Category

Podcast

Oct 23
Ryan Hanley Can’t Shut His Big, Fat Face. And That’s A Good Thing For Your Content Marketing.

Ryan Hanley Can’t Shut His Big, Fat Face. And That’s A Good Thing For Your Content Marketing.

By Podcast, With Guests

Both Ralph and I have had the pleasure of being on Ryan’s Content Warfare podcast so today Ryan joins us on ours to talk about what he knows best: content!

If you’re on the content marketing bandwagon and want some insight into taking it up a notch, or if you aren’t convinced and need a push that will get you jumping in with both feet, this is the episode for you.

Ryan is all about challenging the status quo and that’s exactly what we love around here. Listen as we talk about what content really is, how to create it (and why), digital sharecropping and more.

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Oct 21
How To Be Effective At Social Marketing Without Content Curation

How To Be Effective At Social Marketing Without Content Curation

By Podcast, Readings, Social Marketing

Modern marketing wisdom goes something like this:

If you want to be successful at social marketing then you need to share other people’s content 80% of the time and your own content 20% of the time.

I don’t know what the source of this dumb advice is but I would very much like to know who decided that this was the magic ratio and why it’s repeated as marketing gospel.

Here’s why content curation is not doing you any favors… and some practical, actionable ideas you can try instead.

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Oct 20
This Podcast Is Guaranteed To Improve Your Marketing (Results Not Guaranteed)

This Podcast Is Guaranteed To Improve Your Marketing (Results Not Guaranteed)

By Podcast, Ralph and Carol Lynn

In today’s podcast episode we button up a few things that have been nagging at us recently, namely ineffective programs, not-so-valuable “products” and the perils of SEO.

We also summon our sponsor, Cynthia Sanchez of Oh So Pinteresting to tell us about the workshop she’s offering especially for small businesses to help them boost their marketing on Pinterest.

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Oct 16
Get On Board With Pinterest And Synergize The Impact To The Next Level With Alisa Meredith

Get On Board With Pinterest And Synergize The Impact To The Next Level With Alisa Meredith

By Podcast, With Guests

Are you on board with Pinterest? If not, Alisa Meredith will inspire you. She talks about how it can work even for a non-visual business and how you can think differently about this underutilized tool.

We also talk about how to get started with online marketing, avoid internet marketing fatigue and stay in a jargon-free zone. If you think you don’t have the time, don’t have the money and don’t know how to get your marketing working online, Alisa has some great insights to share.

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Oct 15
Improve Your Marketing By Tapping Into Your Failures

Improve Your Marketing By Tapping Into Your Failures

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, Readings

So many times businesses fail to gain momentum on their marketing because they want every campaign to be flawless. When a campaign takes an unintended left turn, a business becomes hesitant to try again.

While you should do everything you can within reason to avoid failures, missteps in marketing are inevitable.

I want to share three of our recent failures so that you can (hopefully) laugh along with us and perhaps learn from our mistakes so you don’t make your own. Or if you do make mistakes, you can learn to pick yourself up and keep going.

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Oct 14
How You’re Being Tricked Into Wasting Your Marketing Dollars On Ineffective Programs

How You’re Being Tricked Into Wasting Your Marketing Dollars On Ineffective Programs

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, Readings

Have you seen the $4,000 toothbrush?

It’s real, I swear.

And it begs the question: what makes a toothbrush worth $4,000?

The answer is pretty simple, actually. It’s worth $4,000 because that’s what someone is willing to pay for it. But when it comes to business the idea of value still lies in the return that a product or service yields. That makes it more challenging to work in the B2B space, because it’s a lot harder to sell something that doesn’t promise a better outcome.

And yet, paradoxically, it’s also a lot easier to trick you, as a business, into spending your marketing budget on something completely worthless. Today I want to talk about one of the most common marketing tricks that will get YOU to part with your hard earned dollars, all in the interest of improving your own marketing. And why you should shut your wallet every time you encounter it.

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Oct 13
This Podcast Is Worth One-Point-Seven Trillion Dollars But You Can Have It For Free

This Podcast Is Worth One-Point-Seven Trillion Dollars But You Can Have It For Free

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, Ralph and Carol Lynn

In today’s episode we revisit our conversation about SEO from last week because I call Ralph out on the fact that he said he had a “big objection” to the article we discussed… but never ‘fessed up to what that was. And that takes on a whole life of its own.

Listen in as we talk popups (good and bad), the reality of discount pricing and how to pronounce “Moleskine”. Plus we share our own email segmentation method so that you can try it for yourself.

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Oct 09
Facebook, Email And Landing Pages: Brought To You By The Power Of The Sun

Facebook, Email And Landing Pages: Brought To You By The Power Of The Sun

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, With Guests

Plenty of people have “a big idea”. But not a lot of those people take their idea to fruition and watch it grow and thrive.

Yet that’s exactly what Glen Koedding did. One day he was hanging out in the pool with a business colleague, thinking about how to use solar energy to heat the pool and nine months later he was running his own solar business. Since then he’s grown the company into an impressive enterprise by doing all of his own marketing.

We talked with him about just some of the incredibly smart strategies he employs – from social to email to website. There are more good ideas here than miles to the sun.

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Oct 08
It's Q4. What Does Your 2015 Marketing Look Like?

It’s Q4. What Does Your 2015 Marketing Look Like?

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, Readings

It’s Q4 2014. With the holidays coming, you have very little time to decide what your 2015 marketing outlook is if you haven’t already done so.

But let me tell you one thing that you can take to the bank. In 2015 more of your consumers will be connected than at any time in the past. They will be online, using social media, looking for the products and services that they want to buy and relying on the information they find online to inform their decisions.

If you are reading this while sitting next to a truck load of cash, then go enjoy your money. This isn’t for you. But if you want to give your business a fighting chance in 2015, keep reading.

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Oct 07
3 Marketing Tropes To Eliminate From Your Tactical Toolbox

3 Marketing Tropes To Eliminate From Your Tactical Toolbox

By Marketing Insights & Strategy, Podcast, Readings

Have you read the story about Marriott International’s “The Envelope Please” program?

It’s stirred up a bit of controversy and got me thinking about dumb things done in the name of marketing. Turns out, dumb marketing is not only the domain of big companies. Even small businesses sometimes fall into these traps.

Here are three of the most head-shaking mistakes and why you should avoid them.

PS: If you haven’t read the Marriott story, I include a link at the beginning of my article. Let me know what you think!

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