Category: Books

Episode 169

You did everything just the way you were told. 

You took the tags the free tools gave you and installed them on your site, you configured platforms and poured over their reports, you connected the systems and even hired developers to hook everything up to a database. And yet, you have little value to show for all the work you’ve put into your company’s analytics 

You feel the analytics platforms are backing away from their responsibility to streamline all this. Instead, the answer from the largest of the bunch, Google, is they’ll hold onto your data if you use their newest tool, BigQuery, and pay them money to store your data …or is it their data… on it. 

The bad news is summed up in a 2023 book whose euphemistic name is “You’re data is flawed”– don’t want to get an explicit rating for using the actual name 

It was written by someone who empathizes with our situation and who lays out in the book the steps needed to generate positive financial returns for our analytics investment.    

Our guest Mark McKenzie started his career in London, but moved in 2014 to sunny New Zealand to work for a data-focused digital agency. That led to him founding and growing an analytics firm that served clients locally and in the UK, Australia, and the US. Following the sale of that firm in 2022, he moved with his family back to the not-so-sunny UK.  where he’s consulting with  on digital analytics

His focus on analytics can be seen through his volunteering at events such as ‘MeasureCamp’ and ‘Web Analytics Wednesdays.’ Let’s talk with Mark McKenzie.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Mark’s MckTui consultancy

Avinash Kaushik

Cambridge Analytica

The Circles of Hell in Dante’s Inferno

With Federated IDs, a company personalizes an experience for someone using digital data that was sourced (but not shared with the company)  from multiple external systems.

The DIKW Pyramid of Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom

https://www.cardinalpath.com/blog/digita-analytics-immaturity

Tom Triscari

Chapters & Timestamps

146.879456 146.879456 Admitting our data is f*%#ed
622.046944 622.046944 prior to fixing data, must treat it as an asset
2369.560249 2369.560249 Fixing data we keep internally
3287.677599 3287.677599 Book and Mark’s contact info

Episode 168

Memes act as our collective memory’s transportation system. The instant they are seen or heard, our minds hop to whatever emotion the meme conveys. The use of this brain-hack is as scary as it is impressive.

Memes rarely come to us via broadcast media. Instead, they spread organically online. Most of the original uses for these have faded, while the internet has collectively assigned them new meanings. 

Our guest was so interested in memes that he came out with a book in 2023 called Marketing Memetics  to explain all that marketers must consider when using them. 

Mike Taylor shares content on wider marketing topics, such as AI & prompt engineering, which O’Reilly has commissioned him to write a book that’s due to come out in 2024. Experimentation is also a passion; he’s run over 8,000 CRO experiments, and he shares the insights he gets on his social channels, and  in courses he has on LinkedIn Learning and udemy. 

His love of learning & teaching can be traced back to his studies at Anglia Ruskin University and U of Nottingham, where he obtained his masters degree.

But in between his schooling and the present, he was working in the marketing trenches, at places like Candor, SumoMe, ShopStyle, Travelzoo and marketing agency Ladder.io, which has grown from its beginnings with Mike and his co-founders to a team of 50 people.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Mike’s company

Mike on Twitter

Skeumorphism

Christopher S Penn

Rory Sutherland TED Talk

Joshua Bell Violin Busking experiment

Episode 166

When it comes to branding, there are many facets to getting it right. But we don’t have to know all about branding to know that only one mistake can cause deep, irreversible damage to a brand. 

In 2009 the Tropicana juice company thought they’d be clever by taking their recognizable straw-in-an orange carton and simplify it down to an indistinct orangish object. Design critics howled and customers shied away from the sight of it at store shelves. In response to this 20% decline, Tropicana rapidly went back to the old packaging

Gerald Ratner, CEO of the UK Jewelry chain that bears his name, responded to a question about some of his products by saying they were ‘total crap.’ The company eventually closed over 300 of its stores, admitting that this comment caused a decisive blow to their reputation.

Subway named a game after long-time spokesman Jared Fogle’s famous weight loss pants and called it ‘JARED’S PANTS DANCE’,  just at the time that Fogle pleaded guilty to sexual interference charges.  

Google changed the logos of its suite of work-applications with geometric shapes in their corporate colours – confusing users (including me) who can no longer tell whether they’re opening Docs, Sheets and Slides.

To learn how branding is done right, today we are speaking with Dan White. 

He graduated from Cambridge University with a Masters of Arts. He has worked in marketing, market research and brand consultancy for 30 years. He is equally passionate about using imaginative visuals to bring marketing concepts to life. If people understand and remember an idea thanks to a clever framework or visual metaphor they will be able to use it in their day-to-day work. 

Three people have been repeat guests on this show; Dan White is now the fourth. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Dan White on LinkedIn

Dan’s earlier episode on The Smart Marketing Book

Professor Byron Sharp

Scrabble

Tony Hayward ‘I would like my life back’

Bertolli rebrandTry to make your brand like Ronseal, who’s slogan is: “It does exactly what it says on the tin”

Episode 167

A trend that’s currently having its day in the sun is Product-Led Growth. According to our guest, it’s a fine model, but our companies need growth that’s based on a more foundational element – advocating for Customer-Led Growth.

CLG begins with creating organization-wide understanding around what experience is most appropriate for the company’s best customers. Value to customers is then delivered — whenever, wherever, and however they need it — throughout their relationship with the company. 

Our guest pioneered customer experience mapping while she was leading marketing for the Vancouver-based SaaS company Unbounce.

She has been a brand builder since 2000. In 2009, she embraced tech startups and SaaS, recognizing marketing’s pivotal role in SaaS success. In 2023 she co-authored Forget the Funnel and with her co-founder Claire Suellentrop has a consultancy that goes by the same name. 

Let’s talk to Georgiana Laudi.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Georgiana on Twitter/X

ACV = Average Customer Value

Clayton Christiansen’s jtbd framework

Dave McClure’s Pirate metrics

You may also like the previous episode on customer interviews with Ryan Gibson

Episode Reboot. Get the free workbook and other free resources on the FTF site.

If you want to learn about sales and start Googling, you quickly run across self-professed gurus, who claim to know the secret to selling. If you faithfully follow this method (available today only for a low low price), you’ll have sales success. Despite feeling a twinge of skepticism about their pitch, you’re so deep into their slick, pressure-filled pitch at this point that you pay for their books and courses…which end up being disappointing. 

Today’s guest says these gurus have put you in the Vortex of crazy. 

He doesn’t try to apply the same advice to everyone – his response reminds me of what an ancient Buddhist guru said. Well, according to a novel written a century ago by Hermann Hesse. 

There are a few men on a spiritual pilgrimage, and they reach a stage where the leader, Siddhartha, tells his followers that he must  continue on alone. His right-hand man, Govinda asks him why, “Siddhartha…spoke quietly… “Always, oh Govinda, you’ve been my friend, you’ve always walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Won’t Govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me? Behold, now…[you] are choosing your path for yourself.”

Our guest says there’s only one sales method that works  –  the one that comes naturally to you. That refreshing take ripples through his 2023 book Do It! Selling.

David Newman has been working since 1992 to help customers land better clients, bigger deals, and higher fees. From Fortune 500 corporations to sole-practitioners, his firm has helped over 1,800 clients with their marketing, sales, and professional services. David is also the host of the highly rated podcast, The Selling Show.

David is married to the #1 most amazing woman on the planet (his words, not mine), launched two great kids into the world disguised as small adults, and has enjoyed raising some of the world’s sweetest retrievers.

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

David’s site Do It Marketing

David’s free webclass about consultancy growth 

David’s Do It MBA

1992 Movie A Few Good Mew

Brent Adamson’s The Challenger Sale

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse