Category: Posts

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

• Ash Maurya’s books Running Lean and Scaling Lean
• Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup
• An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore

When you hear the words “Manufacturing” or “Industrial,” it probably conjures up pictures of smoke-billowing factories somewhere in the American rust belt in the mid-20th century. Those hay days are long gone, that sector’s jobs, which used to account for half of all jobs in the 1950s, had slid to less than 10% by 2009. 

The last dozen years though, have brought something of a renewal to manufacturing. Thanks to the Internet of Things, specifically the Industrial IOT movement, many companies are now making ‘smart’  products that scoop up data about their own health and how they’re being used, a real  goldmine for the products’ makers. Thanks to Moore’s law, they are designing things faster and cheaper, 3D printing takes the minimum number you need to fabricate from huge lots down to single units. The outlook for manufacturing jobs in the 2020’s in places like the US is rosy, with 13 Million workers, producing a total of  $2.00 trillion in goods, or a fifth of the entire GDP (Gross Domestic Product).  It’s not only a good time for manufacturing production people, it’s good for the marketers that work there too.  

My guest today is someone who embodies this upbeat outlook. Caine Ruckstuhl is Head of Marketing, North America for CAREL. He has worked with clients in highly engineered products in Manufacturing businesses, much of it in the HVAC & Humidification space. He knows what it’s like to be in an environment dominated by engineers, who are  notoriously numbers driven, and who aren’t easily impressed by marketing. 

He also has experience marketing consumer products, as his wife perceived young women demanding better hygiene in public washrooms, He and his wife created a brand of  paper toilet seat covers in 2008, doing everything from designing, sourcing, distributing and of course marketing it. When Caine isn’t flying around North America, South America and Europe, he can be found at home with his wife and a lot of very small dogs.

Listen to some excellent insights about this tough, quirky environment of marketing manufactured products. Hear what has worked for him, so you’ll come away appreciating what it’s like to be an industrial marketer.  

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

Glenn’s blog post on lessening importance of specs in marketing

Episode Reboot.

For another episode on marketing engineered products, check out Episode 55. 

If you have been a marketer for a while, odds are you have been helped by a mentor.  The use of the word Mentor to mean someone who shares knowledge with a less-experienced colleague is relatively new in English. But the concept of a mentor can be found in cultures all over the world, Going back millennia. 

If you have been helped by a mentor, a good question to ask yourself is, “should I start mentoring others?” 

There are great benefits to doing this, provided you’re well-matched with the person you’re mentoring. One person who’s been at both ends of the mentoring spectrum is Anu Adegbola, Director of Paid Search at Marin Software. Originally from Nigeria, Anu moved to the UK and got a bachelor’s of computer science, with a master’s in marketing. She is also one of PPC Hero’s 25 Top Influencers for 2021. 

Listen to her as she describes what internal traits to look for in a mentee you’re considering working with, how senior marketers should balance advice on technical expertise with general professional advice, how to balance managing others and getting your job done, and how much you should open up about your own personal struggles to your mentee. 

Enjoy the episode. 

People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show

• How the archetype of Mentor began with a story in Homer’s Odyssey
• Anu’s profile on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Anu’s #PPCChat Roundup Podcast

Episode Reboot. 

When you’re asked to mentor someone, know that what you are saying yes to is primarily asking them questions. That’s the best way you can help them.