Confessions of a Marketer

On Episode 79, Rob Weedn of DealSignal and Jeremy Middleton of Pramata are back for part two of our chat about ABM and intent. In the first part of our chat, we discussed the winnowing down of the martech stack plus a lot about ABM. Today we continue our chat about it--how to use intent-based data, the promise of technology, programmatic advertising, and more. And we start with a question about the tension around ABM. Episode NotesPepper and Rogers: Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?The Ultimate Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)Cover image is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from a recent hike in Massachusetts.

On Episode 78, Rob Weedn of DealSignal and Jeremy Middleton of Pramata join me. I had Rob on early in the series for a chat about data in marketing. I wanted to have him back, and when he mentioned he could get one of his customers to join him, I jumped at the chance to talk about account-based marketing, data, intent and marketing, plus the ever-present martech stack. We have divided this chat into two parts. This is part one.Cover photo is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from a recent hike in Massachusetts.

On Episode 77, we have Victor Machado of Post&Wall in to talk about SEO and SEM. Victor cofounded his firm, an integrated digital marketing solutions, in 2014. He's on the front lines of developments in search. So, as a follow up to my chat with Taylor Ryan in Episode 76 episode about the Google algo changes, I thought it would make sense to get a bit further into the weeds on SEO and SEM—and Victor was the right one to talk with. We talk about organic SEO, location SEO, confusion about SEO, plus we delve into the data and the possible blending of the big networks. And, maybe most importantly, we debate why so few get digital right.Cover photo is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from a recent hike in Massachusetts.

On Episode 76, we have Taylor Ryan in to talk about the latest batch of Google algo changes. We chatted with Taylor back in Episode 47 about Hacking Your Marketing. One ingredient in hacking is how you use Google. And Taylor, who’s CMO at Valuer in Copenhagen, is an expert on that. So, with the hubbub about the Google algo, I asked him to join me to make sense of it. I think we made some headway. Episode NotesGoogle Algorithm UpdateGoogle Diversity UpdateMatt CuttsGary Vaynerchuk on Why Marketers Ruin EverythingGoogle E.A.T.: Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness“Your Money Or Your Life”: What Google’s Recent Algorithm Update Means For The Healthcare And Financial IndustriesGoogle explains how it's fighting fake newsWho are Google search quality raters and what do they do?Google Search Quality Evaluator GuidelinesGoogle My Business (It’s on Wikipedia, so it’s trustworthy)Don’t be evil or Do the right thingCover photo is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from a recent hike in Massachusetts.

On Episode 75, Jonathan Soares is back to continue our chat about social selling. We got to my favorite subject—trends—late in this chat. And we also discussed some success stories for Jonathan’s firm, Agency Labs. But to start, I asked him about the right time to start talking about your product—really when you start the switch from marketing to sales. And his answer was loaded with the kind of insight you’d expect from someone who deals with CMOs all day long.Cover photo is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from a recent sunset in Massachusetts.

I remember connecting with Whitney Johnson years ago on Twitter. Her posts were always brimming with insight. But her game is innovation and the focus of this podcast is marketing. So, how could I have her on? Didn't seem possible. Then she came out with a great book--Build an A-Team: Play to Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve and I wanted to have her on so the managers, directors, VPs and CMOs in my audience would gain from her insight. It was a great discussion that closed out the first season of CoaM. I present it here as we head into a quiet holiday week in the US so you can contemplate her wisdom as you flip burgers and laze around in the sun.Episode NotesBuild an A-Team - Disrupting yourself is a way of life around here, so it’s only natural that it is my turn to be disrupted.Meet Whitney - Whitney Johnson is one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world (Thinkers50) and an expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption, a framework codified in the critically-acclaimed book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work as well as well as the award-winning Build an “A” Team: Play To Their Strengths and Lead Them Up the Learning Curve, published by Harvard Business Press in 2018.

On Episode 74, Jonathan Soares, founder and CEO of Agency Labs, joins us. His firm builds websites, software and mobile apps for companies around the globe. One common denominator: social media. He’s become an expert on social selling. So we dug into how to best use social media, when to sell, when to market—and lots more. Cover photo is copyright 2019 Mark Reed-Edwards from Boulder Mountain Park, Colorado.

On Episode 73, Jon Chang is back to continue our discussion about his five-year career planning template. This time, he shares how you can use it to improve your work life and even become a better marketer. It's a good meditation on what's possible in your career and how to make it actually happen. dreaming is great, but doing is even better.Episode NotesJon Chang’s career planning template is right here.See more of Jon’s thinking here.Learn more about Jon here.Cover photo from Flickr, no known copyright restrictions.

We're thrilled to share the pilot episode for a new podcast we'll be producing starting in July. It's the Demystifying Data podcast with Chris Clegg, president and research director of PortMA. Chris has been my go-to on data and marketing. You may remember him from his previous appearances on Confessions of a Marketer. We got to know each other and his ability to deconstruct data and all it means for marketers was clear. So, as we look to expand our podcasts beyond this one and The Innovation Podcast, Chris was an obvious first choice. In each episode, alternating between interviews and commentary, Chris will deconstruct an element of data with the aim of making it less mysterious to marketers.Episode NotesIn this pilot episode, Chris tackles the challenge of defining the dollar value of impressions.  This is the most popular blog post on PortMA's Experiential ROI blog and garners the most activity when they post on Twitter @portma.  Chris breaks the problem down into three business challenges:How to collect experiential marketing impressions reliably: Turns out, that consistency is more important than accuracy.  Chris breaks down this critical data science principle and provides simple solutions to avoid this common mistake.Methods for recording the five primary impression categories: In experiential marketing there are five impression categories that every campaign should be tracking.  Don’t sell yourself short by missing one of these key areas of value.Assigning a legitimate dollar value to experiential marketing impressions: Finally, Chris reveals the industry standard for impression valuation modeling and provides several examples that allow the non-data minded marketer a clear roadmap to assigning the right dollar value to experiential impressions.Links of InterestPortland Marketing Analytics (PortMA) is a marketing research firm specializing in the develop of marketing communication strategies and measuring the return-on-investment of experiential marketing campaigns.You can follow Chris on Twitter @portma.For a more compressive review of Ad Value Equivalency Modeling techniques including criticisms of the approach visit PR Week’s article, The AVE debate: Measuring the value of PR.

On Episode 72, Jon Chang is back in to talk about some thinking he’s done on career planning for marketers. I first spoke with Jon early this year about a survey that IBM Watson did on marketing. Jon was knowledgeable, insightful and passionate—and not just about marketing. Follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter and you’ll see someone with broad interests in helping others figure things out. When I saw him post a career planning template, I thought it would be fun to have him in to chat about it and see how he formulated it. This is the first part of our discussion. We talk about starting with your passions and figuring out two things you can be great at. Episode NotesJon Chang's career planning template is right here.See more of Jon's thinking here.Learn more about Jon here.Cover photo from Flickr, public domain.

On Episode 71, I continue my discussion with Elle Woulfe. What is the key to B2B marketing? It's simple--think of everyone as a person. That's the main conclusion of my discussion with Elle. There's a lot more to it than that, though. So you'll have to listen to get the whole story. As always, a fun chat with Elle.Cover image from Flickr, public domain.

A look at an episode of The Innovation Podcast: We have Bruno Aguiar, VP Commercial Management & Analytics at ESL/Turtle Entertainment. Of course, ESL is the trailblazing e-sports brand. We were thrilled Bruno agreed to sit down with us. To kick off the first of three episodes, we heard about Bruno's background and learned about the difference between e-sports and real sports (hint: there isn't one). We had a few laughs along the way, too.Cover and header image from 123rf, standard license.

On Episode 70, Elle Woulfe joins us to dig into data and B2B marketing. Elle is VP of Marketing at PathFactory. You may remember the chat we had about six months ago about her rebrand. Elle did some special work with that and we got lots of reaction to it. But Elle has a lot of knowledge about using data as a marketer. What’s behind the data we collect and how should we use it? We get into that and more in part one of our chat. 

On Episode 69 we’re talking marketers as customer advocates with Riccardo Osti. In the second part of our discussion, we delve into how marketers can be customer advocates, the trends Riccardo is seeing, and we learn more about Wonderflow. 

On Episode 68, we have Riccardo Osti in to discuss marketing and the customer experience. Riccardo is CEO of Wonderflow, and we start our chat by defining the customer experience, then branch out into how to improve it and the role data can play in it. Riccardo is a fascinating guy with a really interesting company. Wonderflow gathers and makes sense of unstructured feedback from consumers. So Riccardo was the right one to speak to about the customer experience. 

We're taking another look back into the archives. In the middle of the first season, I had a chance to speak with Alex Withers, CMO of InMotionNow. It was great to get a CMO on the show with a fresh perspective. And it was even greater when we started chatting and Alex started to explain his thesis: that people like him should listen to creatives. As I wrote when I published it all the way back in March 2018, it was an inspirational chat--one that marketers and creatives alike will enjoy. Give it a listen.

On Episode 67, we continue our chat with Chris Dayley about converting social media traffic. We discuss split testing, understanding where people are in your funnel, and, of course, data—and lots more. He’s an engaging guy, and I think you’ll enjoy the chat. 

On Episode 66, Chris Dayley is back to discuss the dark arts of social media conversions. We start off our two-part chat with a discussion of what a company should expect from social media, the value of a two-way dialogue, and using tech like Facebook LIve. 

On Episode 65, we go even deeper on product marketing with Josh Martin. We talk about the value of data, balancing the demands of the day with planning for the future, plus he lets me in on the story behind his current company—Perfect Sense. It was a great discussion that makes, um, perfect sense. Enjoy!

On Episode 64, we're knee-deep in product marketing with Josh Martin. Josh and I spoke in an early episode of Confessions of a Marketer. And today we expand on that in the first of two episodes. We start off by talking about the ideal background for a product marketer, Josh’s career path, understanding the audience, and the value of working hard.