The Marketing Minute

Welcome to the Marketing Minute! We’re a short-form story-driven podcast designed to provide value and industry insight—all in under ten minutes. Every episode, we invite an expert guest to answer three questions: What’s your favorite story for marketing communications professionals? What were the insights gained? Why do you do what you do? It’s all the value and nothing else. Succinct. Insightful. Actionable. Give us a listen, subscribe, and follow! 3-2-1. Done. Brian Kurtz, Founder of Titans Marketing Transcript: Karl Boehm: Brian, what is your favorite story for marketing communicators? Brian Kurtz: You know, when I, when I take on a, I’m do a lot of one on one consulting, but when I do or when I’m working with someone in my mastermind, or about their business, I always ask them a question that starts with, let’s assess your assets. And it’s funny because even even someone just starting out, or just, you know, who thinks they have nothing. They all everybody has something if you dig deep enough, and so I start with, you know, what list do you have, because lists are the most important thing in anything in marketing. And they say, I don’t have a list. And when I dive deeper, they always have a list. They have a list of people who’s there, it’s their email list on Gmail, or it’s their Facebook audience. It’s their Instagram followers, it’s there people that they have people who did searches on them, whatever. And being able to capture those names into an online family is the first step of assessing your assets. And then I say, what kind of content do you have? I don’t have any content. Well, have you ever written anything? Have you ever done a podcast? Have you ever been interviewed in some way or something, and, you know, every time I do this assessing your assets, you come up with a lot of things that they already own. And it’s always better to start with something than just go out to what we call cold traffic. You know, everybody talks about cold traffic, and cold traffic. To me, it’s just outside list of people who don’t know you, let’s start always with things that people know you, they might even already trust you, they might like you even. So you know, if they know like and trust you. That’s where you always have to start when you’re assessing your assets. And if you if you if you have some names, that’s where you start. And you get them into a CRM or, you know, into some kind of way that you can blog to them and write to them and be in relationship with them. Because everything’s not a revenue event. But everything is a relationship event, in communications and marketing, anything. So that’s would be the story that I would use for this because it’s one that I come back to on a regular basis, when I when I go to a client and really, or I go to someone who I’m working with, and really want to get what they have first, as opposed to looking at the outside world, because they have a lot more internally than they then they know or think they have.Excellent. Karl Boehm: And you kind of distilled the points, the insights right within that story. So I guess we don’t need to ask that question. Brian Kurtz:Well, I’ll go one step further. And say that, even if you don’t have a list, and you don’t have content, and you don’t have have not done things that would support the business that you want to do, you need to go look at competitors, or people that are doing what you want to do, and see how they’re going about it. Even ask them I mean, competition is coexistence for the most part, you know, not everything is cutthroat competition. And so, you know, I think that you want to go again, a mile deep, you want you want to be a mile deep in something of interest that you’re passionate about, then trying to be everything to everybody. And that would be the best insight that you could gain from just going deep on what you have first. Karl Boehm: Excellent. And why do you do what you do?

Peter Corbett has one more awards than most people dare to aspire to: 30 under 30, 40 under 40, Tech Titan of the Year (twice!), Global Shaper, CEO for the Ad Age Small Agency of the Year, many more and another accolade listeners will certainly appreciate: successfully exited/retired well before the age of 40. How did he do it? What makes him and his approach different? What is he doing now?

Welcome to the Marketing Minute! We’re a short-form story-driven podcast designed to provide value and industry insight—all in under ten minutes. Every episode, we invite an expert guest to answer three questions: What’s your favorite story for marketing communications professionals? What were the insights gained? Why do you do what you do? It’s all the value and nothing else. Succinct. Insightful. Actionable. Give us a listen, subscribe, and follow! 3-2-1. Done. Gracelyn McDermottVice President of Marketing, Sales & Business Development at Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States Senior health care executive with proven experience in implementing process improvement and building teams. Over 15 years of operational and project management experience in leading teams, managing key client relationships and overseeing programs. Transcript: Karl Boehm: Grace, what story would you like to share for marketing communicators? Gracelyn McDermott: Well, it’s funny when, you know, we first connected. Literally, that day, a childhood memory had popped in my mind, and this is a situation when I was about seven or eight, I have the opportunity to take a free swimming lesson and I think the overall goal was to get parents to sign up for a package of lessons but my parents didn’t do that and we got to take that one free lesson. So that day I learned how to blow bubbles and swim under water. About six months to a year after that I got invited to a birthday party at a swim club. And everything was going well. I’m in the shallow end of the water, we’re splashing it up, we’re having fun. And then one of my friends decided that they wanted to go jump off the diving board. And for whatever reason, I decided to follow them and decided that “Yes, I too, could jump off the diving board”. So I go right up, I line up alongside everybody else, I climb up the ladder and I jumped. And, I have to tell you that I had no idea how deep that water was because I froze when I realized that my feet weren’t touching the bottom. I was terrified. I had no idea how long I could hold my breath for and just completely my whole body frozen and I’m sinking and sinking and sinking. And finally I hear this voice, whether it’s my own voice or it was my friend’s voice, I hear ”swim!” So I started kicking my legs and moving my arms and I eventually got to the side of the pool and I pulled myself out. And shaking myself and tell my friends “oh I meant to do that I wanted to see how long I could hold my breath”. And I walked right back into the ladder, climbed up again and I jumped again and I probably jumped off that diving board at least twelve times that day. But I still to this day I remember how terrified I was when I hit the water and realized “uh oh, you’re not in Kansas anymore” kind of situation. Karl Boehm: Wow, yes, that sounds impactful. Sounds like the kind of thing both dreams and nightmares are made of. Gracelyn McDermott: Exactly! Karl Boehm Well, that’s really cool. What insights do you derive for marketing communications professionals? Gracelyn McDermott: I don’t know what prompted me to just let me have that memory pop into my mind. One of the things that I was contemplating about is these days before we take action, before we act, we want to know everything. We want to know the ins and outs of an experience before we move forward. We want to look at the data, we want to analyze the data, capture more data, analyze the new data and then once we have all the data together, we wanna hold together a focus group and we want to see what they think about the data, and then we’re gonna go back and collect more. Trust me that’s good, that’s best practice. We live in an era where we’re a data rich society and we absolutely should take advantage of the data that we have. But sometimes, we just need to jump. And, it can be terrifying because we don’t know what the expected outcome is, we don’t know what the future is but it’s better than not acting and at that time you j...

Seth Greene is a nationally recognized marketer and the only person to be nominated three times for the GKIC Dan Kennedy Marketer of the Year Award. He’s our latest guest on the Spiral Marketing Podcast to tell businesses and entrepreneurs there’s a light at the end of this dark tunnel we’re in. If you feel your business or entrepreneurial endeavor can bring more value to the market as competitors struggle to virtualize their business, this episode can explain the big picture about what you should pay attention to. Check out the full show notes here: https://www.spiralmarketing.com/podcast/episode-50-market-domination-with-seth-greene/

https://youtu.be/ZSQTyJFQQdc “It’s a time for us to start to be more disciplined around the way we position ourselves.” Tara Clever is the Vice President of Marketing at MarginEdge, a company that streamlines key processes for restaurants. She’s on this episode to discuss how the pandemic can lead to opportunities with the right data and empathy.  Has your value proposition changed? Customer data is now more important than since the pandemic changed spending behaviour.  Examining this new climate through the lens of marketing, sales, and an entrepreneurial spirit, can lead to new avenues of opportunities to build long lasting business relationships. “Are we saying something meaningful? Are we saying what’s already been said?” Just a few of the points you’ll learn in this episode: The discipline it really takes to cut through the noise of the unnecessary How companies find creative ways to modify their business model What you should do when everything you know about your business will change Why certain brands will achieve more success over competitors as customers become more digitally savvy “We understand the pain, we know the lingo, this is part of our DNA.” Marketers   The role of transparency between companies and customers  What you should take away from a crisis   The benefits of seeing the world through an experimental lens (agile startups to seasoned ventures)  How data can minimize the “blame game” to optimize growth strategies Entrepreneurs  What does your community expect from you during changing times?  Why entertain the possibility of failure and success equally?  Why it’s not a good idea to make assumptions about what your customers want “Most owners and operators have a story that connects them to the product or company that they’ve built.” Where to learn more about and reach Tara Clever: marginedge.com Tara’s LinkedIn

Welcome to the Marketing Minute! We’re a short-form story-driven podcast designed to provide value and industry insight—all in under ten minutes. Every episode, we invite an expert guest to answer three questions: What’s your favorite story for marketing communications professionals? What were the insights gained? Why do you do what you do? It’s all the value and nothing else. Succinct. Insightful. Actionable. Give us a listen, subscribe, and follow! 3-2-1. Done. Raj Khera EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, WealthEngine Raj is a former CEO & Co-founder of multiple software companies, two of which were acquired by public companies. At WealthEngine, he helps to create more value for customers through thought leadership and game-changing product enhancements. He is passionate about supporting higher education & cancer research and volunteers his time at the University of Maryland and local schools. Karl Boehm: Raj. What is your most insightful story for marketing communications professionals? Raj Khera: Well, I’ll give you an example of how you can use data to change the game. And so one of our clients is the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International. And one of the segments that they pursue is planned gifts. A planned gift is someone who leaves behind money in their will, in their trust, in their insurance plan that you become one of the beneficiaries. So the reason they do this is because planned gifts tend to be large amounts. And they found that their average planned gift from someone that they had not engaged with in the past was about $40,000. And they found that if they engage with that person and built a relationship, that gift changed from $40,000 to over $130,000. So they wanted to figure out who they should be engaging with and how many more people can they actually talk to, to start that relationship. The way they did it was they started with data they created a persona figured out who are the people that are giving money right now. And they find that the most the biggest givers are single females over age 65, I think is age 65 might be often that by few years who have a pet, and then other donors are single males, same age bracket who also have a pet. So starting with that, there’s a few more nuances but they dug deeper using insights from our tool WealthEngine, were able to create a very tight segment and then created ads on the post on Facebook of say, a woman in that age bracket petting her dog or something like that. And that started engaging people. But they placed those ads and targeted specific people who matched the profile. That’s where the data came from. That’s what they use artificial intelligence machine learning from our system to figure out who they should be targeting those ads to. Once they did that they started creating relationships with thousands of people who were their target market. The result? they generated $43 million in pipeline in 2019. Just from that campaign, huge ROI, huge ROI Karl Boehm: Really outstanding. What are the top insights derived from that story? Raj Khera:  Well, the biggest thing is to use data to your benefit. segmentation, donor segmentation. customer segmentation is what it’s all about. There are tools out there right now that can help you do it. WealthEngine certainly one of the leading tools that can do that for you. Our clients include financial services firm, luxury brands, nonprofits, educational institutions, healthcare institutions, and they’re using the data that we provide to figure out who they should talk to, because that really enables you to focus on the most promising prospects and not somebody who’s just spinning your cycles, where you think they might be able to donate you think they might be able to buy, but they don’t really take action. Our data actually will show you a propensity score. So we give you a score from one to five, one being the highest of the likelihood that this person would donate, would engage, would spend. So those kinds of things, those kinds of data can really change, how efficient you are in your role. Karl Boehm:  Love it. Okay. And why do you do what you do Raj? Raj Khera: I do it to help people like our mission at WealthEngine is to uplift humanity’s potential and that mission really resonates with me. And I, you know, I’ve been very fortunate my life to have built a few businesses and been successful with that. And so it really wanted to do something that helps humanity and this organization does that and does it in a big way because we find that when we help other people help their constituency, it helps humanity as a whole. That’s really important, especially in this time when we’ve got you know, the spring of 2020 everybody’s in lockdown with Coronavirus. You know, we all need to help each other and I think anything that people can do is really beneficial to help. So that’s why it resonates with me. That’s why I’m there. Hi, this is Raj Khera. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at WealthEngine. Visit us at wealthengine.com and this is The Marketing Minute.

Welcome to the Marketing Minute! We’re a short-form story-driven podcast designed to provide value and industry insight—all in under ten minutes. Every episode, we invite an expert guest to answer three questions: What’s your favorite story for marketing communications professionals? What were the insights gained? Why do you do what you do? It’s all the value and nothing else. Succinct. Insightful. Actionable. Give us a listen, subscribe, and follow! 3-2-1. Done. Transcription: Karl Boehm: All right. What is your most insightful story for marketing communicators? Jeremy Miller: Well, this is a bit of a personal story, I think the thing that we all have to recognize is you’ve got permission to change. When I was starting out, I actually started my career as a marketer working for my family’s business. And that first year I worked with my parents was probably the worst year of my entire career. And everything I did didn’t work, sales kept declining. And it got so bad at one point that we actually had that entire sales team including myself, cold calling, and I hate cold calling. It’s so gross. I wrote a book sticky branding afterwards, so that you would never have to do this, but that was that formative moment. I remember sitting down at the end of that first year with both of my parents and it was at the just after our Christmas party, actually I said, This is what it’s like to be in a family business. I can’t do this. I came back, I left a successful career to come and work here. And this last year was horrible. And my dad looked at me and he said, “You know, it’s not about the business you’ve built. It’s about the business you’re building. What are we going to build next?” And that was probably the best quote    And I’ll repeat it. It’s not about the business you’ve built is about the business you’re building. What are you going to build next? And it was in that moment, that gave me permission to take a step back. And I started to study our customers, study our market, and study the industry as a whole. And what I realized is we didn’t have a sales problem, all the marketing tactics we were doing weren’t working because we had a branding problem. Our customers couldn’t distinguish us from anyone else. And when we realized that it gave us permission to change & I repositioned my family’s business and we changed the company name for Miller and Associates to Leap Job. We reposition the business. We built a marketing strategy that was so successful that we actually grew through the 2008 – 2009 recession when the rest of our industry was being pummeled. At the end of it all, I was able to sell that business in 2013, to do what I have now become passionate about, which is build brands. But it was that advice my dad gave me that just set the path forward for me at least. Karl: Great. Any other insights derived from that story? Jeremy: The key insight that I think really comes out of that story is we all have permission to change, especially when you look at right now we’ve just gone through this monumental event with Coronavirus, changing our entire world. And so as you have to adjust your value proposition, take the advice again, it’s not about the business you’ve built. It’s about the business you’re building. What are you going to build next? And when you look at that, you can actually be very present and helpful. And so right now What is needed more so than ever, is how do you be hyper relevant for your customers, whether they are going through the crisis or we’re way past this and we’re in a different place. It’s that relevance to constantly reinvent yourself that will always give you a way forward. Karl: All right. Why do you do what you do? Jeremy: Because I have permission to do it. And I’ve given myself permission to do this. I love helping businesses grow. I am an ideas person. I’m also a strategist and I have been able to architect Sticky Branding to play to those strengths. And I think I have if you look at all careers we’re squiggly, but the thing that gets me up every morning is to be able to help somebody else realize their dreams. I think branding is a choice that you choose to grow a Sticky Brand And you choose to make your brand something that people appreciate, and love and come back to again and again. And so if I can teach you how to do that, if I can show you the tools and provide you the process to get what’s in your mind down actually into your business, then that is to me the greatest reward of all. Karl: Yes. Okay. Who you are, where the audience can go to reach you? Jeremy: Okay. Well, my name is Jeremy Miller. I am the founder of sticky branding. I have written two books, Sticky Branding and Brand New Name. And the easiest way to find me is to just Google Sticky Branding. I’m on all the social networks at Sticky Branding or the website stickybranding.com. I’m Jeremy Miller and this is The Marketing Minute.

Welcome to the Marketing Minute! We’re a short-form story-driven podcast designed to provide value and industry insight—all in under ten minutes. Every episode, we invite an expert guest to answer three questions: What’s your favorite story for marketing communications professionals? What were the insights gained? Why do you do what you do? It’s all the value and nothing else. Succinct. Insightful. Actionable. Give us a listen, subscribe, and follow! 3-2-1. Done. Transcription: Karl: What’s your most insightful story for marketers? Benton: So one of our early campaigns was squatty potty. And of course now the squatty potty pooping unicorn is famous, and everyone’s seen it. And it’s, you know, kind of become a cultural phenomenon. People dress up as the unicorn for Halloween now, but it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, it started out as a stupid idea. And when we originally pitched that idea to squatty potty, every single person in their organization, except for one, thought it was a terrible idea and they said no. Two of the three original founders said no. The investors said, No. They even had an investor from Shark Tank who said no. Everyone thought it was a terrible idea. But, Bobby the CEO, he caught the vision of it. He saw it, he understood it, and even though no one else around him did, he gave us the green light. And he pushed forward and said, “Go for it.” At the time, we had no idea that he was going out on a limb and kind of putting his neck out there for this concept, but he gave us the green light. And we went and built this campaign. And I remember two days before it launched, I was talking to Bobby, and he was borderline sick, he was pale in the face like he was white. He was so scared for what was about to come. We’re like two days from launch. And he’s sitting here thinking to himself, what am I done? Like, I am, uh, I have this company we’ve got, you know, I think at the time they had, you know, $4 million per year in sales or something like that. So it’s already, you know, a successful company on you know, on a successful trajectory. So he’s like, I am about to put a freaking pooping unicorn on my brand, as the spokesperson of my company. Like, discuss Could be brand suicide, this could be the end of squatty potty, this could be the end of my tenure as CEO like that is the type of thing that he was facing in that moment. I remember he looked at me and he was like, Benton this has to work. Like it just has to work. I bet everything on this. I’ve even gone against my investors Council and best wishes to do this. And I remember that was the moment where I was like, geez, like, you could have told us this in the beginning. Like there. There’s nothing we can really do about it now other than just go live with it and and hope for the best. Karl: What are the insights that you were able to derive from that story? That’s a fantastic story. Benton: I think at the at the end of the day, Bobby trusted his gut. He caught the vision of it. And he knew that it was right. And he knew that it was work there that it would work. But he had to take the risk. He had to roll the dice and go for it. He had to do something bold and he had to ignore it. All of the naysayers and the detractors to move forward with it, you know, and of course now history shows like what a brilliant move it was, you know, me made millions and millions of dollars from from that campaign and it. You know, completely changed the trajectory of, of that brand. But at the time, that was a really scary, bold move for him and, and to this day, I just take my hat off to Bobby for having the courage to do something like that. Karl: Tremendous is that a bit like, trust your gut and make the leap? Benton: Yeah, I mean, when it comes to trusting our gut, we always have to, you know, look at the risks, look at the potential rewards, look at any data that’s available, and we bring all of those different inputs together to generate a decision, but at the end of the day, yeah, we we do have to take some risks in our decision making. If we’re not taking risks, then we’re not ever setting ourselves up for that. Big rewards. Karl: Love it. Okay, now, can you say who you are and what you do? Benton: I’m Benton crane CEO of Harmon brothers. I lead a team of brilliant storytellers who are the creative geniuses behind some of the most famous campaigns on the internet, including squatty potty, popery, chatbooks, purple mattresses, and many others. We’ve driven over $400 million in sales and over 1.5 billion views. Our mission is to share better stories and make the world a better place. I’m Benton crane and this is the marketing minute

Benton Crane is the CEO of Harmon Brothers, the company behind viral videos that have generated more than a billion views and $350 million in sales.  Viral marketing can be simply seen as stories with the stickiest concepts in our minds. That’s the approach Benton has taken in his quest to fix problems in the digital marketing space. He’s on this episode to discuss why you might be sitting on a goldmine of viral potential but you still need the right set of tools to strike gold! “There’s no better format for storytelling than TV and film.” Just a few of the points you’ll learn in this episode: How trust can be a strong foundation for a successful company What does “freedom” have to do with talent and creativity? How can advertising make the world a better place? Why is storytelling the best form of communication? In addition, with respect to video and social media marketing, you’ll also learn the following: Exactly where is passion most useful throughout the creative process? What do Star Wars and your product/service have in common?  What’s deeply baked into your DNA and how does it influence your business? Does it make a difference when you truly believe in a product? “People are inherently good and smart…when you trust them… they do amazing things.” Believing in your client’s vision can turn a simple video into a great piece of storytelling! “It can sound light-hearted but things like the Squatty Potty have actually improved millions of lives.” Where to learn more about and reach : harmonbrothersuniversity.com   Benton Crane 

“I started at the Smithsonian when marketing wasn’t even a thing.” Atokatha Ashmond Brew learned valuable lessons during her time working at The Smithsonian. Little did she know exploring the past at the world’s largest museum would lead her to analyze past buying decisions around consumer behavior across many non-profit and for-profit organizations. Atokatha Ashmond Brew is a Senior Director for Client Marketing & Strategic Communications. She specializes in branding, strategic marketing, and communication to build excitement for brands and pinpoint profit opportunities. Atokatha is always asking herself how do we predict performance? How do we effectively market products, services, and measure growth? She discusses what it takes to be a high-energy marketeer/entrepreneur and the opportunities in disguise during changing times. “What we knew yesterday continues to change.” Just a few of the points you’ll learn in this episode: The importance of enthusiasm for our work  Machine Learning and predictive analytics (effective money management) Why it’s so important to monitor tasks beyond simple spreadsheets! How can you tactfully use information portals? “If you want to specialize in a particular area, you still need to understand other disciplines of marketing to put it all together. ” Marketers   How can “smart data” improve content for your audience?  Why is the past behavior of your target audience so important?  Online certifications that are as helpful as traditional institutions   What do hirers look for when choosing a new marketer? Entrepreneurs  What’s a helpful way to measure your progress? (Observing other organizations)  Interested in building a team? Which skills should you prioritize?  How to pivot your appeal to shifting conditions (especially pandemic times)  Why it’s important to stick to the facts of each day (webinars, podcasts, AMAs) “When we are working, we’re still a human unit.” Where to learn more about and reach Atokatha Ashmond Brew and references mentioned: Linkedin Profile Nonprofit HR Covid-19 Portal