Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey, this is James, the
founder of sweet fish media. If you've
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listened to BB growth for a while, you probably have an idea of what
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we're passionate about. Loving people really
well, a constant pursuit of learning and
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inspiring people to own their careers.
With all the craziness happening with this virus,
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we are incredibly fortunate to be in
the business of podcasting. So many
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BB brands are looking for alternatives to
their inperson events that are being canceled,
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and our business is growing as a
result. Please don't miss hear me on
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this, because I'm not saying this
to Brag. It is heartbreaking the economic
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impact this is having on so many
businesses. But being in the business of
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podcasting, the demand for what we
do has increased and because of that we're
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looking to hire really talented people to
help us serve that demand. So if
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you like what we're all about it
sweet fish and you're looking for a great
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career opportunity, hit us up.
There's a link in the show notes where
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you can apply today. I'm really
looking forward to meeting you. Welcome back
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to be tob growth. I'm Logan
Lyles of sweet fish media. Today I'm
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joined by Chris Walker. He's the
CEO over at refine labs. Chris,
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how's it going today? Man,
very well, Goan. Good to join
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you. Happy to be here and
looking forward to Jaen's absolutely man, James
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and I have been talking every so
often. It seems like I see one
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of your posts more than every so
often lately, because you've been very consistent
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on Linkedin. You're very like minded
with US trying to put out actionable,
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tactical stuff that that gets to where
the rubber meets the road. So I've
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been excited to have you on the
show for a while now. Before we
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jump into things today, we're going
to try and get action. will not
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kind of hey, drink water because
you work from home, but in light
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of everything that's going on, what
are some things that marketing teams need to
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be thinking about today? Breakdown a
post that you shared earlier this week on
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linkedin before we jump into that.
Man, for folks who aren't familiar with
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you haven't been seeing your content on
Linkedin, give us a little bit of
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background on yourself and what you and
the team are up to. It refine
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laps these days. Yeah, for
sure, so. So. Yeah,
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my name is Chris Walker. I
started this, this company, about twelve
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months ago after working several growth stage
venture back companies and seeing the power of
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marketing how that kind accelerate grows for
growth for a company by lowering cust requisition
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cost shorting sale cycles overall creating a
more efficient growth model. And so now
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we are essentially an outsource expertise for
demand generation for growth stage softwares of service
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companies that sell a product in the
ACV range of five to a hundred k.
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So not to transactional, not to
enterprise, we stay in this like
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middle place where where I think the
power of content marketing really really can drive
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growth. I think it works at
all spectrums, but especially in this little
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place, because companies that have two
low of ACD, so you're going to
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be way to performance marketing base for
my liking, and companies at the way
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enterprise level are going to be far
too outbound sales, ABM sales, you
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if you call it a BM account
base, sales focus with market is helping
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with that. And neither of those
are really really things that I believe in.
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What I believe in is produce super
valuable, unique, original content do
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it incredibly consistently know how to distribute
it to the people that you need to
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see it, which leads to increase
brand awareness, subconscious product consideration for you
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all and a lot more in bound
opportunities that happen organically there for lowering customer
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position costs and get a revenue one
more efficient. And so yeah, in
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essence, that is that's what we
do. We work with dozens of B
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TOB SASS companies helping do that and
continue to refine the model and add layers
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to the things that we do.
Yeah, man, as I mentioned already,
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so like minded with us. I
mean we're serving a lot of the
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same folks in kind of that mid
market area, especially SASS companies, is
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they're using their their podcast to get
in front of folks consistently provide tactical,
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useful content. Just agree so much
with the mindset that you guys have and
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how you're helping marketers. Today.
Let's jump in and and talk about,
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you know, something I think we're
all thinking about and then we're going to
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get into the what to do about
it. But you know, your post
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earlier this week on Linkedin really kicked
off with Hey, marketing budgets are going
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to start to be scrutinized as is. You know, every functional rules budget.
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But set the stage a little bit
there and kind of what you're seeing
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and talking to your customers today,
and then we're going to get into you
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know, what folks can start doing
about it. Yeah, for sure.
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So I think a great place to
start is that this is not a prediction,
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this is just an observation of what's
actually happening. So I speak to
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a lot of anything from marketing manager
to CMO level, people at a wide
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range of different types and sizes of
companies, both hardware and software. RECURRING
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REVENUE MODEL, growth stage, profitable, doesn't matter. And and when the
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the economy tightens up, which hasn't
happened in a considerable on a time,
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especially to this degree, companies will
then start to scrutinize their expenses, which
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they haven't had to do for a
very long time, and the first places
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that they're going to look are in
variable expenses, not non fixed overhead,
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not had count. You're not going
to be able to cut your, you
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know, your office expense with a
consider a non straight away. So they're
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going to look at variable expenses and
and the number one, the largest department,
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the department with the largest variable expense
budget is always, or most often
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in the marketing team, and so
that's where companies are going to go first.
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They don't want to lay off people
straightaway, so where else can they
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cut? It's going to be in
software that's in month to month contracts and
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it's going to be in variable expenses
in the marketing budget or the first places
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to look. And so for marketers
that are that are going to be faced,
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seen and having that discussion, you
better be prepared with your metrics and
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your performance and your plans about how
that money's being used and what the impact
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is and relative to other things in
the company, why you are making an
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impact this greater than some of the
other expenses on the on the panl yeah,
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I love it. Man. The
other thing that you mentioned that I
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thought was very timely for folks to
think about, and there may be only,
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you know, certain number of things
that you can do about this based
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on what your product is, but
there may be things that you can shift
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or you can pivot a little bit. You know, if your productor or
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service takes a long time to on
board and you've got very long contract links,
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you've got a costly implementation process.
You've got a complex implementation process that
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produces a lot of variables, which
creates, you know, some fear and
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uncertainty, which is where, you
know, again, where we're cuts are
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going to happen. So you work
with a lot of SASS companies. What
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do you advise in them kind of
on this point right now? Yeah,
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I mean to be honest, I
think the people that are going to find
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the most impact on that side is
actually consulting service based companies that are doing
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project based work. Big Website overhauls, hundred k website overhaul is not going
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to not going to kick off tomorrow, in my view. Huge sales sports
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consulting rebuild probably not going to kick
off tomorrow, and so some of those,
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I think those companies that are project
based, large deal sizes are quite
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vulnerable to having that cash flow be
delayed right now. In terms of the
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SASS, the SASS side, I
think that, just because there is so
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much uncertainty in the system right now, that a lot of people, I
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mean I think almost everyone right now
is in a wait and hold position for
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at least a minimum next two to
four weeks and I think that things will
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become more clear than and so think
to make this really actionable, like what
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can companies do right now? I
think there's a couple key places that that
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they should focus. One is really
figuring out branding content. I've been talking
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about this for five years companies.
If this trend of what's happening continues,
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the companies that failed to become true
experts in content, social digital execution are
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going to really struggle over the next
six months. It must be a core
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competency inside of every company. The
next one would be product. Continuing to
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move forward on product and build those
are things that you have looking at what
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you have control over, investing in
product, in differentiation, understanding customers and
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being able to move forward on that
is something I think is super huge.
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And then last thing is just overall
organizational efficiency, whether it's on the revenue
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side or other places to people are
cutting, you know, software is that
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are unnecessary or done in or things
like that to save money. But it's
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also, like I've been talking about
this forever, it's like look at your
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overall company and how it's generating revenue. You have variable marketing expenses, marketing
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headcount, a SDR head count,
no matter where they fall. Account Executives,
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account manages, you have that,
and so, like companies are going
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to get pressed and make decisions on
what of those types of resources they need
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and how it needs to get reallocated. I think a lot of companies are
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going to find that there, as
the our teams are going to drink.
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That was another point here. Given
what's happening right now, I think we're
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going to see a further decline in
the effectiveness of about bound selling, and
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so with that I think companies will
start to sense that and that will be
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a place where they start to try
and recover some costs and, from a
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fixed overhead perspective, and reduce that. And so those are just some of
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the things that are going through my
mind right now and we'll just have to
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continue to wait and see how it
develops. Yeah, I like that you
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went there and talking about looking at
all your go to market strategies, looking
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at outbound, looking at looking at
content and and inbound. You know what
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you said. They're about. You
know, brands that are able to establish
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their thought leadership and their expertise to
drive relevant inbound is just very top of
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mine. I you know, I
posted just yesterday on Linkedin. A lot
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of our producers who help manage podcast
for our customers are getting these questions.
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SHOULD WE DELAY OUR PODCAST launch?
Should we stop releasing episodes, and and
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the resounding answer from our team,
which may sound a little bit selfserving,
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that hey, keep going with your
podcast, but truly I believe this,
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that you need to be putting out
more content. Where we're in our houses.
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The content consumption, I've heard from
people, even just earlier today on
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Linkedin, kind of anecdotally looking at
the data, content consumption is actually going
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up. Meet people where they are, when they're doing the dishes, when
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they're, you know, shoveling the
the sidewalk in front of their house,
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which sometimes those the only things that
we're doing right now. So tell me
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a little bit about where you see
the role of content playing right now.
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And folks that are saying, well, maybe we should pull it back,
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you know, are thinking is you
should be in front of folks and get
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very good at getting in front of
folks in multiple digital channels efficiently, because
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you're actually going to win there,
because you don't have events for that,
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just standard. Hey, we're going
to be there, we're going to get
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that exposure so digital seems even more
important to us right now. What's your
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take on that? Yeah, I
mean when I when I rattle about this,
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couple things. The first one was
content in brand and not in the
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sense of brands like refixing your colors. It is when I talked with brand.
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Thank you, matting, clarifying that. Any marketing that doesn't require is
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not measured on a directed tributal Roi. Like a direct response, paid media
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and so like thought leadership content,
podcast, video, video, podcast blogging
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with the appropriate distribution, like there's
a lot of different ways that that can
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be that can that can come to
life. I think it's like probably the
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most important thing that a marketing team
could do right now. So look at
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the landscape, like look at these
are some of the things that I think
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are going to change right now.
So you look at a marketing budget,
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like probably most marketing teams budgeted somewhere
between twenty and fifty percent of their expenses
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this year on events, on on
trade shows or their own field marketing events
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or whatever. For the first at
least the near future, of those things
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are out. So where's that money
going to go? There's a couple different
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options. There's one option. Where
companies going to take that and they're going
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to hold it because having a nice
castage cast fusitiones as smart to their prop
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they might not use it for companies
that don't know how to use it,
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which I think there are many.
That's what's going to happen. Another thing
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that's I think it's going to happen
as companies are going to start to scrutinize
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their agency relationships. There is a
lot of agencies that charge on a recurring
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revenue subscription and do do not generate
revenue just straight up. They are deliverable
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focused or not revenue generation. Think
those relationships will be scrutinized. And the
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third thing is I think that companies
need to put more money into digital if
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they know how to execute. Otherwise
it's going to be money wasted right and
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so this is why I talked.
I call it like getting on the treadmill
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for a marathon. Like if we
if we're considering we're starting running the marathon
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right now and you haven't done any
training for the past five years, you're
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not going to be able to be
you are gonna be able to do this.
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And so in that case I'd recommend
holding the hold in the cash and
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being smarter about that to understand where
you can spend it. But for those
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that do know how to execute,
let's assume that most people that are listening
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to this, you know how to
execute, it is go harder at content.
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Right now, it's actually quite simple. We're sitting here. We can
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create video content, you and I
right now, in a podcast, and
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that can get redistributed and then,
if you know how to do it well,
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you could use media to get that
in front of the right people.
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And that is that's what that's what
we do every day. It just becomes
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a more important part of the mix, given how the landscape has changed.
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To close out, is just I
think that that is the I think that
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must be a marketer marketing team's top
priority right now. Did Electrical execution.
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All right, let's get back to
the show. Absolutely I know we're
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kind of rounded out the conversation,
but any any quick hits for folks right
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now in things that you guys are
thinking about in executing and making sure that
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your content is getting across the right
digital channels, whether that's, you know,
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may be specific to Linkedin or paid
or just anything that's top of mine,
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even you know, super granular,
going either linkedin paid media or something
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like that. Any closing thoughts tips
that you think listeners to this that you
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know maybe are pretty good at execution, but you found something that's been a
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little tweaked that's been a game changer
for you guys that listeners might want to
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know today. Yeah, yeah,
so I want to get two topics and
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so if you can hold that question, I'll get back to it. There
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was one that's kind of like whooping
back to the beginning, which is like
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okay, so your marketing budget is
going good. Guinness start to be scrutinized.
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How are you going to what are
you going to present in order to
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demonstrate that the marketing is the most
effective path to continuing to grow the business?
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And I believe the companies that mark
it well that that marketing source revenue
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is by far the number one channel
to grow if you look at it from
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a customer position, costs and a
sales efficiency standpaling. The challenge is that
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most companies don't know how to do
that. Or can't do that for whatever
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reason. The metrics they're measured on
the lack of budget, the lack of
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talent, the lack of knowledge.
So but for the ones that can,
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your custo ecollision cost should be two
to six x lower on a on a
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marketing sourced funnel as opposed to an
out of pure outbound approach and and also,
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I had believe, to be more
scalable, given the differences in those
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two. So I think the first
in that marketers need to do is they
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got to start breaking down their their
funnels by opportunity source. And so there's
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actually some within. So the core
breakdown is inbound, outbound, on inbound,
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then you have to break it down
to a couple other off sources.
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It's like the way that I look
at is sales, website sales conversions by
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far the number one conversion in my
view, which would be I want to
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demo, I want to quote,
I want to talk to your sales are
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up right, in bound call you. How do you drive to that conversion
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point is the number one for me. The next one's going to be events.
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We can debate for you know,
much longer going to have on this
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podcast. The effectiveness and the custer
reposition costs to that channel. But I
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guess you should break that out because
people that just look at overall marketing tact
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are are missing the fact that the
sales efficiency and custer reposition costs inside of
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that bucket are very different depending on
what you're doing. And so you have
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events, I would break down and
measure that. If you're doing syndication,
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I would go break out and measure
that because it's going to expose its indication
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is not actually very effective relative to
other marketing activities. And then you have
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the outdown side and on the outdound
side you're just looking at the cost,
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the non cost of sales, so
that's SDRs and any other variable expenses to
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support that channel. Right. So
when we're doing these cat it's the lead
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generation piece of it, not the
sales piece of it. So that's why
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I leave it out. It becomes
more normalized. And so you look at
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those two two buckets and then once
you're able to effective, we split them
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out. You need to start looking
at certain things. You need to start
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looking at win rate, sales cycle, average deal size, number of qualified
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opportunities generated, which will give you
a pipeline velocity for all those different sources.
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We need to be looking at qualified
pipe rat pipeline contribution amongst those core
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sources. We need to be looking
at overall expense across all those different sources,
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revenue contribution as a percentage of overall
net new logo acquisition across all those
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sources. And when you start to
look at all that information and then you
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look at how much you're spending on
all those different channels, it's good become
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very clear what the best path to
growth is. For some companies that are
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outbound driven and don't know how to
do marketing, it's going to tell them
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to do more in dog right like
if if you, if you're an athlete,
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you're getting you're better at basketball,
then you're probably going to want to
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do more basketball than play hockey,
right like. That's just how it goes.
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So half of this this is these
are not blanket statements. It also
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has to do with the core confidencies
of your company, which is why it's
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really important to go and analyze the
data, figure it out for yourself and
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then, once so, if a
marketer does find out, and often what
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we'll find is that the demo demo
inbound sales conversion bucket is the most effective.
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People are raising their hands and they
want to talk to a sales trap,
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shorter sales cycles, all these different
things. And so how do you
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design your marketing engine right now to
move people to that conversion point without doing
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direct response, adds to send people
do it? Get a demo, because
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the difference between that is that the
people that are filling out the demo form
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are doing it on their own.
They're not being driven there. And so
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if you drive them there, you're
going to get the conversions, but the
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metrics across that channel are going to
go way down. And so the way
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that you do that is you create
a lot of brand newar and it's upfront,
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which then drives organic traffic and that
conversion point. That's PODCAST, video,
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podcast, effective distribution, all the
things that we're saying. And so,
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as a marketer, everything I just
mapped out, you need to know.
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You need to have an a dash
boarding to be work with your marketing.
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KNOBSTER sales offs people understood the data
is right so that when the CFO
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or the or the CMO or the
crro comes and has that conversation with you,
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you can have a very black and
white, competent conversation about. Okay,
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look like, you know, we're
spending x here, and why here,
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like I believe that we should keep
the marketing budget and we should actually
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cut five of those heads over there. Should be studying more here because it's
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working the best, and so that's
that's just one example. I really think
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that that there are many companies that
don't look at it at that level that
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really would benefit from doing X.
I think it would show them a lot
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of interesting stuff about how to approach
not only the next couple months of business
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forever. You know, as we
talked about, I last thing I wanted
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to do was like, okay,
everybody panic, your marketing budgets about to
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be scrutinized. So, like go
ring your hands and stand in the corner
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you gave people. I mean,
if you're a normal two x listener,
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you're probably either going to have to
hit the back button a couple times or
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slow down to one point two or
something like. Go back to what Chris
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just said. Guys in and check
that out. I really like what you
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said to about looking at, you
know, breaking down that inbound channel,
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because there are differences in there.
are going to be different close rates,
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there are going to be different percentages
based on you know where that's directly coming
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from. So that's all really good
stuff. I love that we loop back
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to that. All right, as
we close it out, being effective in
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those digital channels. You know,
if you want to share a couple,
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you know on Linkedin, on paid
and strategy, something to around out the
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conversation, give folks something that they
could go and look at how they're doing
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it today and and maybe tweak something
today, depending on when they're listening to
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this. It's Friday now, but
I want to say before the weekend.
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But anyway, something they can quickly
and go take action on it. Yeah,
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for sure. So let's we'll kind
of think about these as like the
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two listeners. So like the way
that I think about this is one you
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must have a deep understanding of whoever
you're trying to sell to, otherwise your
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contents not going to hit. So, like I can speak, speak in
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a very authoritative, thoughtful way to
cemos because I work with a bunch of
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them and I've been ahead of marketing
at a BB company and I understand them
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deeply and I think that I have
advice that can be really helpful to them.
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Most people that are creating content are
not in that position, which is
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why the content doesn't work. Step
one, and then, I think step
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two from there, if you're able
to get to that point, is consistency,
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which is a place where people do
not do not succeed. Content,
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especially in an organic social format,
works because you do it frequently and consistently,
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and so I think you know,
posting once a month to Linkedin from
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your company page when you have three
hundred followers, just not going to get
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it done. And so from the
consistency is next. So how do you
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create a framework where you can create
a video, podcast, a written blog,
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info graphic, a deck, whatever
it is, at least once a
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day for every channel that you're trying
to play on, which is why I
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always recommend for companies to find the
number one channel and spend all their time
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there until they've exhausted that channel and
then expand every other company are not that's
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an overstatement. A lot of people
try and cover every channel really poorly instead
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of just doing one channel really well. There's always one or two channels that
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are have the greatest up side.
Linked in this one of them, especially
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in bb right now. And so
like consistency. And the last one that
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I think this is probably the most
actionable out of the out of the everything,
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is go back into all of your
existing content and figure out how to
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repurpose it or reignite it. Take
a blog, take three quotes from that,
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build a quote card and then you
have three posts a day on Linkedin,
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because all the contents already been created
just needs to be reformatted and distributed
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appropriately. And so that's another one. Is like that old case study that
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you had, that old interview?
Can you clip that old thirty minute interview
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into ten different one minute clips and
push those out over linked in in a
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consistent fashion? And the last one
is, if the content is good,
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how do you figure out how to
put media behind it to get all the
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other people that haven't seen it yet
to see it? Job Title, targeted,
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skill based, targeted, feel to
study based, started to like the
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linkedin targeting is just crazy. It's
expensive. M A CPIM standpoint. If
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you can get to them on facebook, maybe that'd be better, or facebook
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or Instagram, but if we're focused
on Linkedin, it's like if you have
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a video or a post or a
piece of content or something that's working.
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How do you amplify it with media
spend that you have left over from the
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trade show that did the booth that
didn't happen or the field marketing events that
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didn't happen or the other expenses have
been shut down? How do you put
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a thousand dollars down a piece of
contents working to get that in front of,
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you know, Twentyzero more people that
are like the people that have already
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engaged with it and and accelerate the
fact that consumption and the awareness and all
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the other things do the funnel that
we're talking about? Oh Man, so
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good. Just a couple of resources. I want to mention two folks that
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we can put in the show notes
that that go off of these, because
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you mentioned kind of three specific things
here, Chris. To Take Action on
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one, you've got to make sure
your understanding your audience and your buyers better
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than ever right now. If content
you really is your way forward to stay
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in front of them, with events
canceled and and everything else. A couple
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of resources. James and I did
an episode in our behind the curtain series
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about our SEO strategy. Lots of
people refer to it as Google alphabet soup,
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a way to look at and leverage
Google's auto suggest to look at search
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volume, in addition to a lot
of the other tools that folks are used
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out there. We also did an
episode in our why podcast work series where
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John Rougie talked about how hosting a
podcast helped to refine messaging because he was
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talking to people in a new space
when when he switched industries. Now you
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don't necessarily have to have a podcast
that, but if you are a marketer,
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find a way to interview your best
customers. Find a way to interview
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your best prospects, whether it's a
podcast hopping on a zoom call, whether
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you record it and then use it
for a podcast later, which kind of
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goes to your point, Chris,
about repurposing stuff and then look at your
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existing library of content. We just
did a website overhaul and we're looking at
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a lot of our core pieces of
content. One of those on our content
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waterfall strategy, might be helpful for
some folks who will link to that,
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because it falls in line with what
you're talking about there, and I just
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can't reiterate enough. You know it
just in our own experience what we're seeing.
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It lines up with what you're talking
about, Chris. You know,
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for a long time here at Sweet
Fish we've been obviously very consistent on the
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podcast on BB growth being daily there
linkedin. You know, other channels are
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not as much of priority, but
we've seen that being very consistent in podcasts
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and being very consistent on Linkedin we're
able to reach our folks. Now,
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those might not be the channels for
you, but find that that top channel,
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find those top two and make them
work together in any way possible.
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Man, Chris, I could chat
with you all day. We might have
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to come back to that event attributional
conversation another time. We could possibly have
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you on the BB sales show.
I know you are consistently putting out stuff
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on for the sales side of the
house. This has been a fantastic conversation.
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Thank you so much. We'll have
to find several ways to slice and
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diise this and share it for anybody
listening to this who wants to ask you
404
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some follow up questions on the funnel
breakdown that you did or follow along with
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your content. What are the top
channels? What's the best way to stay
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connected with you? Man? Yeah, the best way to get me is
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to d me on Linkedin. I
try to get every every message that is
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00:27:49.549 --> 00:27:52.670
thoughtful and not asking for me to
go to take a demo or something like
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00:27:52.789 --> 00:27:55.950
that is I try to get to
every single one of them. So if
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00:27:55.950 --> 00:27:57.619
you have something that a question that
if it's a little bit deeper, we
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00:27:57.660 --> 00:28:00.259
can set up like a ten minute
call and just go through and help you.
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00:28:00.339 --> 00:28:03.619
Awesome man. Thank you for that
offer for listeners today and thank you
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00:28:03.779 --> 00:28:08.019
for dropping some really tactical content for
folks in light of everything that's going on.
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00:28:08.420 --> 00:28:11.380
Really appreciate you being on the show, Christ thank you. Welgome.
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00:28:11.460 --> 00:28:15.930
Everyone to stay, stay, say
can stay healthy. Talk soon. I
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00:28:17.130 --> 00:28:21.490
hate it when podcasts incessantly ask their
listeners for reviews, but I get why
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00:28:21.490 --> 00:28:25.490
they do it, because reviews are
enormously helpful when you're trying to grow podcast
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00:28:25.529 --> 00:28:27.880
audience. So here's what we decided
to do. If you leave a review
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00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:32.559
for be to be growth and apple
podcasts and email me a screenshot of the
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00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.880
review to James at Sweet Fish Mediacom, I'll send you a signed copy of
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00:28:36.960 --> 00:28:40.720
my new book, content based networking, how to instantly connect with anyone you
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00:28:40.799 --> 00:28:42.670
want to know. We get a
review, you get a free book.
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00:28:44.029 --> 00:28:44.630
We both win