The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

I have a problem. “Hi… my name is Brian… and I am addicted to tabs.” I normally have four Chrome browser windows open with 20 to 30 tabs open in each—that’s over 100 tabs. As you age, things slow down (I can’t run or jog as fast), and I believe your brain gets full. My memory is still sharp, but I have to admit that there are many more ideas, facts, and concepts that I had to remember before the lightning-fast, internet-based information overtook reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica. AI is an excellent tool for quick research or jogging your memory. AI is an excellent tool for defining ideas and concepts and exploring new ways to build or clarify supporting content. AI is an excellent tool to bounce your content off of, like a writing partner who gets you. But it’s ultimately up to you to make it sound and feel like you wrote it. My main point is “You be You!” You have to define your voice, style, and process. No matter what you write, AI can be a great tool, but it does not replace the need to integrate your style and personality. Remember, AI uses other people’s content to help you make points, but your thought leadership is an active tool that AI has not mastered… YET!

I recently came up with a Billion-Dollar Idea. I am sharing it with you, so please don’t share it with anyone else. It’s going to make me rich, and I would not want anyone to copy or steal it. I created an app that will stop delivering snail mail, emails, texts, radio, and TV commercials once you have voted in an election. The only problem I have not been able to work out is that it does not work if your spouse or partner has not voted yet. Political marketing is about how a candidate or a party will affect you, your family, and your life. Business marketing is about getting attention and then getting people to make a choice (buy or vote for) and take action (buy or vote). What I mean by vote is to choose to interact with or at least not block or unfollow. Automation and AI in marketing help collect, analyze, and utilize data faster, better, and maybe cheaper. This is the allure, but it lacks the emotion necessary to develop a relationship. That takes people. Sometimes, your most powerful tool is pen and paper or a note-taker app. Capturing that information and transferring it to your CRM or ERP will give you data that will become useful for AI or even a word cloud app to gauge the pulse of business today.

Back in the day (circa 2013), I spent a lot of time networking. I attended up to 20 events per month. It has slowed down since, but I have always found some value in networking. That all changed in 2020. The pandemic shut down in-person events and everything went virtual via Zoom. While it decimated some groups, others thrived due to the ability to network with others not within driving distance. In 2022, in-person events were coming back, but people were reevaluating the time and costs of local networking. I have always said, “Relationships are the currency of business.” I also tend to view business relationships as a way to help my clients and contacts make more money. By focusing on business and not just sales, you create relationships that were not built around the transfer of cash but the cooperative transfer of wisdom, insight, and quality connections.

It’s incredible how fast things change. Do you remember that slogan? “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby.” That phrase was used in an advertising campaign for Virginia Slims, a brand of cigarettes marketed specifically to women. The slogan was introduced in 1968, and cigarette ads were banned in 1971. It lasted only three years but was so successful that it’s still remembered and used today in cultural references. In the first four years of the 2020s, technology has not changed much except that it has become cheaper, faster, and more powerful. But when it comes to marketing, the game has completely changed. Today, I want to discuss the three things we must pay the most attention to and how you can increase your ability to break through the marketing morass and noise. Some of you may remember the Toys R Us ad “I Don’t Want to Grow Up,” which touted play and toys. I still have that feeling today. I love toys. AI is a toy that helped me come up with this post. Computers are fun because they help us do so many things: become organized, be better communicators and more analytical thinkers. I believe that thinking of marketing as play with data, computers, and tools can help us focus on the fun and not the function. And be careful not to choke on your marketing efforts.

I confess that I try to simplify things down to binary choices: good and evil, easy and hard, the boogeyman and Superman. But I think that in our ever-polarized world, there is becoming a blurred line between truth and opinion. When it comes to marketing, I tend to think of Google and Search as the boogeyman and content marketing as Superman. Yet, like energy, they are a symbiotic and correlated existence that exists and has to function to help businesses market to their audiences and prospects. I believe you have to think like a superhero like Superman to overcome the erosion in website traffic. I know companies are hoping to find a superhero to help them overcome the challenges of getting their content in front of the new and right set of eyes to help them maintain and grow their business. I believe that you have to be either the actual superhero or at least the sidekick like Batman’s Robin. I believe that superheroes are not just fictional characters like Batman or Superman. I know that they are more like you and me. We are heroes if we learn and grow from our experiences and use them to help others better their lives.

A question often asked is whether it was easier to reach your buying audience in the past or today. My answer is both. Less choice meant you had less to learn but took a more significant risk. With more choices, you have more to learn and often have to use more marketing platforms to reach the same audience, but you run the risk that multiple could fail simultaneously. The one thing that has never changed is the audience. What you were selling in the past and what you are selling today may have changed, but people are still people. People may have changed where and what they are paying attention to, but little has changed in what attracts and motivates them to act regarding ads and messages. It may seem that AI is making email and websites less relevant, but due to the evolving landscape in search and answers of AI, I am here to tell you that I find them more important than ever before. I wish I had a crystal ball to help predict what next new technology will help make your business more successful, but alas I don’t. As I hinted early on, the one thing that does not change is people. They may change what tools they use or how they consume content, but they are still people. They have needs, biases, and emotions that can be directed and affected by what and how you communicate to them.

There is a debate about whether and when AI content will be as good or better than human-generated content. I believe that it will always be a mix of both. Two Truths The two lists above (the binary choices and 3 options) were generated by AI. I rearranged and edited them to my liking so they fit better with the concepts I am trying to get across today. Although there are people in marketing who will use AI to generate content and post that as humans, I believe that both are needed, necessary, and can co-exist in marketing to help create awareness, educate, and generate sales. Artificial Intelligence compiles content that was primarily generated by humans, so it is both computer and human content. You can use AI to rewrite your human-generated content and use your personality and experience to enhance and add your signature to it. You can use AI to generate ideas and concepts that you can use within your personally written content. If someone is an expert in websites or social media, they will argue that they are more important. Then, people who work in the AI world will say that AI is faster and more cost-efficient than the human version of content creation.

One of my all-time favorite jokes is about babies… “How many babies does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “None – they neither have the cognitive or motor skills to perform such a task!” You could imagine a baby holding a lightbulb and trying to insert it into a lamp or socket. But if you wanted to see it, you could log into an AI image generator to create one. AI opens some interesting conundrums about the use of images. Who owns the copyright? What if you use a well-known person? Can you be sued? Images are assets. These assets can be bought and sold. What once was a free image that you picked up from free image sites like Pixabay or Pexels can be sold to a paid-for library. Those libraries can use tools like Google Lens or a metadata search to find that specific image. At this point, I feel safe creating images with Firefly because I have a paid account with Adobe for their creative suite and their Stock Images (two different accounts). I would not be as confident using anything I am not paying for. Even if you win the battle, you are spending your time trying to ward off what I consider an attack.

If you manage your own or other business websites, I imagine you are using Google Analytics or another data manager to explore the traffic to your website. Generally, you measure how much traffic you get, how long people stay, and which pages or posts get the most traffic. Another key indicator is where the traffic is coming from. This includes organic search (Google searches), direct (typing or clicking a URL), referral (link from another website), organic social (multiple social media sites), and something called unassigned (catch-all for all others). I have seen customers and clients who pay attention to numbers that have little to no connection to reality. What I mean is, how can you tell when a human is really getting to your website and spending quality time? Google considers engagement as someone spending at least ten seconds on a page or post. Considering that is what most people need to read a headline, look at a picture, and decide if this is for them, that’s a pretty low bar. Most content is posted once, and then forgotten. That assumes that it was only right for the audience who was following your business at the time it was posted. What you have is an asset. That asset can be reposted to social media more often than once. It could be posted 10-15 times and seen by a different set of eyes each time. That’s what happens when I repost my Baconisms. I post the same 30+ image sayings every month. I see random comments and likes each month that I have not seen before. “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.” – Charles M. Schulz In this episode, we will explore how to increase views on your content by the right audience… at the RIGHT times! . Want To See How To Market BETTER? - Click Here

I could easily take my old blogs and ask AI to rewrite them to reflect today’s business environment better. That would certainly be faster than my two-finger typing, re-working sections, and asking a VA to proof and post, but would it or could it be more successful or effective? Most businesses will ebb and flow between profit and deficit, and you sometimes have to cut expenses to offset a deficit of profits. When it comes to marketing, outcomes are profits and content creation and distribution are part of the expense. As long as those outcomes lead to financial profits, marketing goes from being an expense to an investment. Businesses have a longer and more chartable P.A.T.H. to purchase. They go from Awareness to Engagement to Inquiry to Purchase. By chartable P.A.T.H., I mean there are data points you can track and measurably follow from send to sale.

I was listening to a podcast interview with comedian Mike Birbiglia. I was not familiar with him, but I found his take on comedy interesting. He believes that comedians have a one-on-one relationship with their audiences. Social media and podcasts can help to create a more intimate relationship with fans. Some influencers lose that connection because they become an outsized version of themselves. They get lost in the audience’s abyss and lose the connection with individuals. They become unapproachable. I find the same thing with marketing. We tend to lose sight of that one-on-one relationship and get lost in the abyss of the avatar. A comedian is selling entertainment with jokes. You, on the other hand, are selling profits or solutions through hardware, software, and services. As a sales and marketing organization, you need to craft a story around your products and services that will resonate with individual buyers. Getting potential customers to know, like, and trust you is a journey. Each has a unique place in the Customer Journey.

I want to do something a little different today. I want to share with you my why. If you can figure out your why, I believe you are halfway to success. Simon Sinek tells us to start with why. But I believe that why is not all-encompassing and as simple as finding one why on your way to the top. I believe there are a series of whys. Why are you in or running a business? Why are you in the niche or market that you serve? Why do you offer the specific products or services you sell? The other thing I have found is that, over time, your why can change and evolve as you change and evolve. I believe that understanding the “why” questions and how others may perceive you is not only useful but critical in business. It can help you get a peek into how clients, prospects, and vendors may perceive you before you start to interact. Then, the rest is up to you to collect data from interactions.

How do you define success? Success is not measured like temperature with a static scale or counting system. It is an abstract system that is different for every person and business. With today’s Attention Economy, you may think that likes and clicks are the most important metric. But I am here to tell you that profits are the main thing to measure in business. Profits come from sales. In this Attention Economy, companies are trying different tools and techniques to stand out. You have two invaluable assets that others don’t have: relationships with your current and past customers and their contact information. In other words, you already have their attention! Creating USP messages and thought leadership content that is focused on those who already know you is faster, cheaper, and better than trying to snag the attention of people who don’t already know, like, and trust you.

AI is machine learning. It’s great for repetitive tasks. It collects knowledge and synthesizes it into useful compilations. AI machine learning can be predictable. “I” learning is what we do when we interact with people. It’s as unpredictable as an amateur golf swing. Interacting with humans requires empathy, psychology, self-awareness, and patience. It is time-consuming and can have different results on different days. Interacting with people is how we do business. People do business with people, and although AI can help, it cannot replace human-to-human interaction. In the world of generating leads, social networks, and business in the post-pandemic economy, it’s not just connections that matter. It’s who you are connecting with and who they have in their networks that matter. It’s your job to stay connected and keep you, your business, and your content and concepts top of mind with them. Active connections create relationships, businesses, and referrals.

In business, we need to embrace systems to align people with processes. Companies spend time and money on systems to speed up or simplify processes. The one thing that stands in the way of business systems being effective is people. You are working with a group of people with different life experiences, goals, and beliefs. As much as we try, we can’t dig deep into each individual and try to align them based on their unique perspective, so we try to find a middle ground with the expectation of varying degrees of adaptation. We then create documents and training to help the alignment process. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) help us to set expectations, give instructions, and align expectations. Then, just like a kindergarten recital, you have some who fidget, adlib, or move to the beat of their own drum. With marketing, we often utilize systems and SOPs to reach our current, past, and prospective customers. We would all love it if one system (law, scripture, or proclamation) reached all three audiences because it would simplify and reduce time and expense. Yet, when you define success as a sale, it’s one person with a team of decision-makers that you ultimately must convince to buy from you rather than your competition.

Businesses, especially ones that have well-established systems and methodologies, tend to ebb and flow. It’s pretty common for a business to slow in the dog days of summer and pick up in the fall, but I hear frustrations from some and jubilation from others. I was conversing with a client about how business has changed since COVID-19 (2021-2022). Before that time, you could meet people in person at networking events, conferences, and more. Marketing and connection emails were being sent and opened (albeit at a 20-30% open rate). Phone calls were being received and returned. In most ways, it was not easy, but it was feasible to create leads through standard means that have worked for years. More recently, ads and content have flooded Google and social media. That worked well for a while, but Google Search is being replaced with AI and greater ad competition (and cost). Organic marketing starts with gathering data about your current customer base and reaching them with thought leadership content that focuses on what is top of mind with them. Then, you can find out what topics or slants on solutions are available and focus on them briefly. I can guarantee you one thing: Doing more of the same or spending more money on the problem will probably not create a solution.

I had the opportunity to travel to the South Carolina Coast for my son’s wedding. However, I dreaded the idea that renting a house or condo was the only way to stay on Edisto Island. I had visions of Florida or Myrtle Beach, where the coast has huge hotels and condos. When it comes to marketing a B2b business online, it’s more like Edisto than Myrtle Beach. Edisto is trying to reach a niche audience that is harder to find and communicate with. Yet, it can only serve a limited number of customers. They would love more sales, but scaling takes time and resources. When it comes to using LinkedIn to grow sales, many thoughts, techniques, and tools are being pushed, sold, and pontificated on. The problem is that LinkedIn users are not on the platform to be sold. They are there to build networks, learn new things, and, frankly, find opportunities (like jobs).

When I was a kid, I did not have to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow! But it was before you could buy calculators and computers in the dollar store. I am trying to remember any algebra, trig, or calculus that I actually use today. Much of it was based on formulas and principles. I know it’s used in science and computing, but I’m in sales, marketing, and advertising. Most of the math I do today is primarily in accounting and spreadsheets. There is a bit of geometry involved in creating art in Photoshop. Art and music use geometry, math, and formulas. Business is about math. Income minus expenses equals profits. Advertising is not any different. You want to spend as little as possible to increase sales to make more profit. Let’s look at relationship marketing as MATH. Or better yet, and an acronym. MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help. To sum up, MATH is HARD. But if you want to add more customers and multiply your profits, you should subtract some old processes and then divide and conquer to help the right people at the right time. “If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.” – Francis Bacon .In this episode… We will discuss how MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help and could help lead to future success.

Growing old means having another day to learn, live, love, and grow. If you choose to continue to learn every day, you acquire wisdom. That wisdom may or may not help you become more successful, but I find that to stay relevant in business, you have to continue to follow trends and learn from experts who may be both younger and older than you! When it comes to marketing, I think we need a team of specialists to help us deal with what ails our business pain. Often, what is diagnosed as a lack of traffic to a website is actually caused by a process associated with the end goal… producing more sales. One issue with healthcare is you see a bunch of doctors. They take notes and fill them into a database. Then, the other doctors can read the notes and do their best to interpret the meaning behind the entries. Rarely do they ever get on the phone or an online meeting to collaborate. Each acts like an informed silo. Marketing (like healthcare) may become disconnected and even redundant if you work with multiple individuals (or only one or two). Just as sales rely on good marketing, your website visitors rely on quality information that is easy to find and navigate. Finally, you want to capture as much data about who is visiting and where they are going as possible.

One big difference between Chicago and Raleigh is traffic. Chicago has basic north-south east-west routes and a lake that stops you from going east at one point. Raleigh has roads that can go east-west-north-south within a few miles, and you cannot live without a GPS. Also, Chicago has many 8-12 lane roads while Raleigh has 2-6 at most points. Yet, it takes almost twice the time to go the same distance in Chicago as it does here in Raleigh. I like to think of Chicago traffic as consumer traffic on the internet. It takes a fairly direct route from searching for a product or service to getting people to that exit ramp (right before the shopping cart). It’s a 12-lane road that gives consumers fairly direct choices based on price or website authority (think Amazon). I like to think of Raleigh traffic as business-to-business traffic on the internet. There are fewer lanes and roads. It’s more scenic because most B2b sales don’t go directly from search to shopping cart. It’s harder to get Google to serve up your content because chances are your company is smaller and has less authority than, say, a big Fortune 500 that offers what you do on a bigger scale to a larger audience. You have to find out where your prospects are and give them a free GPS to end up and interact with your website.

Back in 1997, Deep Blue (an IBM computer) defeated Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time, in a six-game match with a final score of 3.5-2.5 in favor of Deep Blue. Almost 20 years later, in 2016, Google’s AlphaGo program achieved a similar victory by defeating Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top professional Go players, in a five-game match with a final score of 4-1. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been around for decades, yet they were not accessible to you and me. Now that they are, they’re predicted to change marketing (and life in general) forever. Experts, insiders, and reporters expect good and bad from AI. Some predict Skynet from the Terminator movies, while others expect it to cure cancer. Ockham’s razor would predict that it’s probably something in the middle. Companies and their leaders are telling us that they are working to make your experience better and part of the greater good of humanity. Search is supposed to provide the best answer to your search prompt, and social media is supposed to serve the content you want to see. In reality, it’s more about profits than principles. Search is optimized to get you to click ads—that’s how Google makes over 75% of its revenue. Facebook feeds your friendships and shows posts meant to stir the pot and keep you engaged. Facebook makes over 95% of its profits from ad sales. Ockham’s razor would show us that trying to find and win customers through search and social media would benefit the platform more than you. It’s like a casino with all that noise of winners on its machines, but the odds have been programmed to make the casino much more money than it’s paying out! When it comes to marketing, we have been using AI since the beginnings of Google and Facebook. Both are run through algorithms.

I have always been entertained and enamored by magic tricks. When people see one performed, they usually have one of two reactions: amazement or curiosity. The amazement is, “How did they do that?” and the curiosity is, “How did they do that?” Some people will look forward to the next one, while others are distracted by trying to figure out the sleight of hand. At every turn, your data is being collected, and how that data is used, sold, and utilized is still like a magic trick. The only way to truly opt out of everything is to simply stop using computers. Yet, we are seeing success not in creating more content but in creating better content that is served to the right people. The right people are people who have been on your website in the past or are finding you for the first time. Artificial intelligence scrubs the web and provides generic answers that combine multiple sources with articles that have been posted in the past. Quality content includes your own personal perspective and experiences with a topic, combined with the knowledge of the audience you are trying to reach (specifically, your current and prospective customers).

Do you remember life before Beepers, CB Radios, and Fax Machines? All three gained momentum and popularity in the ’70s and ’80s and peaked in the ’90s. However, all three fell victim to mobile phones. Beepers became text messaging, faxes became email, and CB radios became Nextel phones and then standard mobile phones. Artificial Intelligence is about to completely disrupt how your business is found on the internet, making it harder for small—and midsized businesses to stand out and be found. It will affect consumer businesses more than B2b businesses, but it will continue to get harder, not easier. But there is good news. You can still take action to make sure you and your business are actively seen by companies that need what you sell. I think creating a symbiotic relationship between your sales and marketing teams and between your sales and marketing data makes sense. You may need to hire (internal or external) to help manage the data and the sales relationships and create reports to help your company’s sales and marketing teams identify trends and opportunities, and maybe avoid missteps.

As Artificial Intelligence begins to overtake the marketing world, I think it’s a good idea to get nostalgic about marketing and see how we can infuse it with a modern-day perspective. When you get down to the core of marketing, it’s about people. Marketing is creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society. At its core, it’s about getting people to buy something. Consumer marketing is often self-serve. People select and buy products and services based on marketing alone. A sales team and process usually facilitate a sale in the business-to-business world. Business-to-business marketing is more about enhancing human-to-human relationships that lead to sales. It’s more like a door-to-door salesman selling vacuums than an Amazon drone delivering one before your current vacuum breaks. Organic Marketing is often defined as content creation and distribution versus paid advertising to attract leads. It’s a digital marketing strategy that generates traffic to your website, builds brand awareness, and attracts potential customers. B2b Organic Marketing means the ultimate goal is to connect those potential customers with your sales team and process.

In sports (and in business), two factors affect success. The physical and the mental are two parts of the whole, yet one is easier to evaluate to predict success… especially in football. In business, we tend to focus more on the mental than the physical of the people we work with. This is why artificial intelligence is both an opportunity and a detriment. AI has the benefit of agility and speed with decision-making. It also has a bit more consistency and predictability than humans. If you take a robot with adequate physical abilities and supercharge it with AI, it can score wins in a more frequent and predictable model. The scary part is that it learns from the past and tries to predict the future. When AI makes decisions based on an unforeseen circumstance, it will either shut down or fail. It may learn from mistakes but often lacks the emotion or empathy to evaluate its decisions from a moral or personal perspective. Golf, football, baseball, and other sports are generally described as a game of inches. Golf is about the six inches between your ears. Even if you have mastered the physical skills, your mind can keep you guessing. The question is, what data are you paying attention to, and how fast can you make an educated decision? I find that capturing, processing, and utilizing data is key to success… in sports and in business.

I was just in Chicago at the American Marketing Association’s Leadership Conference, where 400 people from around North America, representing 50+ chapters, came to learn and grow with and from each other. Conferences are great for networking, learning, and getting out of the routine work rut, but they are also very peoply. Sometimes, too peoply. Like social media and audio amplifiers, my brain has a self-preservation technique of shutting down when I spend too much time with people. As a salesperson, peopling is your job. The barrier is that you are reaching out to people you probably don’t know and trying to converse at a noisy dinner table. Promoting your brand is not 100% about what you sell. It’s about you as a person and how business and the personal interconnect. LinkedIn is one of your best platforms for sharing and caring if you are in the business-to-business sales world.

Growing up in New York, Yogi Bera was one of my favorite characters. He was a good player but even more of a philosopher (well, sort of). Some of his most famous “Deep Yogi Thoughts” include: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” “You can observe a lot by watching.” “Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.” “You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.” “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.” Baseball is a sport. It’s not quite as life-or-death as a gladiator in a Roman coliseum, but some people feel like it is (especially in the payoffs). But it’s certainly not war, or is it? Speaking of war, Donald Rumsfeld had a Yogi Bera moment during a press conference in 2002. Rumsfeld was the U.S. Secretary of Defense in the period right after 9/11 when our leaders were contemplating attacking Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction. The direct quote was, “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me because, as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know, we don’t know.” While that quote may be a bit confusing, the underlying concepts of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” have been used in various fields like project management, risk assessment, and strategic planning for decades. I would like to look at it from the perspective of marketing in today’s multigenerational, AI-infused digital online marketing world!

When you think of unicorns, I am sure the first thing that comes to mind is a mythical and colorful horse with a single horn. Although there are no living, breathing unicorns that I have ever seen, I know unicorns are REAL! Real unicorns in business refer to an elite privately funded startup that has crossed the $1 billion valuation mark, usually in the technology field. When you think of business leads, I am sure the first thing that comes to mind is a real-life person who needs and wants to buy what you are selling. Although there are living, breathing people who buy what you sell, I am proposing to you that most business leads are NOT REAL! A business sales lead is a person or organization that potentially needs what you sell (products, services, or a mix of both). You can define leads as cold, warm, and hot. I understand that business needs leads to create new sales, but I propose that you have options other than buying names or researching people who are cold leads that require your sales team to spend hours and thousands of dollars trying to qualify and pursue them as prospects. Chances are, you are not selling to unicorns. Believe it or not, you can buy Pixie Dust on Amazon. Either way, the road to our business-to-business realities always begin and end with people. Happy customers and great relationships lead to referrals, which are often sprinkled with the Pixie Dust of trust!

One of the most recognized sounds computer lovers remember is the dial-up connection and AOL’s announcement that says, “You’ve Got Mail!” It was like a sugar high whenever you heard that sound. Nowadays, most of us feel like we have the stabbing pain of a cavity when we hear our Outlook or Gmail inbox notification saying, “You’ve Got Mail!” What changed? The biggest difference is that many (if not most) of the emails we get today have one goal: to sell us something. Some of that is subtle, like email lists we have signed up for, while others are just blatant phishing, which is a random solution (or at least they say so) in search of a problem. It’s hard to have the time and resources to optimize data, but that is one of the single activities that can impact email marketing success. All too often, we import names and emails into email programs and lists because it’s easy. What’s a bit harder is collecting more detailed information and tagging contacts along their lifecycle on your email list. I hate to break it to you, but people don’t want your newsletter. Newsletters are about you, and they are interested in what benefits them. Yet companies create emails with five or twenty stories (some or all with links). The real challenge is finding and creating content relative to your audience when you send it. It is so important to create fresh, specific, and timely content. The best way to prime your business for the AI revolution is to learn how it works for you and your company in the current business environment and then adapt as the tools become smarter and more accessible (and affordable).

Let’s face it. We are living in a world that is overwhelmed with information. 380 new websites are created every minute, and over 500,000 new websites are added every day 7 million blog posts are published across the internet daily 300 BILLION emails are sent per day (85% spam) 720,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube (30,000 days’ worth of video content) per day AI-generated content creation will double those numbers in less than a year Getting your messages in front of any audience is getting harder and harder, let alone the perfect audience who might care about what you do or sell. Okay… Take a deep breath. It’s not all doom and gloom. All of that information is only a problem if you are trying to outperform companies with deeper pockets and more cutting-edge resources. You can totally zig while your competition zags. While most businesses are hunting for new clients in the internet marketing space, you can grow your business better and faster using relationship marketing principles. These principles are based on psychology, sociology, and human-to-human principles that date back to the beginning of time. Let’s dive into five myths and remedies that may help you achieve your desired outcomes while spending less money and making more in the long run.

Mulch is made by shredding trees. Finer shredding improves the soil over time. As organic mulches decompose, they can add nutrients and organic matter to the soil, enhancing its quality. Mulch is not only decorative but also functional. It helps plants by regulating soil temperature, retaining water, and preventing weeds and erosion—all from recycled trees. I think of creating content as an ecosystem, just like a tree. It starts with an idea or a seed of thought. It grows and builds roots in your business marketing. Then, it provides nutrients to help feed itself and your business. Running a business is hard. The bigger the business, the more complex it is. You have to manage issues like people, finance, supply and demand, sales, marketing, and what I consider the most challenging part… finding customers and keeping them happy. Like a tree turns CO² into oxygen, you can turn lessons into relationships. This means converting those lessons into strategic marketing ideas that facilitate sales. Reinvention is based on results. It requires critical listening and critical thinking to understand the subtleties. You can hear how the bass drum and bass guitar build a foundation while the strings on the chorus lift the message to a different level. It has to become a habit of consuming fuel that drives you forward to success.

You may not think about it, but we are surrounded by messages and ads all day long. In today’s digital age, the average person encounters between 6,000 and 10,000 ads daily. We are bombarded with billboards, snail mail, radio, and TV, not to mention all the social media content, spam emails, and robocalls. All of that noise has one goal: to get you to spend or give your money to them. The never-ending battle for your attention and dollars is waged relentlessly daily. This works because we are personally tied to our beliefs, egos, and needs. We all want to be right, liked, and sustained without being taken advantage of. We face a lot of noise that is trying to persuade us. We tend to pay attention to what we find relevant. If you think about it, each change in our economy has created new opportunities while the status quo has deteriorated before our eyes. People who refused to reinvent themselves and their businesses fell by the wayside, while others saw their fortunes explode. Revolution is based on promises. Promises are like music that we have already heard. You may have an emotional connection, but the next song forms a new connection once the song ends. It’s a sugar high that peaks and falls. Reinvention is based on results. It requires critical listening and critical thinking to understand the subtleties. You can hear how the bass drum and bass guitar build a foundation while the strings on the chorus lift the message to a different level. It has to become a habit of consuming fuel that drives you forward to success.

If you have been involved in online marketing in any way over the last 10+ years, you have been fed a steady diet of more. More followers equals more sales. More hits to your website equals more sales. More social media engagement leads to more sales. Almost nobody would argue that more sales are bad, but people have conflated more with better. I am here to say that better is worth more. In the world of relationship marketing, sales begin at connection. A connection can come in the form of a follow, a friend request, a connection request, a message, a website form submission, or whatever each platform uses to start, generate, and maintain conversations and relational connections. The main goal is to stay top of mind and maintain a connection so people will see your content, consume it, and hopefully learn something, and then engage in a relationship at the time of their choosing. That is the promise of social media. They do this for free, so people will pay for advertising to do just that!

Trust has to be planted and grown. It is a seed planted through a personal relationship. It needs to grow roots and be nurtured through light and water to produce fruit. Trust must be watered by honesty, warmed and fed through the light of integrity, and rooted in consistency. Strong roots and branches provide shade and shelter in the stormy weather of doubt. It would be great if there were a way to measure trust. You can calculate the number of people who know or connect with you. You can measure likes by the number of people who interact with your social posts or open your emails. However, trust can only be seen when a transaction happens. There are five stages to go from like to trust: Connection, Caution, Consistency, Courage, and Commitment. No tool, system, or software program can automate trust. You may think that sending emails, keeping people in the loop, and sending them direct messages may help, and they do. But the only way to maintain and nurture trust is through human-to-human interaction.

Going from Know to Trust requires a stepping stone, and that’s called a Like. You can try to jump over that stone, but it leads to a transactional two-step. You may make a sale, but it will not build a relationship. Relationships are key in the B2b world because businesses need to be reminded that you are there to serve them when needed and that they can continue to trust you. Like is a connection. Online a connection is a follow, friend request, or whatever a social platform says its phrase is defined as a positive affinity, rapport, or fondness with someone in a digital sense. In the literal sense, like means you have something in common. For example, I like dogs, golf, music, humor, motivation, family, and business. The more you have in common with certain people, the more they will like you. So, it is the activity that gets someone who knows you to know you better. It’s about informing without dividing. It’s about making them feel something. It’s about forming a bond around subjects that matter to both of you. The goal is to stay in touch and be top of mind. The goal is not just to sell something. There are three final points that I believe need to be addressed.

Know is a beautiful word. People ask, “You know what?” They text IYKYK (meaning if you know, you know). Know can also be a derivative of knowledge. Know is a two-way street when it comes to marketing. You want people to know about you and your business. You may also want to know who knows about you and your business. Knowing who knows what is almost like the old Abbott and Costello bit, “Who’s on first.” Or, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Just because someone becomes aware of your business or gets to know you exist does not guarantee that they will remember you a week, month, or year from now. That means that you have to remind them that you are there and that you are still relevant. As I mentioned, there are three kinds of marketing: awareness, education, and sales. Awareness is about being top of mind. With awareness marketing, your goal isn’t to inform, educate, or convince. It’s about raising your hand and saying, “HEY… we’re still here!”

The concept of “Know – Like – Trust” has been around for a while. It is commonly attributed to author Bob Burg (Endless Referrals and The Go-Giver). Another person attributed to the concept is sales trainer Michael Goldstein, who talked about buyers needing to experience “confidence, affinity, and empathy” before making purchases. No matter who originated it or how you phrase it, it’s undoubtedly a foundational process to making a sale. When I say process, it’s one foot in front of the other sequence. Yet many business people try to hop over the like part and go from know to trust. Know, Like, and Trust has three distinct phases when it comes to marketing to build relationships. One of the critical principles that muddies the water when it comes to business-to-business relationship marketing is the concept that your business is trying to appeal to the largest audience possible. In business, sales are the KPI that drive everything from employee compensation, innovation budgets, and, in some cases, investor and shareholder enthusiasm. The concepts of Know, Like, and Trust are intertwined, yet each has its own purpose, process, and performance metrics. One last key thing to remember is that marketing people are part of your sales team, and salespeople are part of your marketing team.

Networking has been around for a long time in business. Some of the names you may recognize (Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller) were prolific advocates of networking. As we know it today, networking started taking hold in the 1970s. More formal groups like BNI (Business Networking International) started in 1984. Tradeshows, associations, and even chambers of commerce are all forms of networking. One of the best philosophies I have ever learned about networking is that business is not B2B (business to business); it’s H2h (human to human). Humans are complex beings. They have emotions, biases, experiences, expectations, fears, hopes, and random acts of kindness or stupidity (depending on the planet’s alignment and inspiration from higher powers). In face-to-face networking, we get a tiny glimpse into the complexity of a person’s overall being. Think of networking as a relationship bank! You have to make deposits to create interest. Every quality network you can tap into creates a foundational asset that can and will help grow your sphere of influence.

One of the foundations that’s stuck with me through the years is, “Businesses do not do business with other businesses. People do business with people.” There has never been a corporation that has ever paid cash or written a check. People do that. Yes, companies try to put you on autopilot by making you subscribe to things, but it still takes a human to enter the data and make the initial purchase. What had been the Horatio Alger dream of the Nineteenth Century, starting in the mail room and ultimately owning the bank or factory, now had even more scope. How many loyal workers dreamed of climbing the corporate ladder to become CEO of a multinational corporation? Part of the evolution of business is about teaching ourselves how to really network. There are many options, from associations to chambers of commerce to people who do informal and semi-formal free and paid events. Those events lead to people suggesting other networking opportunities. That could expand your Golden Rolodex even further, but how do you find value in networking?

What’s your image? Top view on pan with fried egg with bacon Babies are cute, puppies are cute, and bacon is not cute, but I bet your mouth watered a little bit. What if someone recently lost a baby? Maybe they are a cat person? What if they are an animal rights activist or vegan? Then, those first statements could not be any farther from the response you had hoped for. Brands, like cute, are in the eye of the beholder, but as a business, our brand is our image. Branding is complicated. It’s more than your logo, your corporate fonts and colors, and how you advertise to your perfect customers. It encompasses everything from the stock images you choose to how you answer the phone (or not) to what platforms you choose to distribute your content. Speaking of content, your content comprises text, images, and media (audio/video). It’s Not About You, it’s about people choosing you. So, what does BACON (Building Authentic Connections Online Networking) mean or look like to you and your business? I can assure you it is different for almost everyone, but all have some things in common. For B2b businesses, this means investing time in nurturing a long-term relationship. This may mean providing them with information in the form of articles or even providing them with connections that may turn into leads and sales for them first.

You can’t control change; it controls you. Chances are, you are in one of two camps: 1) Those who embrace technology or 2) Those who are overwhelmed with all the change. Now, you may still be a damn the torpedos, I am going to use my printed Franklin planner and Palm Pilot Blueberry thingy kind of person, but I want to try and help you understand what change matters and what may not when it comes to you and your business. My goal here is to help you better understand how to embrace the benefits of these changes. Heck, you can always hire an assistant to deal with all those technology changes that keep coming at you like stars in a hyperdrive Star Wars scene. It’s Not About You, it’s about people choosing you. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: In today’s reality, it’s not you choosing the customer, advocate, or power partner, they choose you! What you have to do is find a way to become distinctive, memorable, and top-of-mind. This is the power of social networking and social media, getting you to that top-of-mind position and helping you stay there. You just have to learn how to leverage the tools in a way that creates and enhances relationships.

I’ve spent more than forty-five years in business. During that time, business has experienced many changes, innovations, breakthroughs, revolutions, and upheavals. I’ve had the chance to see the birth and evolution of the personal computer, and I worked at the company that pioneered the cell phone. Then I watched the “brick” phone transform into a computer that fits in your pocket. I’ve watched and evolved with the growth of the internet. I’ve experienced the world before browsers, email, websites, Google, Facebook, and YouTube, and watched in awe as these new technologies emerged to create a complete paradigm shift in how we conduct business. In this new and revised version of the book, I will do my best to give you better context about your type of business. Let me start by defining two major categories that transcend most all marketing subcategories. “It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be.” – Malcolm Gladwell To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at B2bInteractiveMarketing.com

It’s been 10 years since I wrote my first and still my favorite book. I was faced with the challenge of deciding if I wanted to write a new book or update the original. This is the beginning of that journey… What follows is the prologue form the new book Sections Include: So here we are! The Birth of B2b The Teacher The Birth of this Book Fast Forward 10 Years 10,000 Hours Relationships that are fundamentally built on trust are what have been motivating us to change, take chances, learn, stay alive, and become better human beings! It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you’ll be. To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at B2bInteractiveMarketing.com – Malcolm Gladwell

Here are the top five New Year’s sayings or cliches: 1. Out with the Old, In with the New 2. New Year, New You 3. Another Chance for Us to Get It Right 4. See You Next Year 5. A Frest Start Now, I don’t want to become a Captain Buzzkill or minimize the significance of what the New Year may mean to you. We should all be proud that we survived to make another trip around the sun. We should enjoy all of those yearly retrospectives of what happened last year and revel in what lies ahead. After all, “Hope springs eternal.” But one of my favorite cliches goes like this, “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift… so be open to the present!’ Let’s explore some old and new that we can embrace in the present as we look ahead. “An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves”. – Bill Vaughan .In this episode… We will discuss how what’s old should become your NEW go to marketing ideas..

Mark S A Smith: Working in the world of technology since 1982, Mark uses systems thinking to help organizations successfully bring new, disruptive technology to market by orchestrating compelling, strategic conversations with executives. Mark’s authored many books including include his latest Pivot to Profit from IT Disruption, Security in the Boardroom, Linux in the Boardroom, Guerrilla Negotiating, Guerrilla TeleSelling, & Guerrilla Trade Show Selling. Forthcoming: Selling Disruption & Executive Strategy Skills. Mark is an electrical engineer, media technologist, computer programmer, hardware salesman, software marketer, business owner, executive coach, author, professional speaker, video producer, podcaster, blogger, musician, and father of five Millennial children who do not live at home. Ask Yourself: Just how good is my “crystal ball?” Is that going to get better or worse? How much do I need to be thinking about the future? How important are each of the timeframes to making decisions that impact our business? Action Plan: Build and frequently update a document to collect insights that impact the four timeframes. Hold “crystal ball” conversations with customers, vendors, partners, and industry leaders. Talk with people of all generations to get their thoughts and insights, to understand what they identify with, and what they feel is important. Look for changes in the way people think and make decisions. Contact Mark On LinkedIn - CLICK HERE

When I was a kid, I did not have to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow! But it was before you could buy calculators and computers in the dollar store. I am trying to remember any algebra, trig, or calculus that I actually use today. Much of it was based on formulas and principles. I know it’s used in science and computing, but I’m in sales, marketing, and advertising. Most of the math I do today is primarily in accounting and spreadsheets. There is a bit of geometry involved in creating art in Photoshop. Art and music use geometry, math, and formulas. Business is about math. Income minus expenses equals profits. Advertising is not any different. You want to spend as little as possible to increase sales to make more profit. Let’s look at relationship marketing as MATH. Or better yet, and an acronym. MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help. To sum up, MATH is HARD. But if you want to add more customers and multiply your profits, you should subtract some old processes and then divide and conquer to help the right people at the right time. “If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.” – Francis Bacon .In this episode… We will discuss how MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help and could help lead to future success.

Ely Delaney is an Automated Systems Strategist and the co-founder of Purple Knight Marketing, an education company designed to help entrepreneurs go from surviving to thriving in any economy. He’s an Amazon bestseller with his two books “Marketing Tidbits” and “Networking Tidbits” With a passion for connecting people, his best selling training course “Networking Like A Rockstar” has over 1350 students registered globally. Ely helps speakers, authors, and coaches automate their follow up to grow their business without having to have an MBA from MIT. He’s the guy to help you build a 24/7 automated system and turn you into a Follow-Up Rockstar! Connect with Ely - Click Here

This is the time of the year when there tends to be a heightened sense of humanity, spirituality, and morality in the air. Business slows down, and we start to think about something more than ourselves while being thrown into the mix of chaos, hustle, and short emotional fuses. Now, I don’t want to go all holier than thou on you because I am as flawed of a human as anyone else, but it’s good to take a breath and inventory how we may be different people in different circumstances. If you search Google (it has to be true because it’s on the internet), an article states, “While 94.6% of people say they think other people act differently online, only 57.1% say their online personality is the same as their in-person personality. While we see how others act differently online than in person, we don’t (or can’t) see it in ourselves as much.” Relationship marketing is different from a marketing relationship. Relationships come first. That does not mean you must become besties or even like each other. But you do have to create respect. That means it’s best to do unto others and ask for permission before digging deeper. That requires a relationship, and relationships are foundationally about trust. “There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.” – Sylvester Stallone .In this episode… We will discuss how to use empathy with B2b marketing, which could help lead to future success.

Mike has more than 20 years of experience in advertising and marketing, and his ability to understand and connect with an audience is the hallmark of his career. The approach he shares is what taught him how to understand an audience and deliver his message in a way they will not forget. Mike spent 13 years in the agency world as a client services specialist before joining Hasbro Toys and Games on the global marketing team, where he developed marketing and retail programs for brands like Transformers, Tonka Trucks, and Jurassic World. In 2015, he became the face of the Hasbro Gaming franchise, with the charge to establish the personality, attitude, and style of the Hasbro Gaming portfolio by creating a message the audience won’t soon forget. Mike has engaged his practice with audiences in the US, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, and the UK, and every one of these audiences remembers him for not just what he says, but how he connects with them.  After over 20 years of real-world experience, Mike is thrilled to share his experience with you, and to show you how to get your audience to say… “TELL ME MORE!” Learn More About Mike And His Company - Click Here

At the beginning of 2023, businesses were facing the possibility of rising inflation, a recession, and workforce shortages. Then, the tech business community added some spicy Artificial Intelligence into the chaos soup. While the Bitcoin Bros were trying to pass themselves off as ChatGPT prompt writing gurus (making $100K or more), sales teams were tasked with using AI tools to identify prospects. 2023 was an unhealthy serving of fear mixed with technology, creating a cold-call gazpacho that pushed prospects away from the table. All of us were being inundated with offers to connect, followed by a relentless flow of sales pitches. I can tell you one thing that changed. People are tired of talking on and with computers. While companies scrambled to integrate AI into everything, people craved personal, face-to-face, human interaction. Although we all want and need new business, that is only a portion of what effective marketing needs to focus on. I call them the Four Pillars of Profits or the Four Horsemen of the A-profit-lypse (a play on words with Apocalypse). Each of these deserves a different strategy and different context. Paying clients Past clients Prospects Partners “We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.” – Alfred Newman .In this episode… We will discuss two groups of four parts of B2b marketing… that could help lead to future success. Want To See How To Market BETTER? - Click Here