Category: Books

Consumers and corporate buyers no longer put blind trust in our brands. Nor do they trust big institutions. Nor religion. Nor the government. Nor the media. We do however still trust people like us. That’s where influencers come in. 

Gordon Glenister is a UK-based adviser on the business of working with influencers and running membership associations. Gordon launched the association arm of the UK’s Branded Content Marketing Association, to support the influencer marketing industry. Additionally, he hosts “Influence”, the global podcast on influencer marketing.  In 2021 he published the book Influencer Marketing Strategy

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

• Example of an influencer scorecard:

• Influencer monetization platforms like Patreon
• Scale using Influencer followers: Nano (1-10K), Micro (10K-100K), Macro (100K+)
• Launchmetrics research studies on influencers
• Joe Pulizzi
• Influencer Becky Li
• Influencer Louisa Hatt
• Influencers used in B2B setting: IBM’s Ryan Bares profiled in episode of Gordon’s podcast
• Instagram Influencer Sponsored Post Money Calculator
• Gordon’s LinkedIn profile

How would you feel if you picked up a book about work, and in the first few pages it tells you that one of the core principles your whole profession holds is flat-out wrong. In most cases, that would be grounds for slamming the book down and never going back to it. But when the book comes from the bestselling author of 10 books, you might read on and hear him out. 

That’s the effect John Jantsch‘s 2021 book had on me. 

He is a who is a keynote marketing speaker, husband, father of four grown children and is a native Missourian. As he consulted for small businesses, he became known for approaching marketing pragmatically, something that many midwesterners are known for. Though it originated as the name of his 2006 book, Duct Tape Marketing has come to embody his blog, his podcast and his whole philosophy. It just shows how well good brand names…stick.

You’ll hear John tell what most of us haven’t grasped as the goal of marketing, and the steps his book uses to help us get full value out of our marketing. I guarantee that you will get value from listening to him, whether you are a business owner who wears the marketing hat part-time or you are a veteran career marketer. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

• Site about The Ultimate Marketing Engine book, containing templates 
• John is also the author of 
• Duct Tape Marketing
• The Referral Engine
• SEO for Growth
• Duct Tape Selling
• The Commitment Engine
• The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business
• John’s LinkedIn profile

100th Episode Thanks:

These podcasters have had me as a guest on their shows. Listen to their content:

• Wendy Covey’s Content Marketing, Engineered
• Andrew Monro’s Drinking with Freelancers
• Kevin Dieny’s Close the Loop

W. Chan Kim, author of Blue Ocean Strategy, said “The hardest battle is simply to make people aware of the need for a strategic shift”.

I somehow feel that he was thinking of marketers with this phrase. We are changing the minds of our buyer so they’ll choose our brand. To do that we are often changing our companies to produce the value our buyers expect. And changing the status quo in some companies means overcoming a lot of lethargy. This takes someone who’s courageous, as today’s author argues, it takes a renegade.

Drew Neisser is the founder of the marketing agency Renegade and Is the host of the podcast Renegade Thinkers Unite. Drew has been featured on network TV, many podcasts and writes a regular column for Ad Age. He talked to me from his Manhattan office about his 2nd book, Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands which came out in 2021.

Key takeaways for unleashing your own inner Renegade

• Have the traits of cool marketing CATS: Courageous, Artful, Thoughtful, Scientific
• Reverse your targeting – start with employees, then customers, then prospects
• If your content isn’t of legitimate value to your customers, then don’t release it
• Work with your CFO to radically simplify your metrics (8 KPIs or less)
• Don’t overspend on martech, watch how much headcount it takes to manage the automation technology you take on
• Leave 10-20% of your budget for experiments
• Get your value proposition down to 8 words or less
• Sell through service:think of what your customers would consider valuable; give it without regard to charging them for it

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

• Jeff Perkins
• Brent Adamson (wrote the foreward to Drew’s book) author of the Challenger Customer
• Drew’s LinkedIn Profile and Twitter profile
• Drew’s first book, the CMO Periodic Table