Author: Show Runner

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Episode 79: Becoming a Digital Marketer with Gil Gildner

Digital marketer isn’t one of those occupations that kids in school blurt out when they are asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” 

Thankfully, a book came out in 2019 that lays out very plainly many of the things I wish I’d known when I joined this profession.  Becoming a Digital Marketer has elements that are tactical but it also weighs in on existential questions like ‘what kind of lifestyle can I have being in this field?’ and ‘should I work client-side, agency-side, or be my own boss?” Though I’ve been at this for decades, I’ll admit that I learned a number of things in the book, both about marketing and about  Kombucha, which was the product used throughout the book’s marketing tales.

Once our guest, Gil Gildner, got out of school, he worked in media for NGOs, where he traveled to over 45 countries, wore hazmat suits in Ebola units, and rode Ugandan motorcycles. Realizing that he wanted to survive into his thirties, he started doing marketing for a company that sold around-the-world airfares. It’s in this company where he met his wife Anya, a paid search specialist. Listen to our conversation for more of the interesting story of how Gil and Anya wrote this book and founded an agency which they operate from wherever they are. Today he happens to be in his hometown of Fayetteville Arkansas, near Walmart world Headquarters 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot.

Check out Discosloth’s free resource The Beginner’s Guide to PPC

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Episode 78: How AI Helps Marketers, with Cathy McPhillips

Lots of experts have said that AI is transformational to business. Call me cynical, but when you look at how the average marketing team functions in 2022, it doesn’t seem like much of our work has been transformed. My guest today, a mainstream marketer who hadn’t been influenced by  all the hype, will share her appraisal of AI’s practical uses.

Cathy McPhillips is a longtime Cleveland-based marketer who has worked in corporate, agency-side, as well as owning a small business. She worked for years with the Content Marketing Institute which was led by Joe Pulizzi (who was on Episode 56 of the show). Nearly a year ago, she joined the Marketing AI institute as chief growth officer, but admittedly with very little hands-on experience with AI. 

Brought on to grow the relatively new institute in a hurry, Cathy’s gotten up to speed on how to use these tools. She’ll tell us her story, including how the way we traditionally do things has to change in order to get the benefits of AI. Cathy lists many resources and tools, which have been compiled into a table that’s in the show notes.   I hope by listening to Cathy, you’ll try some of them out, and come away as excited as she is about how AI can be a superpower for today’s marketing.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot:

Tools to help contentE.G. PersadoDRIFTDescriptMarketMuseWriting social posts, messages (Copy.ai, persado) Personalizing landing pagesAnalyzing what’s said on social about our brand
Tools to help mktg activitiesE.G. Rasa.ioSprinklrOptimizing ads on campaigns to get most leads for least cost-summarizing/visualizing our web visitors and prospectsUnderstand which prospects have intent to buy, are open to contactData cleanup or other repeated tasks, learning from watching you

Also check out our other AI-related episodes:

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Episode 77: Stop arguing over leads; start scoring them, with Gary Amaral

Disclaimer: The company featured here is not a sponsor of the show, nor have I affiliated with them. They simply bring a perspective that I think you’ll get some use from.

Two things are required to get a clear view of revenue growth. First, sales and marketing must come together to jointly-define the thresholds at each stage of a lead’s lifecycle. Second, they must apply points to a lead’s every action, either manually or by layering automation on this process. 

My guest believes that lead scoring systems not only bring pipeline visibility, they improve the collaboration between Sales & Marketing. In fact, he claims that by pooling their information on leads and letting AI find the patterns, they can tell when a lead is ready to buy, upsell, or churn. 

Gary Amaral held several positions at places like at BlackBerry & Hootsuite, always at the intersection of marketing and sales. Seeing how poor scoring led to frustration for all involved, he joined forces with two other serial startup entrepreneurs. 

In 2020 they co-founded Breadcrumbs, which is a revenue acceleration platform based on a co-dynamic lead scoring and routing engine. Listen for Gary’s advice on what you need to do to get scoring right. Just as good communication helps keep couples together, the Sales & marketing relationship needs good communication on the status of leads. Lead scoring could very well be the glue in this marriage. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

You can also check out these episodes involving lead scoring:

Episode Reboot.

Download Breadcrumb.io’s lead scoring template

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Episode 76: Paid Media Automation: It’s About Time, with Ameet Khabra 

There’s no shortage of things to do in paid media marketing.   

There are so many options available for automating what the platforms do. Those of us who have taken the plunge into automation all agree it makes sense, both the logical kind and even literal cents, the currency kind. Yet many still resist automation. Not really resist, but given all the things each ad platform does, and all the third-party tools out there, the problem some have is knowing where to begin. 

Our guest today can help us there. Ameet Khabra has spent the last decade figuring out why people do what they do online, what prompts them to take action, and how to use this insight to make marketing work better. She uses that experience in her agency, Hop Skip Media, to design campaign strategies for clients and teach future generations of PPC pros at the university level. Ameet loves her dogs Luke and Leia & the Dallas Cowboys, and Celine Dion songs.

Listen to her take on where this goes right, and in cases like Google Ads’ optimization-scored recommendations, where this can go wrong. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Episode Reboot. Be scientific in how you evaluate the use of automation

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Episode 75: When Growth can’t be Hacked: New category marketing, with Ned Nadima

Ned Nadima

Today we’re going to talk about the limits to growth marketing, aka “growth hacking.”  In his book “Growth Hacker Marketing,” Ryan Holiday defines this person as: 

“A growth hacker is someone who [works] with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable. Growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users.”

There’s nothing wrong with this practice per se. But there are stages in an industry’s life cycle where it’s the wrong approach. You can’t, for example, continuously improve a metric when there’s no data to base the metric on in the first place. There are other industries where privacy or perceptions require you to use a different approach. 

This is the world that Ned Nadima lives in. Growing up in Ottawa, he now spends much of his time in Newfoundland, studying and working as a marketer in the Biotech industry

His main passions are growing businesses that involve neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.  He avidly follows his crossfit routine and practices optimal living, experimenting with fasting, sleep hacking, diet and other ways to promote longevity. Like Ryan Holiday, he’s also into stoic philosophy.

Listen to Ned explain what you CAN do when you CAN’T growth hack.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show