Category: Books

This is the fifth book of our “Summer Books” series and we’re even going social with the hashtag, #SummerMarketingBooks on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. This book focuses on Pay-Per-Click marketing, and whether you do any PPC yourself or outsource, you should be aware of how much of a ground-shaking shift artificial intelligence is making here. Remember that Google & Facebook have been investing enormous sums of money on AI. Their ad empires pretty much run on AI now, and it’s vaulted them to become two of the world’s top 10 companies.

While acknowledging that this sounds ominous for advertisers, our author believes that by joining with them on campaign automation, we can actually thrive. Our author’s seen this shift happen first-hand, as part of the NY-based agency Adventure Media, where he serves as COO. his book, Join or Die: Digital Advertising in the age of Automation, came out in 2020.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show  

• Think-with-Google’s Messy Middle paper
• Single Keyword AdGroup (SKAG) strategy
• Eric Seufert
• Survivorship bias
• Jason Kalakanis’ Google Wins Everything post
• Fred Vallaeys PPC Town Hall
• PPCProtect.com
• Clickcease.com
• Cheq.ai
• Agency where Patrick works is AdVenture Media
• Patrick can be contacted on LinkedIn and Twitter

This is the fourth episode in our Summer Books series. 

Anyone who’s joined a Twitter chat or attended a conference session about it knows that discussing PPC stirs up strong opinions. The criticisms around Google, with its near-monopoly, grow louder and louder. Whether it’s making their auction more competitive, their campaigns more automated, or their data reporting more opaque, it seems that everyday there’s something Google does to tick off its users. 

It is against this backdrop that Kirk published “Ponderings of a PPC Professional” in 2020. For the last decade, Kirk’s agency, ZATO marketing, has specialized in Google Shopping Ads. His moral  compass clearly points towards what’s best for the advertisers that are his clients. Kirk is not afraid to tackle these things head-on. In some areas, the book offers a philosophical slant, keeping it fresh for whatever a PPC marketer in the future might be grappling with.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

• Fred Vallaeys
• Patrick Gilbert
• Schrödinger’s cat
• Mary Poppins
• Google Marketing Livestream 2021
• Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin
• Kirk can be contacted on LinkedIn, Twitter and on Instagram 

Our book is “Marketing Automation Unleashed” by Casey Cheshire. From 2011 to 2021, Casey was the Founder of Cheshire Impact a From Nashua, New Hampshire-based consultancy focused on Pardot. He is the host of the Hard Corps Marketing Show which has just blown past its 250th episode. You’ll also find him sharing his views on marketing automation at industry events including Dreamforce.  

Prior to Cheshire impact, Casey served in the U.S. Marine Corps and he maintains that physical stamina as a skydiver, mountaineer, triathlete. 

He released the book in 2019 and I have not only read it but gifted it to others. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Four Functions of any marketing automation tool, rolls up to acronym CNAR:

• • Capture
  • Nurture
  • Automate
  • Report

Cheshire Success Index (CSI) – a 10 point marketing automation assessment 

Tim Ferriss Four Hour Workweek

Office Space TPS report

Communication principle of What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)

Lisa Earle McLeod book “Selling with Noble Purpose”

Contact info and Social Profiles:

Casey’s website

Hard Corps Marketing Podcast

His Profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Goodreads

This is the first show of our “Summer Books” series, our featured book is called The Lead Machine: The Small Business Guide to Digital Marketing by Rich Brooks. 

Businesses know that for their marketing to have a significant impact on revenue, they have to put some effort into it. Many are confused by where effort is most needed and how to measure it all. Rich Brooks gets this and his hope in writing the Lead Machine was to break this whole marketing puzzle down into its constituent pieces. 

Rich Brooks is founder and president of flyte new media, a digital agency in Portland, Maine.  He founded The Agents of Change a weekly podcast that is about to cross the 400-episode mark. He is a nationally recognized speaker on using digital channels like search, social media and mobile for marketing to your audience. Rich also hosts the Agents of Change conference which takes place in Portland, Maine.

This episode begins with websites, which Rich sees as the cornerstone of your marketing assets. We then skip through the chapters he devotes to SEO, paid traffic, Social Media, Email, Podcasts and Video. We also explore how to contextualize this investment, so we have a yardstick to judge whether we aren’t spending enough or we are spending too much on marketing.

People, products, concepts mentioned in this episode:

Rich’s BARE marketing framework: 

• • Build
  • Attract
  • Retain
  • Evaluate

John Lee Dumas

Google Data Studio

Rich Brooks’ contact info:

Agents of Change Podcast/Conference

Flyte New Media

Fast Forward Maine podcast

Rich on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram

Whether you look at traditional or digital media, there’s a growing expectation that brands be more human. Those that use technology as a spamming tool or a way to hide from their buyers are being ignored or worse, heckled by their audience on social media. You may not be experiencing this problem right now, but just because you aren’t, doesn’t mean you don’t have this problem.  

Buyers may be at a breaking point where they’ll stop tolerating company messaging in their media feed. We have saturated our audiences with so much sterilized corporate-speak, they don’t even hear us anymore. This is a sure-fired way to lose, and the only way we can win is to be more human. Listen to my conversation with Eric Collard (here are his Twitter &  LinkedIn profiles) who knows a lot about how to communicate in a human way.

Items talked about in show:

Funnel Reboot Episode 15 – Ad Fraud and what you can do about it

People & Products Mentioned

United Airlines

Mathew Sweezey 

Douglas Rushkoff

“The Marketing Rebellion” by Mark Schaefer

Quote attributed to Anthony Robbins (originally by Jim Rohn) “Success leaves clues.”

Image Eric likes depicting the journey: