having a strategy based upon which platforms you’re posting to, for example, in Facebook is a lot better at the other platforms with posting links. driving traffic to websites, to whatever, you know, you really want to drive traffic to a YouTube page, whatever it may be, but it’s good about pushing your content outwards towards other platforms, in terms of website traffic and engagement in that manner. But you know, Instagram is very visual focused, and it’s gonna be all about the Is it a photo? Is it a video? Is it a GIF? Is it a? Is it a podcast, you know, graphic, whatever it may be, you know, you’ve got to be conscious of the visual aspects of Instagram. And it’s very important upon that. And then I think LinkedIn is a very good way to connect the professional environment. So if you have a professional message that is important, where it’s a newsworthy element, where it’s something about your career that’s being changed or adapt something you’ve learned something about your company that you’re working currently working for. People want to keep it very professional very buttoned up. would say on on LinkedIn compared to the other platforms. So you know, your content on there is going to be drastically different than what you do on Instagram, for example. So being part of that algorithm and changing with it, it’s all gonna be about the content at the end of the day, and making sure that you know, what content goes up where and how a post differs on Instagram versus the LinkedIn or Facebook, for example. So if that’s going to be very important, part two, tell him how you can have success individually on different platforms to overall help your your strategy that you’re working on.

Mark Fidelman  07:35

Are there any hacks like if I post something on LinkedIn to get more engagement, for example, controversial questions? are specific types of images or memes, or do you have any advice like for that?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 07:50

Yeah, you know, to me, it’s always positivity. Authenticity always kills on social media. People want to see you know, not to fail. have others not, you know, on LinkedIn, this company just laid off 20% of staff. I mean, that’s newsworthy, obviously, that’s a little bit buzzword, but they want to see this company, promoted, you know, promoted somebody, you know, whether it’s yourself or someone that you’re close to, to a higher level, and it’s being shown on news and news elements. So a lot of it is going to be when you show the positivity, it’s important, showing that promotions are happening showing that positivity with an organization is happening, showing whatever it may be, that’s positive, authentic people will send to tend to agree with that and and engage with it. And then finally, we were talking about I think, is important. When you ask a question on social media, especially LinkedIn, to talk about how does your professional environment different from this or whatever it may be, you know, questions will always lead to comments in social media environments. So if you ask the right question, At the end of the day that will increase engagement. And that will show your audience that you actually are a deep thinker. And you’re involved in your industry very well so that you’re staying on top of things that are overlooked overall important to the ecosystem of your your, your, your professional environment. So overall, just being on point with with these types of things in terms of the news elements that are positive and authentic, but also asking questions are very important. So kind of hacking an algorithm in a way by showing the best sides of yourself and what you think about is very important on LinkedIn. Okay, and what about me? What do you see is the best platform for businesses to be on now that still has a high amount of organic engagement? I hear a lot about Tick tock, but not because this can translate into Tick Tock easily. But what is it what are the trends? You’re seeing? For me on, it’s constantly I think Instagram has still have a threshold on the on the environment for businesses, it kind of is a way whether whatever you’re posting graphic, a photo, something a Lincoln bio to get some more traffic, I think Instagram is a great way to understand that you’re the visual face of your company through Instagram. Obviously LinkedIn is a good way to so what’s professionally happened to your organization, you’re getting investments, you’re hiring more people, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, if you have a really good Instagram engagement rate, that’s going to increase what you want to do on social media for your whole platform. So it’s, to me it’s vital to have a good Instagram following to maybe hire someone that just runs Instagram and others some of your other social media platforms. But obviously, like you mentioned, tick tock. It’s still businesses are trying to figure out how do we use it because the engagement rates off the chart with with Tick Tock Americans Instagram, other platforms, but you’ve got to play towards the trends on tik tok, or else you kind of fall behind. And I don’t know if that’s a viable platform for companies to be on necessarily depending on where your company is all about. So, at the end of the day, it’s good to try things out on Instagram and really see what plays well for your engagement. And overall, visually, make sure your company is sound on that department. And that could obviously help your company’s overall perception on social media is when you do have a good Instagram account.

Mark Fidelman  11:33

I think the best I’ve seen is YouTube. I mean, I still have videos from YouTube that are six years old that are still paying dividends. Yeah. Because mainly because of the SEO value of it, but also, I’ve put out 300 for a time it was quite consistent lately. It hasn’t been and it’s just generated a ton of traffic for me and elevated the brand of the company. to a higher level, but you know, good quality videos are hard to produce. It’s not like you just post something on Twitter, I mean, acquires a lot of thought it’s got to be somewhat professional on YouTube doesn’t have to be completely professional, you could sit in front of a webcam and do it. I’ve got a course coming up that shows you how to do that and translate it into leads or dollars. So what are your thoughts on? You know, like YouTube?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 12:22

Yeah, I think YouTube is, I think it’s, it’s always going to be the really high end quality product video for any of the platforms. So if you can really have a good five to 10 minute video that engages with the audience, but also keeps them watching. And like you talked about SEO is very helpful, because obviously Google owns YouTube. And so if you have a good headline, SEO primed headline that’s very important for Google, so someone to Google like, you know, top 10 reasons to use Photoshop top 10 you know, whatever it may be, and the videos could pop up from five years earlier, because someone’s literally title his five, top five or 10 Top Reasons to use How can use Photoshop. So things pop up nicely, that could, you know, generate traffic and for you. And I think it’s just like you said it could be a webcam that you use, but if you can invest into a high end DSLR, you know, they, I think they range from 300 to $1,000, I guess. But at the end of the day, it really can produce high quality video for yourself. And then in the long run that can lead to more information if you want to drive traffic to a website as well to learn more about, Hey, this is a snack of, of what our company’s teaching but if you want to learn more, go to this website to really get a full engagement in terms of what you can do. I see a lot of people even do like for example, an Amazon FBA course. They’ll do a lot of share my top 10 reasons you need to take my course. Then they send people over to really gain traffic and gain more users. So a lot of it is the ability to have high quality content on YouTube videos that really engage the audience. And people notice, you know, the difference between a phone on YouTube versus a really high quality camera, it’s not a bad idea to invest in one. And then overall, really have good content that resonates with the audience and just keep trying things out on on YouTube and see what plays with the audience because you never know what’s gonna hit now, or it’s gonna hit in five, four or five or six years, because YouTube has that, that shelf life can be really long on YouTube, which is nice about it.

Mark Fidelman  14:37

Yeah, that’s what I love about it. And if you stay away from controversial subjects, and who knows what’s gonna happen with YouTube, I know a lot of people are not happy with their selective censoring. But I think that’ll backfire. I think YouTube will come back around. Because if you start censoring, and then you know, somebody’s going to find a reason to censor anything and then you got people on You know, some of your competitors or other people that don’t like your organization, they’re pointing out really dumb reasons to censor your content. And this is gonna backfire, because if it continues, we’re not gonna put anything out.

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 15:12

Exactly, exactly. So that’s I mean, that’s going to be an important part is this kind of, you know, how does it affect my first amendment? Am I allowed to what types of content Am I allowed to post about? It’s gonna be very controversial and ways to had a moderate moderate it and they need to be careful with what videos they can people can put up but also what videos can be taken down because that can obviously lead to legal issues at the end of the day.

Mark Fidelman  15:39

Yep. So what is if somebody comes to you, they want you to work with with them. What do you tell them to do in terms of engagement? Are you saying focus specifically on organic? Or do you say, hey, there’s got to be a paid approach to this as well?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 15:58

Yeah, it’s a mixture of balance. I think it’s almost like to me I’ve had like an E 20 aspect 80% organic content that you’re really being thoughtful over, you’re producing yourself. You have people on staff that can help you produce high quality videos, high quality, graphic, design photos, whatever it may be. So I think that’s First off, what’s important is understanding the content that you have, and what pushed out. And then we start to see something trending, you know, a video is doing well, a photo, whatever it may be a piece of content that you see is starting to gain some traction, traction, then that’s where you can put paid behind it, and really get that get that that post to take off. And then that could also lead to more followers. So if you put a little bit of paid money behind it, I recently did with one of my clients where we were, you know, 10 times the engagement of a normal post, and on top of that, we put like $50 behind the post to go over 10 days. period. And that ends up, you know, we ended up adding like another 50 followers, we ended up getting another triple, triple big agent we already got, because of paid included that. So overall, I think you got to be weary about where you spend your money and why you spending money when you’re spending your money. But you take advantage of the highlights and the points that are, you know, relevant to your account. And so be be cautious at times, but be advantageous when you do see something going well for your account, figure out when to strike and when to put money behind it so that it can increase engagement, increased growth following and overall hopefully increase your loyal followers that really want to see more and more content to you because they already like one piece of content. And that’s where the algorithm comes into play. Is it they like one thing and they started like a second or third and then it boosts up your algorithm with that, that that viewer that follower? And so overall has an impact with your audience. So I would say it’s kind of like the 8020 Split but for the most part, organically figure out what you’re doing how to strategy behind it.

Mark Fidelman  18:05

Okay, and do you see any trends that are coming up the pipe that people should be worried about or concerned about or excited about in terms of social media engagement? Is it going to go all paid? For example, there’ll be no organic. What? I know, I’m exaggerating there, but what do you see is the future?

Aaron Siegal-Eisman 18:23

Yeah, I mean, I think paid will, its cautious to me as a person who is a journalist at heart. I always want to see content do well, and be important part of an account, but I think paid will become more and more involved Facebook and Instagram. People put a lot a lot of money towards to really help boost their posts and stuff. And so it’ll affect the algorithm a little bit, when I’m sort of starting to see is the data that Facebook Instagram has on people is pretty, you know, it’s relevant and it’s apparent To a certain extent, for example, in my in my newsfeed on Instagram, I’m constantly seeing by this mask by that mask by this, they’re always, you know, once you click on one thing, one mask, then 10 masks will pop up throughout your newsfeed. So is that necessarily a good thing? It’s, you know, it’s a data. Obviously, it’s scary that they have all this data on you and they know how to advertise towards you. And that is good for the advertiser side, but it’s good for the user side. And that can become scary in a way where it’s like, when I search Adidas for shoes, three Adidas ads are popping up on my Facebook feed. So does that necessarily help the audience it’s going to move towards it, and then I think, I think people are gonna, you know, at the end of the day, they’re going to try to use tik tok, but they’re getting kicked out very poorly, because they’re not going to be trending trend worthy, and they’re just gonna be account that needs to be on tik tok in the first place. So those types of things are what worries me The ad dollars is gonna keep going up and increasing on Facebook and Instagram, and maybe Twitter one day it will be really high up there as well. But for the most part, yeah, the ad dollars are going to go up will will the sense of being on account will the sense of being on one platform versus another change? Because the younger audience hates to see this, the sales and the business post, they want to see authenticity, the artist authenticity, the positivity. So that will definitely change things when there’s more and more salesy like posts on your feed, I would say.

Mark Fidelman  20:36

All right, well, a very interesting discussion. And I want to end with two final questions. I ask everybody these questions because I really want to know what’s really resonating with people right now. And the first question is, what is the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend?

20:54

Yeah, I mean, right now, I’m

20:57

not not a social media platform, right. Like

Mark Fidelman  21:00

technology that we should be any marketing technology like yeah, I know I think we talked about spread fast was Yeah,

21:06

yeah. So um, I think social media management tools are going to become very important in the future. The one that I look out for is called a Gora pulse as one of them they do a good job of Matt matching up your social media management, mix string mix with a good analytics platform. And and it’s also has discovery platform abilities where it helps show you what is trending right now what accounts are trending, what keywords are trending. So these social media management platforms, what’s good about them is they will give you an overall view about how to run your social media, not having to go individually like on you know, Facebook natively, then Instagram then then Twitter, you could plan out your whole week, just using one of these platforms, and it’s all on one page and it shows you via a big broad calendar. So having a tool like Gora pulse, or Hootsuite or buffer are important social media magic tools for organizations to have in these in this day and age. So if you have that, then it makes it easier for your social media manager, whoever’s running social, to really organize social media very well and have things planned out for this week, next week or the whole month. Just because it’s, it really shows you the whole calendar view around what you’re going to be doing. So I love social media management tools. Agoura pulse is my recommended one right now. I love

Mark Fidelman  22:32

okay. And our next question is, who do you consider the most influential person or group or company in marketing today?

22:42

Yeah, I think a person I think LeBron James to me is like, captivating in a way. You know, he has the obviously the basketball resume, you know, phenomenally you know, in terms of he’ll be one of the top five players probably Of all time, but off the court, he is probably one of the top five top 10 social media users. She has over 60 million followers on Instagram. She does some amazing content with the off the court stuff with his family, he shows his family a lot. He shows Taco Tuesday a lot. He shows, you know, his friends and other people that are in his inner circle a lot. And so it gives you an inside perspective of his life and what’s going on. And users can, you know, they they enjoy that part. He could be doing these big ads that are paying him, you know, millions of dollars, and post that on social media and just be making lots of revenue off of that. But for the most part, what you’re seeing is not those types of posts, you’re seeing the authentic, relevant posts that really are, you know, trending and important. And that, you know, he speaks his voice, whether it’s black lives matter whether it’s whatever is going on in his life. She speaks it and he talks about he’s not afraid To say his opinion, and he also posts the right types of content when it when it matters to him. So he’s very thoughtful behind it. So he’s one of them. And then as a brand, you know, someone that he’s sponsored by I think Nike does a great job. I know they pay a big marketing firm to think about some of these big ideas. But what they do a good job of is when there is a moment in time that they need to attack you know, women in sports, Black Lives Matter, Colin kapernick, whatever it may be, they do a good job of attacking, how to best send the right messaging behind our posts, how to be influential, and what you saw after what they did with the Black Lives Matter movement. With post they made every other star every other big shoe company started to come up with something themselves to show that they’re, that they’re, that they’re, you know, in, in correlation to what they have to so Adidas started coming out with stuff. Reebok, I saw did some things. Converse as well. So other than Brands had to contribute because Nike kind of led the way in that and I think Nike consistently marketing wise leads the way in the way they surfer thought the thought process about social media, and they’re effective. They might not post five to 10 times a day. But when they do post, it resonates with people, and it matters and it’s very important topics that they contribute in this world. So Nike and LeBron James, obviously are our two easy picks for me.

Mark Fidelman  25:26

Okay, excellent. All right, good. And, you know, we’re gonna wrap things up Aaron, but I wanted to give you a chance to tell people where they you could be found. One is your social media consulting firm, and you are also writing a book about sports, social media. So where can they find you and how do they reach out to you?

25:44

Yeah, so you can find me anywhere, go to my company. I want to get more engagement on my company right now. So at Iseman, ei, s ma n digital, so I’m on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, you can find me there maybe one day I’ll do YouTube and Twitch tik tok channel. But for now those are those are my platforms, and where you can find me and you can find me at www dot Iseman digital.com. And then finally I am writing with sports social media book. I’ve been talking to some of the top people that I’ve worked with over the last six years you know, some big name people I don’t want to give away too much but people that have been really effective in sports social media that are going to be game changers and have been game changers this industry. I’m talking to them about how they were doing that. What what they see the future social media being and so that’s in the works and hopefully we’ll get published. Maybe maybe by next year. I’m still working on a lot of the interview process takes time but it’s been a good journey. so far. I’ve had a three four chapters written. Right excellent.

Mark Fidelman  26:52

Yeah, it’s, I’m working on another book as well. So the I know how difficult it is and and how much time it takes. So good luck. With that,

27:00

thank you very much, Aaron.

Mark Fidelman  27:02

Pleasure to have you and good luck with everything.

27:05 Thank you so much shame to you, Mark

How to Increase Social Media Engagement On Every Post
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I always like to find new approaches that work new tips and tricks really to help you out and help myself out. And I came across one where a marketer generated 11,592 leads for venture pact and venture pact is a software development marketplace. And what they did is they launched a lead generating calculator that basically asked the question, find out how much your app costs.

And the landing page you see here converted at 66% 66%. And this was followed by eight questions with multiple choice answers. They asked what platform they were on. I mean, basically all the qualifying questions you, your salesperson would ask to get to understand that person’s particular app, but didn’t want extra thing and not only asked for that user’s email address, it asked for anybody, they’d recommend the app to their user address as well.

And then the final page with results included, and that’s a result of the calculator included a call to action, leading the company or leading whoever’s taking the using the calculator back to the company’s website. And that was even a 4% conversion rate. So what was most interesting though, for me, not just the leads, but they promoted the calculator on Quora. And they’d look for related questions to how much it costs to build an app and just posted the link there.

And the result from the calculator boosted traffic by 15% generated 11,592 leads and increase the conversion rate by 28%. Now that’s clever. That’s something that you should look to implement. If it make sense in your business.

How This Marketing Calculator Generated 11,592 Leads
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3 Types of Content That Convert And Sell

Guest Post: Darya Jandossova Troncoso, Chief Editor MarketSplash Here’s an indisputable fact about content – if you’re going to invest in content that converts, you need to ensure that you’re utilizing the right type of content. Irrespective of the industry of which your business runs within. The ultimate goal of any content-related marketing activity, be […]

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Mark Fidelman  02:19

Hello everyone. Welcome to the digital brand builder podcast where we interview experts on a single subject. And today, we have Chris Dickey from visibly, and he’s going to talk about how you can bring more visibility to your brand, especially on search engines. So, you know, Chris, I want to welcome to the show and please give us a little bit of background on yourself and, and where you come from.

02:53 Chris Dickey

Thanks for having me

02:55 Chris Dickey

yeah you know I’ve been in marketing professional for the last 17 years, I’ve been in house. I’ve worked with startups I’ve worked with national companies. I’ve worked as a marketing director I’ve worked in publishing. For the last 13 years I’ve worked in primarily PR agencies, which is kind of an interesting place to come from when you’re talking about search, you don’t see that often but more recently in the last 10 years I’ve actually operated my own agency it’s called purple, orange brand communications. And then several years ago. While we were at war he started kind of exploring some of the intersection between PR and search, and that gateway to a new idea that we call this that I call visibly visibly is a brand new software solution that can check out and will help identify how well your brand is doing for any given keyword search.

Mark Fidelman  03:52

Okay, wonderful so why don’t we talk about why search engine visibility is so important today.

03:59 Chris Dickey

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if you think about it from a marketing perspective. There’s a lot of marketers are kind of stuck with the conundrum how do we get in front of more people, how do we at top of funnel marketing How do you even know that we exist as an option for everything that they need. And, you know, historically PR advertising those have kind of been the primary vehicles for that but increasingly, if you think about our own behavior when it comes to product discovery how we learn about new stuff. It all happens through search, I’ll happen two thirds in search engines. There’s around 70,000 searches every single second mark, it’s it’s pretty incredible and every single one of those searches you can assume as a question, and are finding an answer that search somewhere in the first five organic links on a page. Perhaps further down but his you know you know looking. Statistically speaking it’s about 70 or 70% of all the clicks I’m all about, you know, for a keyword will land within the first five organic listings which makes it a really competitive piece of real estate.

Mark Fidelman  05:10

Yeah. And, you know, besides the obvious which is revenue is, you know, is there any other benefits to being on the first couple of pages of Google’s Google search result.

05:24

I think that I think the most important thing that we’re interested in and it’s something that all of our clients are purple or interest or interested in is just getting on people’s aware, you know, just when you go on people’s radar. And that sense of, Hey, we exist and we only offer a solution to the thing that you need is what we call it on top of funnel marketing, and it’s it’s a really, really tough thing I think once people are in the proverbial funnel you can kind of get them to come back to your website through emails or retargeting or whatever it might be, but search offers this like incredibly unique platform where people who are looking for your thing, type in a question to Google, and you can get right in front of them and you also know as a marketer, how many people every single month are searching for that term what’s their average, click through rate all these different things like that. So getting more intelligence on how to build brand visibility. At the top of search is a really really important subject. I mean,

Mark Fidelman  06:27

I’m sure that if you look at the revenue of companies that are on the first page versus the 30th it’s it’s a huge discrepancy. And I can’t, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to strive whether it’s longtail keywords or, you know, the shorter keywords to get to page one or two.

06:47

Yeah, and I can just give you a little anecdote from my from my experience in PR,

06:52

the valuable PR heads

06:55

that we’ve ever landed for clients are the PR IDs that ended up bubbling up to the top of search for really popular keyword, and that stuff is that’s kind of essentially how we ended up hitting as an agency’s early years ago was recognizing, you know, we were we were winning major PR wins across the board. You know, we’ve actually you know, working with you too. In the past, as a writer at Forbes. But aside from all that and you recognize that if an article didn’t live beyond the flicker of the moment that it was published it had really limited value for our clients.

07:31

And given the digital noise that there is

07:37

the digital landscape is for attention. Search really provides SEO and search really provides the primary vehicle for anything being sticky when people are looking for something over time. So we would we you know sometimes it’s not you expect ends up getting rewarded with a ton of search, but those when you kind of look back at all the stats and all that, how things are performing, time and time again, at least from our perspective, those PR hits were by far the most productive for our clients.

Mark Fidelman  08:13

And so what’s changed from even five years ago or three years ago, in terms of SEO, what what are the big changes that have occurred if if someone from three years ago did an SEO exercise until now.

08:27

I think that

08:28

yeah so the biggest thing that I’ve identified is this idea that search engines are no longer just doing straight up keyword matching you know you used to be out and you did all the right things with your website, and you got a bunch of backlinks from high quality websites. And then you just played the clean the SEO game and you did the keywords and in search engines would would kind of recognize that you’re an authoritative site and then they elevate you. It’s not that simple anymore. What search engines are trying to do now is determine the intent of the person who is submitting the query. And what I mean by that is that people look or the search engine tries to determine say I’m looking for a pair of scissors.

09:16

And that’s an extra keywords like shoes. And this description has to make a

09:22

has to make a determination is that somebody’s trying to buy a pair of running shoes or are they trying to learn about your running shoes Yeah, whereas there’s nothing else going on. And, and so what SEO is called that is like the idea of transactional intent, versus informational intent. And so, you know, if, if you’re not focused on the intent of a search engine results. You might you’re, you’re, you really need to pivot your strategy around the understanding of how a search engine is elevating certain content, depending on how it interprets the attempt of a keyword.

Mark Fidelman  10:00

Okay. And are you able to influence that a as a potential company that’s trying to become more SEO friendly is that is

10:12

that you can’t you can’t implement, Google will do, but you can respond to it. Right. And you can collect better intelligence, so you can understand what your keywords are transactional and what your keywords are informational. And that’s something that we recognize as efficiency it’s like okay like well we have a tremendous opportunity to win top of page visibility or recommendations for our clients. But we only have opportunity, if that keyword is informational in a, you know, in intent. If the keyword is interpreted as transactional and that it’s populating a bunch of e commerce heads as a PR agency we had zero clay on that page there’s nothing we can do there. But if it you know if the if the search engine is interpreting the intended for it as informational. It’s all PR. And so being able to kind of like bucket your keywords as transactional or informational then kind of what you want to do is you want to share those visits to different teams, it becomes a very multi channel approach to search. And, you know, SEO traditional SEO is typically defined as how do you do ranking of your own website and search. But I think what marketers should recognize and should raise is the idea that doesn’t matter how somebody finds your brand and so long as they find you. And there’s so many potential touch points on the first page of search, as I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation. A lot of those touch points are there are all competing for the same real estate in the same clicks. So it makes sense as a digital marketer to pursue all the potential touch points, all the potential places where a customer may discover your product or service. And then saturated right second thing your favorite.

Mark Fidelman  12:06

Though you would said, if it’s informational, you could influence it and that’s all PR No. Isn’t it more than just public relations in terms of how you can influence it can’t you just do your own blog posts or videos or other types of content.

12:22

And that would be, you know, honestly that’s the gold standard, is if you can get your own content to show up at the top of search. I think the problem that we see quite often as an agency. Is that a lot of our clients. Simply in most in most brands and, in fact, do not have the domain authority to burst onto that top tier of search results. They’re literally displacing companies like a New York Times or something you know, in order to do in recognizing that that that that click behavior is so narrowly focused very page. It really does. spend a lot of money to get on to page two, or even at the bottom of page one. It does if you can get out the page one. Fantastic. Great. You guys

13:14

are you’re in the top.

13:17

1% or more, but for the rest that 99.9%. It’s worth looking at the multi channel approach about how you reach your customer. Why not

Mark Fidelman  13:27

just for go up your budget, or a content production budget and just pay, pay to be on page one.

13:34

Yeah, absolutely, super expensive. It can be more expensive than TPR and creating content. Yeah, for sure,

13:43

our, our clients are demanding

13:46

upwards of, anywhere from 10 to $100,000 a month in a pay per click.

13:53

And it’s, it’s still an adding on. Yeah, this is paying it goes away.

14:01

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the fact is, there’s always somebody, you know, kind of nipping at your heels because it’s because the whole thing is a bidding process. So, the second that you draw out how much you willing to pay someone else comes up in

14:16

a bid or competition for that.

Mark Fidelman  14:18

Right, but then you got to worry about Google changing their algorithms again which we’ll get into in just a second yeah

14:23

i mean i think i don’t think it says, I don’t think it’s as simple as saying, Do I want to do an ad play or do I want to optimize for gameplay. Figuring out like what’s the right balance for your company there. And that’s, I think, a really critical piece for marketers is to say is I think something that doesn’t happen enough, especially with search engines, marketing, is that getting all together in one place, putting forward a unified strategy to say okay. These are the keywords we’re going to optimize for organically here PR here’s your purchase orders, e commerce here’s your marching orders, sem, we use these keywords to create this ability and these, these other kind of results. Otherwise, pick it get organic penetration. That kind of coordination. I think is pretty rare, but with companies that do it well it’s incredibly effective,

15:17

and how important is.

15:20

Oh it’s super important.

15:24

You know, things are created equal, you know i think

15:26

i think most your audience know that it’s important to say though that there are two types of links there’s there’s regular links, which are known as follow links are follow links. There’s a nofollow stuff, and the nofollow that just means that you’re not getting any recognition to search engine for that link in knowing that it exists, and knowing how to avoid them, or just really not necessarily avoid them. Knowing how to spend your efforts more wisely. So, you go through this like rabbit hole and trying to get some backlinks that you actually get credit for them. Okay,

16:04

now let’s get to.

Mark Fidelman  16:06

So we’ve talked about burdens we’ve talked about a few changes in SEO now. I somebody works with you or your soon to be released tool called Blakely, what is it that they need to do walk us through that in order to create their search engine visibility.

16:25

Yeah, totally. So, first thing you need to do is get your key words organized, identify words are drawn, or, you know, relevant to your customers, what are they using to find your product or service online, not in position they don’t know you exist as a non branded keywords. Search volumes like the rates. You know, you can okay compete, you know,

16:56

competitive they are but it’s a strategy.

16:59

It’s kind of nice to go after keywords because you can use other channels to this brand visibility strategies are grant dominance across those keywords as well. So first, get your keywords organized. Second thing is, you know, plug them in. You can do this kind of naturally just google search or you can use the clipboard that we created visibly it’ll be free, by the way, so it’s. We’re not trying to show you what you went to a shameless.

17:25

Check out what what it visibly allows

17:27

you to do is to basically cross analyze against. So, we look at his age age we don’t just look at the link, we look at the content within

17:38

sweets we look at the content as well. grappling with somebody see a big clue

17:45

about your brand yesterday now step further and we segment. So tell you right away. It’s just an e commerce site as a PR is this is a brand new segmentation, new lines the whole process. I have an idea of the intent of these various keywords for their their transactional over information you have an idea of what your brain does instead. Well, it also points out your blind spots. And then lastly you can quickly segment, you can say okay, I just want to pull out ecommerce stuff. I don’t have that list handed over to my ecommerce team. I want to pull all of the money out of this list, I’m hammering my PR team. So once you’ve got that stands What do you need to do they talk to you with their marching orders are so they speak, and then you benchmark your success and because you check it a month or two later. See if you didn’t get better see if you could have improved overall footprint on that.

Mark Fidelman  18:53

So let’s talk about this visibly just review that information for you, it makes it really really simple. Is that what happens,

19:02

we’re basically doing.

19:05

We are listening. We’re listening.

19:09

We identify with, showing up across all different channels, not just subscribe today like me to review on your

19:18

third, you know, organic search results.

19:23

Or we can tell you that your commerce sites. Is there any page is actually featuring your brand or it’s not your brand.

19:32

I think all that stuff is really important managing these channels in your

19:37

funnel

19:38

visibility. And then, I was a second.

Mark Fidelman  19:44

Just for tools to help people understand

19:50

where they’re at, so right so the first thing is listening.

19:54

The second thing is building, and that’s

19:58

what I think is really important. You have all this information, extracting it and organizing the way that your teams know what to do next is really important for you as well. Okay.

Mark Fidelman  20:12

Now, once you find out what’s going on, what then do you recommend people do in order to take the next step forward.

20:23

Well, it’s kind of trying to figure out internally,

20:26

how do you how do you understand the makeup of these different search engine pages to try to get in front of users. And, you know, some pages, you’re not going to be too competitive to deal with

20:44

no basis, meaning they have

20:47

a ton of e commerce in a relationship was e commerce players but whatever merchant pays. That’s something that you need to press on your ecommerce, where it’s a PR thing and maybe there’s a bunch of humans who just weren’t even identifying it those are that goes outwards. The traders word. So, it’s very much cleaner to get better job and your, your collective marketing. Okay. And are you essentially home at least some of them.

Mark Fidelman  21:23

I’ve just been trying

21:26

until I noticed visibly and so I need to enter

21:31

into a separate company. I don’t want to intermix it too much.

21:37

As you know, he have

21:41

come in from the agency side where

21:43

she said, you know, if we will actually do this work on behalf of our clients. Don’t just work for us or for clients and physically. It was

21:54

a realization for us, meaningful the work was we’d be able to get off with really basic like running shoes

22:06

would never be able to actually break for as a, as a brand

22:11

to reinforce it written, and you could

22:16

go in there and one.

22:19

Flip over the organic results, almost anywhere you learn stuff. That is super powerful strategy for an easy tangible way to measure PR.

22:35

But there’s really tough, energy, which is why

22:41

we develop visibly visibly is. It’s kind of funny like if we were to step back, ask the question, and existence are simple questions.

22:54

No single solution that answers that question, big tech out there that tells you what you’re asking. Wait,

23:05

out there that tells you where you’re, you’re upset. Show me up. Just

23:10

start listening.

23:13

Vertical Box. No idea.

23:17

So, so there was nobody didn’t do a full

23:23

brain flip printer

23:25

presence across any word or phrase in TV. Oh my god this is such a productive energy for our agency, why not doing it so there’s a ton of different ways you could legally. We use it as an agency.

23:44

Yeah. Okay. All right.

Mark Fidelman  23:48

You know, as you’re. Let’s say they’ve hired to work with you. Are you then using the tool yourself in order to see how you’re doing in terms of page one, two, is it’s a part of your, your passion.

24:04

So, so I call it search engine visibility.

24:08

It’s different from search engine.

24:12

Sem it’s

24:15

typically related to your own websites like

24:20

TCP or social. So really, the idea of just how do you increase stronger visibility in search PR as a huge piece of that. And all of it is is sizable. When you look at key words content.

24:40

But yeah, you know,

24:42

it’s not I don’t think the PR, you know PR

24:47

purposes. To make announcements sometimes it’s

24:52

a recall, that’s not, you know,

24:57

I think there comes a viable strategy for you, is when you’re trying to use PR to create

25:07

brand awareness, sit on top of a phone call customer acquisition.

25:12

And when you look at that guy.

25:15

Yeah, like

25:17

huge huge

25:20

playground where you should be doing some work.

Mark Fidelman  25:23

Okay. Excellent. So, what else do you run, and people you do.

25:31

Besides,

Mark Fidelman  25:34

working on the like your prints or else is coming. They know and take away from,

25:43

You know, that’s

25:47

course. Yeah, I mean,

25:51

you know, for us,

25:54

visibly content.

25:56

Content and doing good content and that’s what you do I know you do a fantastic job of that. So, not only understanding. The, the keywords and the kind of the trends happening in your space but then we just really interesting editorial work that picks up that not only kind of maximizes your opportunity for your own SEO. But also, you know, has that virality kind of acts that aspect to it that people want to share and talk about engage with. So I’m a huge fan of content. Otherwise, you know, just make sure that you’re, you know, checking all the boxes for your website like, make sure that you’re optimized for mobile make sure that you’re looking at that your PageSpeed is amazing. There’s a ton of free tools out there. Yeah, just kind of Google for free SEO tool, you know, you’ll get up, you’ll get a bucket load. Okay.

Mark Fidelman  26:52

Yeah, I mean the mobile thing has become big with what was the panda release where if you didn’t have a mobile optimized page, you would be penalised.

27:02

It’s kind of wild if you think about it, Google has 9090 plus percent of the world’s market share. Search and effectively they put out this this this this this rulebook that says, hey, if it unless you can form the way that we want you to create a website and like presenting materials, we’re not going to rank you up. Yeah, so they are an asset as a single company rebuilding the entire web. The entire internet and the image that they want to see what you know, for better or worse,

Mark Fidelman  27:32

probably worse, but we’ll see. We’ll see if there’s an emerging not gonna comment version competitor coming out. Okay, so I’m vague, thank you for all of that strategies and tactics. There’s a whole lot more and I know there is one of the things I would like the audience to take away is, you know, Chris has got a, a white paper on the subject called The Ultimate Guide to search engine visibility. And he’s also got that search tool that he talked about called visibly which is free, so you should be going to each of those places where would they find them Chris.

28:10

Yes, visibly is the is Abo why people who are wondering, and it’s just, yeah, B is ebay.com to visibly calm.

Mark Fidelman  28:22

Okay, wonderful and then the white papers on your website. It is,

28:25

yeah, easy to find.

Mark Fidelman  28:27

Alright. Good, now I have two final questions before we wrap things up. One, and the first one is about what’s the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend people do, or download or use right now.

28:40

That’s good. That’s a great question. Man, there’s a lot of good ones, one that I use, which just keeps my head in the game I feel like is this chrome plug in called keywords everywhere. And it’s, it’s pretty brilliant it’s just it’s just kind of poppy it kind of just fits on the side of your browser and anytime you’re doing any search, it just tells you the actual volume of that keyword search, as well as a bunch of related keywords to it and it happens so quickly and it gives you all this kind of data on the page. And even if you’re not thinking or doing something tactical at the moment. It just becomes like a kind of a fun thing to see on the side of the, you know, of your view browser in a kind of keeps you thinking constantly about how to do a better job in SEO.

Mark Fidelman  29:33

Okay, yeah, fantastic. I haven’t downloaded but I’m going to because it looks very interesting words everywhere. Yeah. All right. And then last question is in your space, who’s the most influential person in marketing today.

29:47

Man,

29:49

I,

29:50

I you know I really admire this guy named Rand Fishkin. Probably a lot of your audience knows who he is. He’s the founder of Moz he’s no longer involved in the SEO space, but, boy. He’s. I don’t know the whole story i i think he was unceremoniously removed at Moz. I think there’s a non compete involved with his with his relationship with that company. But, you know, regardless of all that like he’s just he’s just been such a great educator and thought leader in the space, and has been there for really since I think the beginning and people are really starting to realize that they needed to be more tactical when it came to search. So yeah, I really enjoy following what he has to say, you know, on the subject.

Mark Fidelman  30:42

Okay yeah and he’s got a lot of videos online I wonder since he probably hasn’t produced on or two in a while. What’s changed. I think the basics are great what he does and he did it in such a fun way. But I’m curious as to

30:56

how some of that stuff is he’s like a newscaster that ended up in search, you know, he’s so good in front of the camera, he’s so smooth and he’s just he’s, he’s a really smart person.

Mark Fidelman  31:09

Okay. Yeah, I agree. And to me, there’s a lot of smart people but the way he delivered the information was clever. I really liked the I mean he really got into that character. I’m sure that character was him. Yeah, I mean, I mean with the mustache and all the props and costumes just the way the guy is right. Yeah. Okay. Well, Chris, we’re gonna wrap things up I really appreciate you being on the show, and I look forward to her next chat. In the next coming months.

31:41

Awesome. Well thanks so much for having me. Thank you.

How To Increase Search Engine Visibility For Your Products
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Mark Fidelman  00:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the digital brand building podcast. today. I’m very excited to learn about something new, something I don’t know. And that is implementing what they’re calling humanistic marketing practices. And joining me today is Justin Foster and Emily Sikorsky. And today, I have never done this before. But we’re going to talk to two people. And we’re going to try and keep it moving. And we’re going to try and keep it light and, and fun. And as always, I promise you, you’re going to learn something. So with that, Justin, will you go first and introduce your self and give us your background, please?

Justin Foster  05:31

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having us on. So my name is Justin Foster, as you said, and I am the co founder of Bruton River. My background is actually if I go back to the beginning as in sales, I’m one of the few branding guys that I know that came out of corporate sales. And at times, back in the day when I was starting a couple of agencies and whatnot made me feel insecure and now I’m proud of it. That’s a good place to come from and have been self employed since 2003. And like I said, I’ve owned a couple of agencies then was the co founder of tech startup that went to acquisition and then met Emily six and a half years ago and found a lot of simpatico with life philosophy. The way branding should work. This word term we say being human, in just life and in business, and in 2015 launched route and River.

Mark Fidelman  06:34

Okay, Emily. Yeah,

Emily  06:37

right. So I grew up in the southwest. And I began my career as a journalist, and it’s been eight and a half years as a journalist and publisher here and so really diving into language storytelling, and how other people shape their own narratives. And I’ve always been been an avid reader and obviously a writer. So I was really intrigued by that, and then made a move into PR and worked in PR for a couple of years and learned a little bit more about business strategy. And as well as sort of brought the agency that I worked for up to date with social media, spent a lot of time early on working in blogging and building communities. And then I went out on my own began my own company and started doing social strategy, some ghost writing a little bit of everything. I had quite a toolbox by that point of abilities and and then finally began doing brand strategy for human behavioral research company, global company, and eventually became the the vice president of the brand, brand and marketing there. And that’s where Justin and I, that’s when Justin and I paths crossed. And yeah, as Justin mentioned, when we we met six and a half years ago, there was this split between us is alchemy of understanding how people work, and how they express themselves. And this great injustice and so many businesses that these entrepreneurs are leaders have all this passion, they sacrificed so much for their businesses and for their brands. But they are missing in many cases, the ability to articulate the soul of their brand, what drives them their motivation. And in the process of trying to do that they make it so complicated, just not being maybe well versed at language or not well versed at taking that deep and intrinsic dive inside of themselves to figure out what it really is that drives them. And we felt that that was our gift to be able to bring that simplicity, clarity and articulation to clients. And so remember has been sort of an adventure ever since. We’ve worked with over 200 clients and we’re really passionate about inspiring leaders to go inward to uncover and articulate the soul of the world.

Mark Fidelman  09:00

I know how important it is. But I also know how difficult that is, it’s almost like you’re doing a deep dive, when I liken it to is you’re doing a deep dive on yourself. And it’s really hard to do that without the help of an expert. And I think that’s where you come in. But I’m sure people are still wondering what it is that you’re talking about. So when we talk about humanistic marketing practices, and going deep within to figure out you know, what your brand is and what it represents, what do you mean by that?

Emily  09:31

Great question. Yeah, so it can be It sounds very esoteric, but it’s where this blend of being spiritual and very practical. So what this means is doing that deep dive work to understand what are your core beliefs, what are the deepest things inside of what we term your soil of soul. So those are the things again, that drive you your passions, your disappointments, your hurt, your pain, your dreams, your hopes, we dig into that soil and we help our clients articulate or our clients who go through our course. We help them uncover what those core beliefs are. From there, they also work on their mission. And we don’t mean mission statements, we hate them. We think they’re boring. In most cases, they’re long run on sentences that don’t tell people anything. We define mission as the thing you’re here to do that only you can do. And when you have that mission clear in your mind, it usually has a direct line of sight into the business you’re already working in. But it connects something inside of people so that they have this clarity and their confidence is built. Then we move on and we get into message and messages really not what other people want to hear, which is commonly been how it’s perceived. It’s like finding the right thing to say so everyone loves me. In our practice, it’s about saying what your heart wants to say to the world. And we do this with the way that we encourage people to find it is to sort of remove yourself from that approval mechanism that we all have built in As humans, and think about and get real with what really needs to be said, and this is more important today than ever, to have a message that stands out, you’ve really got to come from within be be human to yourself, and then that authenticity, that genuine feeling conveys to the audience and that’s what breaks through all the noise that exists.

Mark Fidelman  11:25

Okay, and, Justin, do you have anything to add to that?

Justin Foster  11:28

Yeah, just from, you know, the term humanistic marketing is for us was born out of the fact that, well, if you have an intrinsic brand, if you do all the things that Emily just mentioned, to get to this place, well, then how does that change how you show up in the world? So well kinda like to look at inhumane marketing practices first. So one of those is the use of Fudd or fear, uncertainty and doubt, manipulating people’s fears. You know, most most of the most Marketing, persuasive marketing tactics that have been used over the last, you know, five or six decades were created by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, who was able to say, hey, if you do these things, you’re going to trigger a psychological response. We view that to be manipulative. Another inhumane thing is to pretend to be something that you’re not. And then certainly there’s the in him, you know, being inhumane to your your culture to your people, to your, your community, your clients. So the idea of humanistic marketing is that it’s it just starts with humans connecting with humans. So we often say this, and this goes back to my sales background is that companies don’t buy anything people do. And certainly, that companies have people that represent the interests of the company, but it ultimately boils down to a human that you’re in relationship with, in in a way that produces the desired behavior. Or the elements that we’re talking about. And this dives into our, our mutual background, Emily more than me, but a mutual background in human human behavior. And then just the other two or three, just so that you know what they are, Mark is, is this idea that transparency is a behavior, it’s an action. It’s not the last thing you do. It’s the first thing you do, which changes the rules of PR and significantly, mastering storytelling. Being a master storyteller as a brand is humanistic marketing. Because we are wired for story. It’s one of the oldest parts of being a human is the wiring for story. And then finally, just being the courage to own your uniqueness. Our one of our mantras is show the world who you truly are. And that truth is still the best brand strategy. If you can go Be who you truly are, and you’re not. You’re not overly performative. You’re not a construct something magical happens around trust and the spirit and science of branding.

Mark Fidelman  14:07

So what let me ask you something, though that has been kind of on the forefront, especially now, given that we’re in a coven situation and obviously, you know, racism is at the top of the agenda for most politicians and a lot of corporations. What do you recommend companies do in terms of messaging or branding or taking a political stand in this environment in future environments?

Emily  14:38

Yeah, great question. And we recommend that they look to their their beliefs, their standards, first. And what we suggest is that they take those values, beliefs, however, they’ve turned them which in most cases, businesses sort of set them to the side and then operate, but you take them out, you look at them, you look at the way that you’re operating. Already, and then you layer on the current realities, racial injustice of a global pandemic. And you see where your beliefs are being lived out very well very clearly. And then tell stories around that speak to that. Share about that. Again, just to mention that transparency is an action. And so the market wants to hear your audience wants to hear where you stand. So if you are not taking if you’re not telling them then they are wondering, and they’re losing confidence in you as a brand, quite To be blunt. But you don’t want to make a statement that is not based in reality. So that’s what we would suggest.

Mark Fidelman  15:41

Aren’t you aren’t companies worried? That if they do take a stand that they might be canceled?

Justin Foster  15:48

Well, there’s that element but I think there’s a couple of things to it is one is if there’s there’s a lot to be said for sincerity. So Nike is you know, it’s a great example of the sincerity of intention. Like this is something that they’ve talked about for years. So it’s not, it’s not, it’s not new. The second thing is, is if you are, if your, your your brand, your reputation as a brand is around doing the right thing of integrity of doing things that are in the public interest, then you’re good. What what, to your point what will get you is virtue signaling, if it’s a little bit like and this is hyperbole here but a little bit like turning Memorial Day, which is supposed to honor the people that have died for the country, into a mattress sale or a truck sale, that disingenuousness or that, again, that performative nature of that that’s what will get you. It that’s what will get you. The other element of cancel is you can’t really be canceled. For taking a stand around something that is a, let’s call it a universal truth. You’re not going to get canceled for taking a stand against racism, for example, you’re going to have people like Dick’s Sporting Goods did which when they pulled guns out of their stores, you’re going to you’re going to have a bunch of clients, or a bunch of customers that don’t shop with you anymore. But that’s different. And my final thought related to this particular topic, which is one of the favorite things right now that we love to talk about is social pressure is market pressure. Those didn’t used to be the same thing. But now they are and if there’s social pressure in a particular area brand, it behooves a brand to listen to that because the marketplace is telling them what they what they they’re telling them what is important to them.

Mark Fidelman  17:49

So you can have social pressure from a very left wing or right wing group that represents point oh 1% of the population. How do you know as a person And to distinguish the signal through the noise.

Emily  18:05

I think it goes back to, you know, you obviously have to evaluate where that social pressure is coming from. But you also have to evaluate what you truly stand for. I wouldn’t advocate you know, making a statement just to make a statement that’s insincere. And we’ll be critics criticized harshly. But you don’t have to respond to pressure that is not in alignment with who you are as a company.

Mark Fidelman  18:30

Well, let’s, let’s take a specific example. Right, so Uncle Ben’s rice and Aunt Jemima syrup. They both now removed that character, and these were based on positive characters. And so was that the result of social pressure? Is that a result of their beliefs or was that a big big mistake?

Emily  18:55

No, I think that was a update along probably a long overdue update. With the with the progress of the world,

Mark Fidelman  19:06

my mother was a very successful the first black female millionaire, very successful entrepreneur. Right? It was not meant as anything but a compliment to her.

Justin Foster  19:15

Yeah, right. So my take on this mark is leadership leaders are going to make mistakes, because we’ve never been here before, just like a bunch of mistakes have been made with COVID. And the COVID response. It’s making the mistake is part of how you learn. And so you know, if we were advising angioma, we would have said, you know, tell your story, we wouldn’t have said swap it out. So I would say that there’s an element and again, this goes back to your, your root, you kind of your root belief, and then your behavior as a leader is if you are reactive, you’re going to be chasing and you know, social pressure you’re going to be you’re going to constantly be reacting to it. As opposed to doing like Marc Benioff and Salesforce has done where he just comes out and says, This is what we believe in, or Dan price with gravity payments, who has become an advocate for, you know, an advocate for dealing with income disparity between, you know, executives and employees, it was those guys, they are, they are not responding to something and then trying to figure out a way to placate an audience, they are just living what they believe. If you’re a leader that hasn’t done that work, you’re going to make some mistakes, you’re gonna make you’re gonna make some mistakes. And I think that’s all part of the process. The other example here is what’s happening with the Washington NFL team. Yeah, you know that. Yeah. And and that’s a that’s a another situation where market pressure in social pressure is the same thing because FedEx and Nike basically told us not You need to take care of this. Now that is not out of character for Nike or FedEx to take stands like that they have done that their entire brand existence. It’s just more obvious now when it’s something that is extra sensitive.

Mark Fidelman  21:18

But I I’m not gonna belabor this because I think you guys know a very good job of of answering this because I know this is on everyone’s mind cuz I hear it all the time. But is it current market pressure? Is it because of a very heightened sense of racism at this point, because of, you know, what’s transpired? Or do you think it’s a long term decision? That is the right one?

Justin Foster  21:45

Which one

Mark Fidelman  21:46

spot just the Redskins changing URL?

Justin Foster  21:48

Yeah, I think it’s, I mean, it goes back to something that Doug Williams said years ago about it, you know, Super Bowl winning quarterback that played for them. He said, it’s, it’s a matter of decency.

Emily  21:58

And, yeah, this isn’t a new issue this is

Justin Foster  22:00

Yeah, this has been going on for a long time, there just wasn’t enough pressure because there wasn’t enough. The social pressure was not enough to get Snyder to do anything about it. When FedEx his partner has caught, you know, one of the majority or minority owners, Fred Smith in the Washington team, you know, they when they started talking about like, Hey, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna be behind this anymore. And I think I’m gonna just gonna play off Mark something that Emily said a minute ago. We have to leave room for evolution. No one, for example, you go back 30 years ago, how many companies had a had a benefits available to same sex relationships? Didn’t it just wasn’t a thing or how many you know, you go back and so there has to be room. And this was what we talked about. In between the two. The two extremes that you mentioned is that there is that if you’re living your brand, according to your values, there is no left wing or right wing. There’s just The right thing to do based off of what you believe in. And so what we teach our clients to do is most of the time just transcend the ideological discussions, because most of them are sort of binary and temporary and kind of useless. You have to know who you are and what you believe in. And then you can advance from there. That’s the starting point.

Mark Fidelman  23:21

It just seems like chick fil a right. They had those values for the longest time and and now they seem to be transforming themselves based on social and market pressure. And yeah, it’s interesting to see how that that all works out. I mean, they’re going against their values in original values to placate the marketplace. I don’t even know if it’s a market. Yeah, I think it’s more social, because they were very successful. They would not sound like their business dipped, but it appears to me that they’re bowing to social pressure. I’m just wondering if that’s the way it’s

Justin Foster  23:55

fair. I mean, I don’t know those guys, but I think they’re evolving too. Current realities. There’s, you know, there’s certain realities that it’s similar to NASCAR getting rid of the Confederate battle flag. I mean, that’s a It’s a race. That’s a reality that, that that is a symbol, very symbol of hatred to a large portion of the American population. I think I think too, and this is a, you know, fascinating thing about this, this nuance here, like, where do we go? And I think it starts with what we would ask any leader, especially if you’re like the CEO, or you’re the face of the brand. That is the second question is, how is our company going to respond? The first question is, what do you believe? Do you believe in if you get that part mark, the rest of it is mostly courage and execution? Yep.

Mark Fidelman  24:50

Okay, um, I think we belabor this enough, but I can tell you, it’s on everyone’s mind if you’re

Justin Foster  24:54

Yeah, that’s fine. Thank you for bringing it up.

Mark Fidelman  24:57

All right, so let’s move to you’ve defined Well actually, no, let’s start with how do you define your values? What kind of exercise do people go through in order to figure that out, and I know we can’t lay it all out here, or else you wouldn’t be in business out of people start to think about this.

Emily  25:14

So one of the ways that we suggest that people begin to tackle this is, first of all, just in a very practical sense, this isn’t something that’s done in the seams. So setting aside time dedicated time to dig into it is fantastic. Having somebody help you with that process is even better because as you mentioned at the top mark, it’s incredibly difficult to do on your own. But without all that the or with you know, definitely setting aside time maybe not having a facilitator what you want to do is sit down and do a little bit of an inventory around the idea of what have I always known to be true to me, but was not taught to me, right? So we want to go back to the inherent you the person who existed in the world before the world kind of imposed itself upon you. And sort of digging into some of the the ideals and values that you have held. And I, we recommend that you don’t really try to think of them first as values against story. And the stories that we tell ourselves are really a great place to start. So going back in your memory to maybe childhood or maybe young adulthood, what were the things that you railed against as a teenager? Or what were the things that as a child, maybe in grade school that you got in trouble for a lot of times what we believe can it once it is challenged, that becomes a formative memory. And by looking at and talking through journaling through on your own some of those early stands that you took, there cannot be uncovered some of these core beliefs. So that’s one exercise that we would we would suggest and we walk some of our clients through through that beliefs like defiance, which is one of our core beliefs as a company, love may be revealed, whatever it is, For you, but the idea is to get into the story first and let it tell you what you believe.

Justin Foster  27:06

There’s an interesting mark, there’s an interesting thing that happens when we do this work with a team, like an executive team. So when we work with a company that’s, you know, got more than, you know, like, it’s not a small business, a midsize company, we work we do that we do the branding work as far as this type of stuff with the entire executive team, because everyone’s in branding. And one of the things that we do is we have them do that exercise with a few others that Emily mentioned, and what happens as the commonalities start to pop up. So we don’t know there’s that classic sort of facilitator thing, which is, everybody makes a list of all the values they believe in and then they circle the one that’s most important to them. We go the other way, which is go inward first. And find out what you believe and then express it and we’ve done I don’t know, probably close to 100 hundred and 25 like groups. Root sessions, as we call them, and we all add to things always come out of this one is, is that there’s this tug of release of the light, like, Oh, I didn’t know you believe that, or Wow, look at that everyone on the executive team believes in, believes in respect or, or something like that. The other thing that happens is, in some organizations, this has happened all the time. But in some organizations, when we do that work, somebody resigns. There’s a value misalignment or a belief misalignment that they’re like, I can’t I don’t, you know, there’s something off and that’s why that that leader felt like they couldn’t be there. What that does is it strengthens the culture, where you don’t have like mindedness because that’s, you know, groupthink, but you have these things that we call, we call standards, which is just the way we treat each other inside of the organization. So it’s all fascinating to watch it unfold for a group

Mark Fidelman  28:57

Hmm, okay, and At the end of this exercise, how do they begin to implement these changes?

Emily  29:07

Well, that’s where the standards come in. So at the end of the exercise, we have five core beliefs typically. And then we begin to examine the culture and what already exists, and determine these standards, which are usually manifest as short sentences, maybe three to five words, almost mantras, Mark, that really articulate the culture of the company and the way essentially, they’re living out their beliefs. So, for an exam, as an example, one of our core values is defiance. And the standard for us that we hold ourselves to and we expect of our team is to find the flow and forget the formula. We’re not formulaic, we always want to differentiate ourselves, and we always want to find a new way of doing things. So that is how What we hold ourselves to. So an organization will then come away with this set of five standards. And sometimes there are their sayings that are already being used quite a bit within the culture. And again, it’s more of an archeological dig to really uncover what’s already there, the brand that’s already there, and then just match it up with a bit more intentionality. So that they then those standards can be used both internally and externally to the audience to describe the culture and storytelling and recognition for employees or for for customers. So a lot of times these standards also apply to what a company is looking for in its in its partners and when its clients.

Justin Foster  30:38

And I think that the other thing too, just a little quick win here to point out related to this, like application that you asked about it, Mark is that

30:48

when you

Justin Foster  30:51

are it goes back to our definition of a brand. Our definition of a brand is how other people experience what you believe, and that you could be you personally Your personal brand as a leader or you collectively in the organization, it’s how other people experience what you believe. So when you and we know this, that behaviors are always connected to beliefs, there’s that’s, that’s, you know, science that, that those behaviors that you have as a leader and as the collective behaviors of an organization, they come from somewhere, they don’t just come out of the, you know, atmosphere. And so when you understand these things, then you can really get into how you show up in the world. And that’s for messaging. In particular, though, and when we say messaging, we’re really talking about the language of the brand, or the ontological expression of the brand.

Mark Fidelman  31:41

Okay, and, you know, I kind of liken these things to personal relationships or dating, when somebody has their core values and their beliefs, right. A lot of times it’s not expressed properly or a lot of times, you’ve got to dig it out of people with the brand doesn’t Have that that luxury. So how does the brand then express those values and and what they represent what they believe in to the outside world? Or at least to their customers? So I think that’s what they’re primarily concerned with, or they should be.

Emily  32:13

Definitely, that’s, that’s where storytelling comes in. Well, first of all, I think there’s a, there’s a big kind of Gimme that a lot of brands Miss is just sharing what your values are, you know, take take a month’s worth of content and look at how you can create high value content, whether it’s blog posts, video posts, it’s speaking engagements that really focus on the company’s values and how those beliefs are played out in behaviors. I mean, do that externally with your clients share that in collateral materials. That’s, that’s number one. And then number two would be tell stories around how you lived up to this value. I think a great example of this is Southwest Airlines. They one of their core values. uses love. They of course, they carry that into their external messaging. But they also show that in one of their great examples of this is on their social media feed. During the height of Cova, they they posted a picture of a whole empty airplane except one little tiny head in the back. And the post was about you know, we’re still here to serve, serve you. Even if our plans are mostly empty. In this case, we are taking a healthcare worker to New York to help with the outbreak there. And so they’re demonstrating their love for their customers and how their customers are also giving that love to the world. So there’s so many ways to express this but definitely don’t want to kind of hold those back you want to be forward with your audience on on what your beliefs are.

Justin Foster  33:48

Okay and other is this on social channels is through the press is it across the board? Are things what are the channels, all of them now, each channels gonna have their own application of how that goes through. But we build brand language around conversations because conversations are the crucible that make a brand live or die. You can have a really expensive shiny ad campaign and that the language is off, it doesn’t matter. Or you can have a grassroots campaign with a great language and it works really well. So so when we, when we our starting point is, it kind of depends if they’re b2c or b2b, but let’s take a b2b company. The first people, the first group that we work with on understanding how to use this language is the sales team or the or the or the channel management or whoever is market facing, because they’re the ones that are on the phones on the zooms, you know, someday maybe back in the conference rooms. having those conversations, then there’s certainly a level of integration into websites. So for example, one of the foundational language elements that we have is what’s called a root belief. And that’s the first thing that’s out of your mouth. It’s the first thing that’s on the hero image of your website. It’s in your BIOS on social media. The root belief goes everywhere. And then the second element is then around category and category ownership is a it’s a brand essential in our in our work. Because a category allows you to create a space in consciousness that didn’t exist before, which is an extraordinarily powerful place to be example, Elvis Presley. long dead is still the King of Rock, still the king rock and roll. Well, you ask any musician, anybody who’s the King of Rock, they say Elvis Presley. That’s an example of owning your category. And then the third one, the third thing that starts to get infused is your your differentiators. The the things that you’re that you’re speaking to that to the your audience that are things that make you two truly different. So when you combine, when you look at all the scenarios, we’re okay, we got to get our root belief out there, we got to get our category name out there, and we got to get our differentiators out there, then you get into the sort of omni channel view of what’s the best way to say those things with using the foundational language. And that’s depends on, you know, company to company to company, a lot of it depends on brand voice and the personality of the brand that they that they are.

Mark Fidelman  36:26

Okay, and I guess when you are a company looking at this and looking back at what what you’ve just said, it seems like it’s pretty complicated. Is it extremely hard to go through this process? Or is it easy? Where does it lie in the difficulty spectrum? Because I know a lot of companies don’t do it.

Emily  36:47

Yeah, that’s a good point. A lot of companies don’t I think the perception is it’s very difficult. I think the most difficult thing is deciding to do it and opening up enough to let it be fruitful. But once you’re once you’re involved in it. And then once you can get through some of the deeper dives, it begins to materialize very quickly and become way more solid and tangible and easier. Our our clients, regardless of their size, huge companies, small clients, they tell us afterwards now it’s so much easier to market to know, I always know what to say I have greater confidence, I’m talking about what I do about business about the brand. Once you’ve done that deep work, which tends to be a little bit more challenging, it becomes a lot more viscous to have those conversations when you know the language that you’re using. Is is true, it’s conveying a truth that you hold dear. And it is also differentiated. And that’s what we work towards in these sessions so difficult in the beginning and much easier on the long tail.

Mark Fidelman  37:52

Because like, I could see how individuals that are in the company that are responsible for marketing or social media or even sales if they had a great code of ethics, so to speak, or a code of branding, then they would know how to speak to people and what language to use and the messaging and the storytelling. So instead of inventing it on the fly as to what they heard from their manager, so a very strong point there, and I know Justin, you had something to say, right?

Justin Foster  38:19

Yeah, I was just gonna, I’m just gonna say My apologies for interrupting the, the, the key to this too is the leadership. So what you know, there, it’s going to be hard. It’s heavy lifting, it’s chop wood carry water. It’s a boot camp, it’s already hard. And to quote, Jordan Peterson, life is suffering don’t make it worse. So intrinsic branding is hard. Don’t make it worse. It’s hard work. Here’s what makes it worse. lack of courage is a big one. If If your leadership team is passive, if they are unwilling to be different, unwilling to try new things, it’s, I mean, it’s just, it’s gonna be a struggle, it’s gonna be a struggle to brand this way because you have yet to overcome the insecurity that you’re okay exactly as you are. The second thing that makes it harder for people to for brands to implement is when the entire leadership team has not bought in. So that’s why we don’t just work with the CMO, we work with the entire leadership team to get the brand language, the beliefs, the standards, all the elements of the brand in place first, and everyone has a seat at that table. And if you’ve got this very compartmentalize like, Well, okay, this is a brand thing. So I’m the CFO or the CTO, whatever, I don’t need to be involved. That is going to cause pretty significant friction in the implementation because now it just becomes new language for an ad campaign or something and that’s, that’s unsustainable.

Mark Fidelman  39:53

Yeah, great point. Okay, so we you worked with a lot of companies going through this exercise and making them more human and they’re relating their values to the outside world. What is the payoff?

Emily  40:10

I think the first payoff is that confidence and that consistency that you gain as a brand when everyone is singing from the same song sheet. What happens then is that your brand is consistently differentiated in the market using the same language which then gets them it gets involved in the language of your audience. And so now your brand is taking it. Everyone who touches your brand is beginning to to share that brand in a way that’s super spreadable and ultimately raises the visibility of the brand. So and then on a micro level to having been in the shoes of a CMO or VP of Marketing, when you have to sit down every time for every project and sort of re engineer the messaging or or come up with messaging, it takes a tremendous toll on you. It’s incredibly difficult to execute. And so execution becomes easier, projects flow more smoothly. And ultimately you get differentiation and you get a larger brand position and presence

Justin Foster  41:19

to more to that mark. One is a significantly lower cost per customer acquisition. And a lot of people they think word of mouth is sort of an accident. We think that word of mouth is evidence of a healthy brand. And so if you have to spend money, so the mantra we have for this is pay for retention, not attention. And so CPC or cost per customer per acquisition is a big one. And another one is just and this is come sometimes comes as a surprise as a lower overall marketing budget sometimes, because you think about in a larger company, the marketing budget, how much of that is experimentation. And let’s see what, let’s see what happens or, or your sort of focus, grouping your way to some sort of message. If you know who you are, and you know what to say you got the language, right, and you got the systems in place. It drives a lot of that experience, experimental cost out of marketing. And all of that net then goes back to the bottom line, and also in. And this is true, pretty much every client of ours, in some form has been an increase in leads and sales, which as a former sales guy, that’s the whole point of marketing is leads and sales.

Emily  42:35

And I take one other point here, Mark, two, four times. I think the other benefit that you get if you do this work, particularly now that we’re moving into a very volatile time, things are going to be unpredictable for a while we’re going to be dealing with crisis for quite a while. And so what you get out of it as well is this this solid foundation from which to respond to the changes to the evolutionary Talking about earlier, it gives you the stable base from which to look to and then take action in alignment with the brand so that you don’t have brand fractures down the road when you’re when you’re meeting those challenges.

Mark Fidelman  43:13

Okay, all very good points. It’s been my experience as well. It also infuses the company with this sense of purpose and mission, which I like, you know, because they’re all on the same page. They all know what they represent. And, you know, most people within the organization are bought in or if they’re not, they soon exit. You don’t want people that aren’t bought in anyway. So to wrap things up, I have two final questions. And I ask everybody these questions. The first one is the hottest digital marketing technology that you would recommend people take a look at. And I

Justin Foster  43:50

might, Yeah, mine is sprinkler. I have been impressed with them for a long time as a social media management platform and The things that they’re that they’re doing had some experience with them back in the day in the work they’re doing with like Verizon and how they end up how Verizon was one of the first big big you know, consumer brands to have a like live response to social media posts and sprinkler was instrumental in making that happen.

Mark Fidelman  44:27

Okay, and you know for sprinklers got a lot of social tools to kind of measure brand perceptions that right.

Justin Foster  44:36

Yeah, you have you have the there’s sort of a, you know, the big data aspect of what sprinkler is doing. And I think they’ve evolved over the years to where social media management isn’t really there. Like that’s a commodity like that’s table stakes now, and so they’re they’re shifting seems to be in recent years is around analysis of or curation of data and relationships, like essentially, who is paying attention and what are they responding to? That is deeper than just, you know, eyeballs or clicks.

Mark Fidelman  45:11

Okay, love it. My last question is Who is the most influential person in marketing today and one of you would said Christopher Lochhead. And I don’t know of Christopher Can, can you kind of give us a little bit of a background on him?

Justin Foster  45:26

Yeah, that was my nomination. And you might have your might have your own. Of course, Chris is never met the man but I feel like I know him, Chris, is that one of the co authors have played bigger. And I would compare if Seth Godin is sort of the king of innovation in marketing, then Chris is the king of category design. And his book played bigger and his podcasts have been very, very influential on how we look at branding through from from the lens of essentially that next evolution of positioning, which is category design. And so he’s in my catalog. He’s a rock star. And he’s also very direct. You’re talking about a guy, mark that, if you want, you can tell where he stands. He is unapologetically who he is, as a leader, and that’s another thing I admire about him too, is it he? We like people that, that don’t really pay attention to the line between social and business, just be who you are. And that’s another thing I like about him.

Mark Fidelman  46:29

Okay, Emily, anything to add?

Emily  46:32

Um, I would say, you know, right now, I’m geeking out on Simon Sinek latest book, and I the infinite game, and I think what he’s talking about there is just, I mean, it was published before COVID. But it is it’s going to be the thinking that a lot of brands adopt as they move forward to continue to be relevant in the times that we’re facing. And Simon’s been a huge inspiration for us and for me, personally. So I think between he and Seth, those Seth Godin, I think those two are really still producing daily thought provoking and relevant information that helps all of us as marketers, and branders.

Mark Fidelman  47:11

Wonderful. Okay, so we’re gonna wrap things up. First of all, if you like what you heard today, they have a book coming out called rooting up and working, they get that book.

Emily  47:22

You can get it on Amazon. Okay, and yeah.

Mark Fidelman  47:26

Okay. And then you also have a course. And if you want some private brand coaching, where can they reach you?

Emily  47:33

route and river.com is our website, you’ll be able to check out the course there and also our upcoming events and learn a little bit more about how we work.

Mark Fidelman  47:41

Excellent. That’s also going to be in the show notes, everyone. So if you didn’t catch that, then look in the show notes. But with that, Emily and Justin, really appreciate this conversation. Really appreciate you guys being real with some of the more difficult questions that I was asking about today’s environment. So Yeah, we look forward to catching up with you in six months or a year when all this is over and there’s kind of a new playing field.

Emily  48:08

Yeah, good mark. Yeah, we really enjoyed it.

Justin Foster  48:10

It was fun. Yeah, you are there with sincerity that You’re the way that you ask questions is, it’s It was a fun conversation. So thank you for that.

Mark Fidelman  48:21

My pleasure.

How To Brand Your Company In The Age Of Covid-19
Read More

 

Host and Guest

Mark Fidelman, Jerry Abiog

Mark Fidelman  01:18

Hello everyone welcome to the digital brand builder podcast Joining me today is Jerry Abiog and Jerry has done something that I started early on in this podcast which is introducing AI into a marketing platform. And because there’s artificial intelligence in this platform, you can increase your revenue you can scale your business and he’s got to focus, and one of those focuses is restaurants, but this can be applied to many businesses. As I see it, so today I want to talk to Jerry about how you use and how his customer has been using artificial intelligence to grow their business. So Jerry, welcome to the show and can you give us a little bit of background on yourself.

Jerry Abiog  02:33

So a little bit about my background. So I’ve had over 25 plus years in sales and marketing 10 years ago I left the corporate world, and I started my own business with helping software companies, drive sales and marketing. And as I said I’ve had some good clients and I’ve had some bad clients and as they say in life you learn from failure. And one of the things I learned during this time was actually from a bad client. But this bad client had an AI and machine learning, machine learning company. Well that company. You know didn’t go so well, if you will, and as it was imploding through serendipitous events. I met my future co founder who was visiting from India, he was visiting Atlanta. He’s live here. And he pitched me this idea about a pro AI driven prototype that could help businesses drive repeat buyers. So knowing what I learned from my last experience with working with an AI and machine learning startup. I took this concept from Atlanta flew all the way to Denver Colorado and outdoor retail show. When I returned to Atlanta. A week later, I had secured to beta clients and that had standard insights the company standard insights form. And we’ve been growing ever since the last couple years, we started in the e commerce vertical because they were the early adopters of artificial intelligence and branch to brick and mortar, finance, and restaurants and actually last year at this time, we created an AI driven digital application for restaurants. And to be honest, market kinda we kind of fell in our face. Just because it was not the right time for bringing an AI driven digital menu to the market so we shove that concept, continue to work on other things. And along comes COVID in March shuts the whole planet down, we pull it out of the garage, did some tweaks and now we’ve relaunched it and we retweeted it too. I ordered menu and Alas, you know we’re gaining momentum is the whole planet stealing COVID with an AI driven digital menu. Got it.

Mark Fidelman  04:43

Okay, so let’s start from the beginning what and why is AI doing in marketing and sales How is it helping, why does it matter who needs it,

Jerry Abiog  04:59

man if they want to be competitive in today’s business world man it’s hyper competitive nowadays. And just can’t approach your marketing or sales efforts, flying blind. I, you know, compared to hey you’re, you’re driving down the highway, your windows are all fogged up right you didn’t turn on the defrost or you’re driving before your windows have been frosted and you’re looking at a small sliver putting your head down and trying to drive. That’s what it is when you’re not being data driven versus using the tools available today with the democratization of AI available to you where you can be more precise in your marketing efforts. We’re already seeing this happen to big companies that are using AI very well. Amazon with their product recommendations and Netflix, with their movie recommendations.

Mark Fidelman  05:51

Okay. Yeah, I mean, if you look at what Netflix is doing that, that’s amazing and just for clarity, they’re not your client right they’re just doing it on their own

Jerry Abiog  06:00

on their own but so they were the so AI has been around since the 1950s. But more recently, it’s become more popular. And everyone knows our Amazon everyone knows Netflix so on a high level Cliff Notes level. Those are two big players they’re using artificial intelligence. And just to give your listeners a cliff notes version of what artificial intelligence is, it’s getting a computer to think and act like a human. So, where there can retail IT security self driving cars, you name it. That’s what AI does. Okay, great.

Mark Fidelman  06:31

Yeah, I love that and I love the Netflix analogy because it is really important. Unfortunately I think the Netflix, just creates their own AI for themselves. It’s not something that you can use in everyday life, which is where your platform comes in so alright so let’s, let’s start with a scenario. What has your platform been used for and what did the AI do to improve their business.

Jerry Abiog  06:58

Start off with, with e commerce vertical So to give you an example we’re working with a company. They sell shoes online. They that are been around what 200 or they’ve been around for 10 years have roughly 200,000 customers and $10 million in, in revenue. So what we were able to do was able to number one, break down to 200,000 customers into a mean who were the most profitable, who were in the middle, who fell in the middle, and who were in the bottom here so now once they get a good concept of who their profitable most profitable and least profitable customers, if you will, they can better allocate their marketing budget. Next, what we did we broke their the segment’s down. So, this client the shoe company has about 200,000 customers, they sell worldwide but we just focus mainly in the US, so we were able to determine amongst their top five and top cities and states, not only where their products were being sold, but the specific products, and the shoe company had 50 different products use skews if you will. So now we can determine to what T was selling in LA which selling in Atlanta was selling in New York City and Dallas in every city in between. In the US, so now when you have that information, you’re better to be able to prioritize and execute data driven campaigns. If you’re doing stuff on Facebook and other social media platforms so those, those are one way you know a couple examples. The third example is we’re able to predict what each and every one of those 200 there’s 200,000 people are predicted to buy just based on studying everyone else’s purchase patterns.

Mark Fidelman  08:47

Can you do that. Can you do that with data. Anyway, why do you need the AI to analyze that. What does the AI do differently.

Jerry Abiog  08:56

You can do this yourself. You know, you know manually, if you will, right so if I give you a spreadsheet. I say, Hey, Mark, a man here are 2000 customers with 50 different products, you know sort them out, based on city and state. So just could be 2000 customers, 200,000, or 2 million, But the thing in with this is, it’s all about time and efficiency with AI and once everything is put in play, and you can analyze these these data points, literally in minutes. Once everything is set up. So, using AI to become competitive in a data driven world, are you becoming competitive when yeah you can do this manually on your own, but you’re stuck in the room, analyzing October 1000 customers you may be there for a month and not come out, maybe for drink for a drink and some food, or you can analyze this within minutes and that person who can do that can immediately execute campaigns mean who’s going to win.

Mark Fidelman  09:59

Right, okay. So it just speeds things up, and maybe finds things that humans can’t just because their attention span so short these days.

Jerry Abiog  10:07

But you also need the human aspect to it. Yeah, software and AI and technologies. They don’t operate well with humans so yes you have to have the human component to it. What’s the first and foremost yep you’re gonna lead off with technology.

Mark Fidelman  10:22

Okay. All right, good. So what was the result of these campaigns where you know I know you can’t really conduct an A B test on them with their AI without it. But what are your customers tell you are the result of using AI with, with the, with their campaigns

Jerry Abiog  10:45

improvement in sales. 10%, improve average order value because if you’re providing upselling cross, cross sell recommendations, north of 20% and reduction of customer churn. So those are three big things, whether it’s an e commerce, whether it’s in finance, or even in restaurants those three things are the results of using artificial intelligence

Mark Fidelman  11:10

proper. Okay, and then where are we going with this so anyone listening on this call, and if they want to improve their kind of data analyzation or data analysis, and they want to use this solution in order to, you know, improve their decision making. What is the, what’s the next step beyond that, what is gonna happen next with with AI. Oh no, just specific to marketing.

Jerry Abiog  11:43

So any company that you know this is kind of a new wish thing if you will but just like with life in general man if you’re more progressive in your outlook and open to learning new things and trying it out maybe trying that, you know foods that you’ve never tried before like hey man, this, this actually tastes good or trying to you drink. It’s all about expanding your mind. And if any of your listeners out there expand their minds like hey, you know, we, it’s a data driven world we’ve got data. You know everywhere, spreadsheets and apps, but we need to do something with it right because data by itself, sitting in a garage does no one any good. You got to do something with it. Just like I could tell you hey, to be healthy, you’ve got to, you know, eat salads and workout. That’s fine and dandy but if you’re not actually executing on it, then it’s a moot point. So just to your listeners out there, you’re kind of learning, or hearing about AI whether it’s here or in podcasts or other podcasts, or what have you. Yeah, be open to trying it out. be open to reading more about and be open to listening podcasts like this and how AI can help your business, drive growth and improve efficiency

Mark Fidelman  13:03

and how hard is it to set up what’s kind of the process to get this integrated with someone’s current systems.

Jerry Abiog  13:10

Yes, so the data has to be clean it has to be structured in a certain way. But really most tools these days and most software companies have API connectors. And it could be data could be gone that way, an API connector and once you have that it’s relatively simple to put structured data together and run it through the machine if you will.

Mark Fidelman  13:34

Okay, but even if it’s structured let’s say it’s coming out of salesforce.com or something. How, how does how does the AI, analyze it and then how is the results structured, I’m just trying to picture okay you could give it data, but how does it know how to understand the data, and then get presented to you in a way that’s actionable.

Jerry Abiog  13:58

We’ll take a look at your listeners may be familiar with the concept of RFM reset someone purchased a product, how often they purchase a product, and how much money they spent with your company so that’s one simple example so we pull all that data, run it through the algorithm. It’s been synthesize we presented a nice bar graph or pie chart, and then within a few clicks, you have this buckets of people in those different categories champion customers, loyal customers, sweeping customer. So, for example, three buckets and then right away you can execute campaigns based on where people fall. Okay, so maybe for your champion customers you may be offering them. You know special that the treatment customers you may not like to say they’ve spent a lot of money with you. You know, and pass treat them accordingly.

Mark Fidelman  14:54

Okay. And so, let me present a scenario before we wrap things up let’s say I’m a ecommerce, I sell pet products online. And I am looking to improve sales, what would you come in and do, and then what would the AI do to help me increase those sales, just the whole, the whole picture.

Jerry Abiog  15:18

Taking example you got all the data right you got geographic demographic data so maybe you’ve got a, you know, single guy who’s out of college, you know, who’s like 25 years old, two years out of college, maybe. The data shows that guys like him and that demographic tend to have, you know, medium sized stock, typically maybe a German Shepherd or or golden retriever so with that being said, if you know that you can target him right with you know bigger dog toys. Right, versus just, you know, shooting off the hip and presenting him dog toys or dog food, that doesn’t pertain to him right so that’s a simple example of how AI can predict things looking at past data. And then, You know executing campaigns that are relevant to someone. And when campaigns are being extra relevant to someone, the likelihood of them converting goes up tremendously.

Mark Fidelman  16:24

Okay, so you take that data. It analyzes what they’re doing their behaviors their purchase patterns, and they’re making recommendations as to what to send them, or they’re just telling you to buy. Okay. Okay. And how does it know what they’re predicted to buy, does it is it analyzing all of the products that the pet company has

Jerry Abiog  16:50

all the products that the tech company has come in they all kind of analyzing what everyone’s bought and what products that company has okay so analyzing all that. My sense is, like, you know, For example, hey, men tend to buy t shirts that are color blue and women tend to buy t shirts or colored pink right so now if you’re marketing that’s a real simple example. But that’s how you can drive growth, and now pictured being more nuanced with the plethora of pet, pet products out there and that’s what you can get with AI.

Mark Fidelman  17:26

Okay. My sense is it probably also is looking at, well they bought that blue shirt but you know, two weeks later, 30% of men bought these blue shorts. And maybe you might want to offer them this specific blue short

Jerry Abiog  17:41

shirt Okay, you just bought a shirt but people that bought shirts into my shorts correctly maybe a hat. So, I mean you can get as granular as you want.

Mark Fidelman  17:51

Yeah. And then, what is the. How long does it take to implement your solution.

Jerry Abiog  17:58

The big challenge is getting the data structured. If it’s not structured well there’s going to be. There’s going to have to be involved some data cleanup. With that, but if it’s structured, literally within once a minute, but within half hour I mean, you pull the data in runs it through and then poof, it’s, it’s on the platform.

Mark Fidelman  18:19

Okay, so if the data structure got it. All right, and what is what is it kind of what’s the cost for someone like say they’re interested in checking it out. Is there a trial period is there a cost to this what.

Jerry Abiog  18:37

And they let me try the food so, but the minimum. I guess size we work with is with a business that has a minimum of 250, or plus customers because AI works better with a lot of cause and effect. So minimum to 15 that will reflect, you know, according to cost. And then all the way up to, you know, clients with 100 200,000 customers, or more, with a bunch of different products so that’s how it works. I mean works better with a lot of cause and effect data. So we can start at bare minimum with the client or customer that has 250 customers. And what’s the cost around that just roughly ballpark, you’re looking at, depending north of 500 bucks a month. Okay.

Mark Fidelman  19:27

Yep. Good. I think that’s reasonable if it’s I mean it fits driving all sorts of recommendations that pay off it’s definitely worth it. Yeah,

Jerry Abiog  19:39

definitely have to be open to it. Right. Most everyone is like hey, they want to do what feels good. Instead of what the data says, right, like a It feels good to eat a cheeseburger. When I should be eating a salad. It makes me feel good, but really to be argued if you overindulgent cheeseburgers and may not be good for you. I don’t think that’s an argument.

Mark Fidelman  20:01

Yeah, I think that’s a fact.

Jerry Abiog  20:06

The fact that hey, if you’re flying blind. In today’s competitive markets. That’s not good for you either,

Mark Fidelman  20:13

right. Yeah, I wouldn’t want you as a pilot, that’s for sure. Okay, so we’re gonna come down to our two final questions, and I asked everybody this. The first one is, what’s the hottest digital marketing technology that you recommend I assume that you’re gonna say yours but is there something else that you recommend people.

Jerry Abiog  20:42

Be open to being data driven, or using any other AI tool out there, whether it’s mine, mine, you know that that’d be great or anyone else, I mean the goal of this podcast is to help improve the business protocols of your listeners so whether it’s my AI tool or someone else’s, you know do that for yourself. Yeah. I mean, the becoming democratized now where it’s relatively affordable for most everyone you know do something good for yourself and stop flying blind.

Mark Fidelman  21:13

I think most people will answer well it’s just too hard to implement the, the, the, squeeze isn’t worth the the the juice that I put out and

Jerry Abiog  21:29

sell today isn’t really gonna help my numbers. You know tomorrow I mean, that’s the decision that each individual business leader needs to make you know for themselves, right, like go with the AI and salad or do I just fly blind and eat a cheeseburger.

Mark Fidelman  21:47

Yeah, okay, I mean it’s it’s a good CounterPoint. All right, let’s go to the second question Who is the most influential person in marketing today at least from your perspective,

Jerry Abiog  21:56

Neil Patel. Well how he helps. Help is driving traffic to their site. Yeah, because if you can get people to your site. It’s never always easy, right, right, you get a starting point to do something.

Mark Fidelman  22:10

That’s right. Yeah. Okay. And then, where can people find you, where do they go if they’re interested in using your technology.

Jerry Abiog  22:21

You can find me on LinkedIn, Jerry LinkedIn standard inside some yellow one there shoot me an email, Jerry JT ROI at standard insights.io or go directly to our website Sander insights.io or if you’re a restaurant owner, listen to this podcast or subdomain is I order dot menu. If you’re interested in seeing how AI driven technologies can drive growth in this competitive business environment. Okay,

Mark Fidelman  22:48

well, Jerry it’s been a pleasure thanks for coming on talking about AI, and your solution, and I look forward to speaking with you in the future about this, especially when you, when you take it to the next level. No problem. And we’re off, I thought that was really good, very educational right up the alley of, you know what my listeners are looking for. Truly

How To Artificial Intelligence (AI) To Grow Your Business
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SPEAKERS

Mark Fidelman, Matt DeCoursey

TRANSCRIPT

Matt DeCoursey  00:00

So like a news article is for the most part not what I would call evergreen content a piece written about leadership, or how to build a business with some timeless advice would be a better example of evergreen content.

Mark Fidelman  00:14

Okay. And, you know, when we talk about creating this long term content, what, what, what needs to be done prior to even starting that

Matt DeCoursey  00:26

gotta have some kind of plan. And really, whether it’s evergreen content or any kind of content, if you want people to care about it, pay attention to it, or find value in it it has to. It has to provide something to them you have to entertain them you have to give them some kind of advice or you have to give them telling the story, or something like that so you know when it comes to evergreen content, it’s a long play, and it’s something that that planning and creating it needs to be. You know you have a systematic approach to it, you should have some idea of what you’re doing, like so. Taking pictures and posting them on Instagram, not evergreen content yeah now creating a long term blog marketing plan with articles that link to each other and provide value and you know have embedded different types of embedded media and stuff like that’s a, you know, that that’s how you would create a plan for evergreen content. I mean,

Mark Fidelman  01:24

because we do content for our clients obviously and I like video. Although you know we’ve done infographics, but we always start from a perspective of understanding who their target audiences and then either doing surveys or research or something to try to truly understand who they are and then, and then the creative part kicks in, which is one of my favorite things is okay how do we creatively. Educate entertain everything that you just said, and come up with those concepts so I mean how do you do that.

Matt DeCoursey  01:58

It really depends. You have to start by defining your audience you know who you’re trying to reach, who is the likely person or organization that’s going to absorb your content and then what message resonates to them, so you have, obviously, you have different kinds of value that people are going to find, so give me an industry. Yeah. Okay, so just name it,

Mark Fidelman  02:20

name it, let’s say, a pet products.

Matt DeCoursey  02:24

Okay, so people don’t have pets they’re gonna. Possibly. Well, people. First off, there’s a lot of people that have pets. So, what kind of pet Do they have Are you looking for dog owners are you

02:34

let’s say cats, let’s say cats Yeah,

Matt DeCoursey  02:35

okay. All right, so if you’re looking for cats, then you’re gonna. Alright, so we’ve defined that, so you want to be pretty clear with the plan like you’re going to title your articles and put the content, it needs to be a rent you shouldn’t be publishing a blog article aimed for cat people that says nine ways to walk your dog or something like that, obviously that’s not a very good approach and then you know what kind of value where people are gonna look so, you know, my, and I’m not a subject matter expert on pet ownership but you know people that don’t test on assuming that they’re gonna want to research, animals characteristics they’re gonna possibly want to find healthier avenues for, you know, like CF pet, pet insurance you could have pet food. What are the benefits of each or whatever and then in some cases it might also be looking up. Yeah, maybe the change behavioral aspects of an animal so you know with that plan you want to structure evergreen content around something specific, I wouldn’t advise anyone to create an article that covered all of that in one those are all separate subjects you’d be watering down an evergreen article by giving too broad with it.

Mark Fidelman  03:48

And then how do you figure out what’s going to be evergreen and once what’s kind of whimsical. I mean with cats especially with cats Matt, I mean if you look at how many videos are out there I mean overdone so it seems like something that can be evergreen is, I look at it as okay with this person print this out, or would they bookmark it, or would they save this video for the future. And then always the issue is okay how do we how do we reach these cat owners in a way that they haven’t already seen or heard, especially in this industry what’s been extremely overdone.

Matt DeCoursey  04:24

Sir, so you know something that once again, if you’re discussing the term evergreen should not have a shelf life so characteristics of a Siamese cat. As an example, so that’s the first thing that came to mind when we if we had to produce an evergreen article so I would think that the characteristics and behavioral aspects and obviously the appearance of Siamese cats has not changed in a very long time, so that, you know, the Evergreen approach doesn’t require constant updating now let’s say you did an article on a litter of six Siamese kittens that you have available right now. Well once those are gone that article expired. Yeah, you could still kind of swing that into an evergreen approach, but you’re gonna have to do maintenance you’re gonna have to go up and update it. You know when I think of an evergreen article I look at something that I pop you, you set it and forget it, you know it’s like it posts and you don’t have to go back and do anything to it it doesn’t require it doesn’t have a shelf life and everything theoretically has a shelf life. Yeah. I’ll give you an example so technology changes a lot. And so one of the things that like front end technology for programmers changes a whole lot. And so with that, we’ll write articles that are about a specific type of tech, but not necessarily each individual version, because, you know, if we said like Angular is a popular front end, technology, and it comes out with a new version quarterly or something like that so you know unless you’re wanting to be specific about that version you’re gonna sentence yourself to constantly updating and maintaining that article to keep it current otherwise people are going to find it they’re going to it’s going to look data then they just bounce. Got it.

Mark Fidelman  06:07

Okay. So, I understand the challenges of of what I’m talking about, which is okay how do you come up with something that’s entertaining on the Evergreen front, what you’re talking about is, okay, these, these, these have a longer shelf life than your typical article and okay so now, now that we’ve got that definition this is mostly on me but why not on you. Why is evergreen content more important than the average, you know blog post or social post that’s put out there.

Matt DeCoursey  06:43

Any podcast article or blog any of that stuff, you have human capital that goes into it, you’re on time your own effort I look at everything that we publish or produce that is quote evergreen as being a digital asset, so you know that the longer the longer, it’s able to produce a return, the more value that you have out of it. Now, I really suggest that anybody and everybody always take an evergreen approach I mean that’s that’s the best place to start, I have blog articles from years ago that still get significant traffic and different web properties that I own and that’s because there’s an evergreen nature to them.

Mark Fidelman  07:22

Yeah, the same, I could say the same for video as well, although I don’t know if the SEO value is as good for video, then for the articles like what you’re doing, are you just dealing in in articles or do you venture into podcasts and video I know you’re at the podcast, but for your clients are you venturing into audio and video as well.

Matt DeCoursey  07:44

Well, we don’t do a lot of marketing services for our clients. Now, with that I do refer to full scale as if you want to learn about what we do, you can go to full scale.io, where I often refer to us as a marketing company that happens to sell tech services, hell I say that because I like the marketing approach first but, you know, when it comes to like, I give me an example, today we published on our yesterday we had an article what is affiliate marketing, and that article like the definition of affiliate marketing isn’t going to change a whole lot over the upcoming however many years this exists. Now, there are other things that go with it and you mentioned liking video and you know video can stick around for a while but it also has a shelf life as well. Some of that I think is a little more centered around it just not looking dated. But, you know, there are videos on YouTube that are eight 910 years old but still get significant traffic. So, you know, think the same thing with podcasts I’m sure this show is the same like, you know, I don’t get the same amount of traffic on episode files we get on episode 365

Mark Fidelman  08:52

yeah I mean the problem with podcast is the search engines aren’t that great. And I don’t think people go to podcasts to do search, you know, they go to Google they go to YouTube. Those are wanting to actually, and maybe Bing, so I like video because it’ll show up forever. Just as you mentioned, you know, there’s still some of my best performing videos that are four years old, because they were evergreen topics.

Matt DeCoursey  09:16

I would comment on that that was one of the things that I’ve seen seven, our podcast has been out for about three years and you know we get significant traffic we have over a million lifetime downloads, get ever in the 60 to 70,000 downloads, a month range right now, that’s seen a level of, I’m seeing a level of sophistication come up like I find our podcast Google Now indexes podcasts and does a lot of different stuff and I think that some things that we may not have considered to be as evergreen or SEO friendly may make a resurgence because there’s a lot of voice recognition technology and a lot of stuff like that seems to be entering the podcast world that’s making it easier to find stuff. So, and you know on the go without as well we’ve looked at any podcast aggregator as a search engine. So, when we title our episodes and stuff like that we do give some consideration to what would someone search for if they were looking for an individual episode, do you look at the data I mean do you have, because I use Lipson for my syndicator, do you have any data as to how popular your episodes were from last year versus any other year to see if people are still downloading them. Do you have any ideas as to what that looks like. Yeah. One of the challenges with podcasts analytics and it’s getting a little better but overall it’s still terrible, it is, how many, how many subscribers Do you have and you shrug you’re like, I don’t know what you don’t know. Like there’s nothing that accurately tells you and it’s all feels like half a guess, it is as now as far as the, the lifetime value of all the episodes I mean every month, every episode in the history of startup hustle gets a lesson. Now the signet there is a sharp drop off I refer to your podcasts analytics, they look like Enron stock, because they start real high. Right. And you know, then you’re getting better, but the thing is if you want to have, you know, if people are finding that the great thing about podcasts and the Evergreen nature of that is if people like your show and they like what you do, they’ll go back and we have some people in it, and God bless every single one of them that have listened to every episode, and you know that’s I mean, we have 300 I think 370 at the time of this recording and you know now. The funny thing is, is I listened to, if I go back and listen to Episode Five, I have absolute terror. A feeling of terror that we even let something that that low quality out, perhaps, so you have

Mark Fidelman  11:59

to start. You have to start somewhere I think it’s admirable that you know you you even put something out there like that. You didn’t know it Episode Five but maybe you did that you’re going to produce 350 and that you’d get better over time. I mean, you can’t start perfect it just doesn’t work that way.

Matt DeCoursey  12:17

Now we always read, we give a lot of advice and have a lot of conversations with startup founders and entrepreneurs and you know sometimes you just have to jump and don’t wings at some point when it comes to this stuff and you know Nike says it best Just do it. And yeah, it’s the same thing for anybody that’s wanting to create content that when it comes to content marketing. Everyone tells you you need to do it. And no one really effectively, well, very few effectively tell you how to do it. Yeah, because it’s hard, and, you know, and the thing is you have to be, if you’re going to do evergreen marketing Another thing is you have to happen within your plan you have to have a level of consistency and repetition, that matters because Google doesn’t care about the website that has to articles on the back end, you just not no one really cares and another thing to is if you plan it appropriately and you use cross channel marketing and just different things like you know for example in the blog at the full scale we have YouTube videos embedded we have podcast episodes and data, and that stuff all needs to, you know, kind of light the fuse on the other stuff and you know that that needs to be part of your plan as well.

Mark Fidelman  13:27

Yeah, I mean the biggest problem I have is okay coming up with what are the ideas and the content that you’re going to produce that hasn’t been done before, or does that even matter like you brought up earlier, you did an article on what is affiliate marketing well I guarantee you there are 1000 articles like that so what goes through your mind when you produce something like that is it that you already have, you know, a high producing site that Google recognizes and will, you know, move that up to page two or one, or is there something else that you have in mind when you produce something like that.

Matt DeCoursey  14:00

So I love the long tail. I’m not, I think trying to, to be number one for the term affiliate marketing, like if that was my goal that wouldn’t be a goal that would be a fantasy. True. We’re not inc.com or entrepreneur.com or anything like that, then you know the history of the internet means that pretty much everyone’s done it at least once. So, you know, the word looking and an article like that it’s either. In this case, that’s a value add, that’s something that we might show to a client or get out there and do some different stuff so I’m not necessarily planning on being first for that but it will the approach is what is affiliate marketing, don’t under don’t undervalue our underestimate how many people just type a question into a search engine and ask. So it may come up you know who knows but in that case I’d be expecting that to come up with some other keyword that might be in the, in the article. Okay, so yeah

Mark Fidelman  15:01

so you’re hoping for the long tail that you know what is affiliate marketing but for cat owners, or cat product, businesses, something like that. Right.

Matt DeCoursey  15:11

Yeah. And in that case it would be a little more centered around probably about someone including the word startup in there, or something.

Mark Fidelman  15:19

Yeah. Okay, well that makes more sense because I’m always looking at okay here’s content. And here’s the internet, which is a vast sea of content that you know is some of its good some of it sucks. How do you, you know, how do you position it so that you’re going to be found more than all the other millions of things that are out in that vast sea and that’s really the challenge and it’s I’m always curious as to what other marketers do in this. What is your thought process around that and making sure that it gets discovered, are you simply putting terms in the article and hoping for that long tail or is there something else that you’re doing.

Matt DeCoursey  16:01

Well I think it starts with the title and you know the title if you’re just using a basic WordPress site or something like that, that also many times turns into your URL. Those things are looked at, you know that’s what Google is looking at and you have to. So my book million dollar bedroom I actually have a section that says things like a search engine and search engines are logical, you know they are looking into their job is to, you know, Google’s Google is trying to put a searcher on top of the best results that answer the question that they’re looking for. So, you know, there are things that matter, you know like, I see people do a lot of dumb stuff you know they take a screenshot of something and then they upload that image to the to their blog article and then that file name is like screenshot 439 and 763 dot png, and you know and it doesn’t it’s not labeled or anything like that so you got to think like a search engine You got it. Like what would a search engine, why would a search engine want to recommend you and it needs to be either relevant references, or what it’s going to lead you to our, you know, I mean, or you have a hell of a lot of links to that, which probably isn’t the case especially right after you publish something so you know and then and then other things too is like I mentioned having videos and data and having podcasts and data. Remember, search engines want to take a visitor to the highest quality result that it can find so you know if it sees an article that’s titled what related to what the search is the images are labeled similar to that there’s a video there’s a podcast there’s links to other resources in case that visitor doesn’t find what they need that search engine likes that.

Mark Fidelman  17:44

Okay, so let’s say you come up with the content the title, everything you just described and you structure it properly. What team do you need to deliver it, what is the average team in a startup, what should it look like.

Matt DeCoursey  18:01

I’m fortunate because we have a 12 person marketing team I’ve got 200 employees so we do have we have a team of six writers. We have three graphic designers two video editors and cmo. Now, here’s the thing you don’t need any of that to publish your own articles. I mean you as a startup or a solopreneur, you can create content, it’s your own time now. Yeah. Looking at that from the outside in, it’s like looking at an elephant and someone just told you to eat it. So you got the thing is is you got to eat that elephant one bite at a time so you know as far as the team goes, I mean you can be the team. I really recommend if you are. So, one of the comments that people have given me over the years as an author is like, oh, I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’m like, Well, why aren’t you, they’re like well I’m still thinking about it, what do I need to do to start by going home and writing Yeah, dude, you know like anything so you know you can create the content but people are overwhelmingly uncomfortable writing. So, you know, this is like yours, that can help with that to help implement it. Now I really, you know, 15 years ago or 10 years ago I wouldn’t have been as adamant about using a company like yours. Now I highly recommend these things because, you know, there’s something to be said about people that have done it and understand it, avoiding errors and that learning curve are important. You know, so I mean there it really depends. I mean you can go anywhere from doing it yourself, to, you know, finding businesses like yours outsourcing that or whatever I mean it’s just there’s a lot of ways to go about doing it. Now for us we have a bit of an assembly line so five days a week we publish a high quality article, and the full scale blog. We also publish five podcasts a week so now it’s taken us quite a bit of effort energy and emotion to get that process down, and that’s why we’re able to do the content and the number of it, but you know I really recommend, whether you’re doing as a start up or working with someone you want to try to learn to make it a process so you’re not having to figure out how to do something for all six steps that you might want to come up with.

Mark Fidelman  20:21

Okay, I mean it’s very good advice that processes the way I think to do it also have a cod content calendar and stick to it as closely as you can know why, why do it. I mean I know a lot of people like ditch a lot of work to produce this stuff and keep people entertained and all that, it’s just it’s so competitive out there. Why should people create this content.

Matt DeCoursey  20:43

Okay, so let’s say that you want to do business with my company full scale right so theoretically if we strip away all the bells and whistles. We employ a bunch of software developers. So, so does a lot of people, there’s a lot of programmers out there there’s a lot of companies. So what makes me different, why do I want to do business with you. And when it comes to creating content. This is the reason I wrote books like people asked me a lot and they say oh you had three number one books on Amazon. Have you made a lot of money selling books. Hell no, no, I wrote books to establish myself as a subject matter expert it’s like an advanced business card. Yeah, no one throws away a book. It feels weird to throw away right people throw away a business card before they even get back to the car in the parking lot sometimes. Yeah. You know, so whether it’s a book is a good example of evergreen content, I find my book everywhere when I go all around town and visit people I see my book sitting on shelves doing this doing that. And sometimes, on a funny note people send me pictures of my book doing funny things like man I this book sucks but it holds my wobbly table. Well, it doesn’t. But here’s the thing, they’re still seeing it Yes,

Mark Fidelman  21:52

your name and title is

Matt DeCoursey  21:55

right now. The thing is, is there’s. Look, there’s a million people that do what you do. I don’t care how unique you think you are, there’s a bunch of people that do what you do, or can do what you do on some level. So what differentiates you so for example, and I haven’t we have a multi pronged approach so not only do we have our blog which gets significant traffic through web search the podcast so if you’re gonna come hire me as a hire full scale as a development service, you, you, you would feel a little better knowing that I know what you need, because I’ve been down the road, I’ve been a startup founder I’ve been an entrepreneur have invested over a million dollars in startups I’ve done a lot of stuff, and every day of the week, I have a conversation similar to this, with people like you. So that content, it starts to stack up and, you know, for us, it’s, it’s a lead here a lead there and then we got a, just try to sound humble when I say this but we have become so effective at it, that we, a lot of the leads we find now people like oh I you know I found your blog and that was great but then I listened to your podcast I felt like I got to know you and then we reached out and you know that’s, that is a great situation to be in. But, how are you going to differentiate yourself from someone if I don’t feel like you’re a subject matter expert and I’m operating on a more than beginners level, then I need you to feel credible and I need to know that you’re a subject matter expert, otherwise I’m just going to move on down the line. You don’t look like you’re in the business of doing whatever it is that you say that you do, you have problems and you don’t even know it.

Mark Fidelman  23:35

Yeah, I think you nailed everything I would have said with. There’s one other thing I think I’d add to that is, with that content you’re putting out there and building yourself up as a subject matter expert and an influencer, you can actually charge premium rates, because people want to deal with someone that’s well known. It’s like doing business with IBM. I mean going way back on this reference but you’d pay more to do business with IBM because you felt more comfortable with a big brand you felt proud to say you’re working with IBM. And I think there’s a whole thing around premium pricing, that we could get into not on this call.

Matt DeCoursey  24:13

Yeah, so that that’s 100% yeah and by the way that that is part of our model I mean we, we are very upfront that we have a premium service offering. Even the employees we hire like we you know we need them to be in the top 10% of wherever they’re at in their career designation, and those are the best clients to work with people, those are the ones that you want. And if you can position yourself for that, then that’s where you want to be.

Mark Fidelman  24:38

Yep, and they’re comfortable paying that amount they’re willing to pay it they understand the value in paying for it. And it just makes your life and your pocketbook a lot, lot better.

Matt DeCoursey  24:47

Okay, those clients won’t pay for anything else they’re buying in that category, whether it’s from you or from someone else, excellent point.

Mark Fidelman  24:55

All right. So I think we did a pretty good job of really, you know, letting people know what evergreen content is why it’s important how to do it, and the value of it. So I think it’s a good time to wrap things up and talk ask you a couple of questions that I asked everybody. The first one is, what is the hottest digital marking tech technology that you recommend today.

Matt DeCoursey  25:20

So I, I’m an investor, I’ll just close that I’m an investor in this platform as well but Diddy HQ di VVY Hq is a Content Marketing Management Platform it’s been around for a while it’s been award winning. If you want to have a plan. It’s very important to be able to be organized to be able to collaborate to be able to communicate. And if you’re gonna. I mentioned earlier that you don’t have to have a process on day one, but if you’re not working towards having a process on day one. You’re never going to scale and get it to the point where you need to be creating quality content, how is about collaboration and communication on many days, so that’s that’s a platform that I’m really happy about when it comes to that regard and then some other things too, like, you know, and I don’t know if this is truly digital marketing technology but you know what are you going to do when you get someone to your site, you know like, I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make they’re really great at generating traffic but they’re not doing a very good job of collecting it or what are you trying to achieve. So, like we use gigabytes calm to take appointments and streamline certain processes and stuff like that so I mean there’s a lot of stuff out there that can help you get forward. I’m curious what your favorite.

Mark Fidelman  26:39

Wow. Okay, so I’m using actually right now my current favorite is otter.ai. It transcribes on the fly. And it’s about 90% accurate, and then it goes back and checks itself. And then updates itself. And I just find it fascinating because I don’t even have to write the blog articles anymore it’s doing it for me. So this podcast turns into a blog article and it’s very all unique content you and I have never said these exact same things before. And just makes it super easy. So,

Matt DeCoursey  27:10

by the way, that’s a great way to create a large audience and content I’ve done that partially with the books that I’ve written. You can you speak a lot faster than you can type and. And one of the challenges that writers have in general is putting a voice in it, they sound robotic or it’s boring if you’re transcribing your presentations or your voice and your message, it has a little more flavor to it I

Mark Fidelman  27:36

totally agree. Totally agree so let’s go to the final question, question number two, who, who, in your opinion is the most influential person in marketing today. I could remind you before you put in the notes.

Matt DeCoursey  27:49

When I filled out the form I said Gary Vee that’s right I see him everywhere, yeah here’s the thing I don’t really spend a lot of time listening to Gary. You know I see him everywhere and that’s why that’s why I gave that answer but you know there I mean there’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of different things. I mean, I just like to, I like Gary’s approach, just because he’s not afraid to me he’s just he’s just who he is. Yeah, cuss words and all. I appreciate that because I’m my team is gonna be super proud of me that I made it all the way through this show without swearing.

Mark Fidelman  28:25

This is it, this is pG 13 or, so you can swear on this show,

Matt DeCoursey  28:29

we mark, we blank check mark in all startup hustle episodes with explicit. We have a hard time as entrepreneur, it’s hard to not describe your journey with. Oh yeah,

Mark Fidelman  28:40

I mean, no question so the one of the reasons I like the fact he chose Gary Vee is because one of the answers. You and I talked about was, you know, once you build your brand up to a certain point, you could charge premium services, he’s taken it to the next level where people come to him with huge business ideas, I mean he’s involved in sports marketing he’s involved in investments and things he

Matt DeCoursey  29:03

is an entrepreneur, and you know like here’s the thing like I like Tim Ferriss and his content but that’s not he’s not the same kind of entrepreneur like Gary is like Gary’s sells wine and he said yeah his online shoes and like, I mean, I’m like that like let’s talk about how we’re going to make money and see if it’s gonna happen and I have an easier time listening to someone like that, then a self proclaimed help self help person that’s never done it, you know, whatever. So, yeah, yeah.

Mark Fidelman  29:30

Okay. Ah, love this podcast we’re gonna have to do another one in six months or so. Where can people find you,

Matt DeCoursey  29:41

where can they find a good answer. I mean what I’ve been working you talk about your long term evergreen content marketing plan, you know, I started mine three and a half years ago when, so I used to be a ticket broker, and I made a hell of a lot of money doing it, but with that I only needed to exist in my little bubble I have relationships in technology that didn’t require a lot of human interaction and when I exit I knew the exit of that business was coming. I told my wife I said I need to reinvent myself, so I said well how are you going to do that so I’m going to start by writing a couple books and she’s like what the hell do you know about writing books i don’t know i’m going to hire some people that are going to help me do it so I have three books that are available on Amazon one the first ones balanced me a realist guide to a successful life, second one’s million dollar bedroom which is more popular than the first one that’s the story of my entrepreneurial journey I actually started my first business in the extra bedroom in my home. And I had nothing but a credit card with an $8,000 limit, and turned that into $30 million with revenue. Following eight years and then became everything we do now. And then last year I published my third book called The real estate guide to successful music career so I worked in music and ticketing for 15 years of my life and that was more of a pet project so those are out there, startup hustle podcast is easily my most consumed content of all, we are consistently in the top 25 of all entrepreneurship podcasts on Apple we’re very proud of that, and publish up so it’s five days a week. In fact, startup hustle is gone so well that we actually brought in additional hosts. So I’m not, and my business partner and I are not the hosts in every episode we’re moving towards a seven day 365 day. You know, publishing schedule like every day and passed out yeah you can find. You can find more about my business at full scale.io and some of the articles we talked about which are largely about technology and entrepreneurship and our blog.

Mark Fidelman  31:42

Wonderful. And if you have any questions for Matt, please post them either on the blog post that you’re reading this on, or on reach out to Matt directly and ask them there. So Matt, I really appreciate you having on the show great episode and want to have you back for sure. All right, that was great man I love it. Sometimes Oh, quick it was, was moved right to the.

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