The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast

Did you know that even some the most well-know national newspapers are using AI to write some of their articles? It's true. And you probably didn't even notice. So how can Marketers leverage AI as part of their Marketing strategies? We've all undoubtedly encountered a chat bot a few times in the past few years, and that is certainly using AI technology. But RJ Talyor, AI platform founder & CEO at Pattern89, reminds us that the key is to make sure you're not losing that humanness in the process. Machines are great with data, but it still takes a human to differentiate the nuances of those gray areas that test ethical or inappropriate boundaries. After all, an eggplant emoji is just an eggplant to a machine, but humans know better.

Are you putting together next year's marketing budget, trying to navigate the coronavirus minefield? Wondering how much to spend, what channels to use, and what your messaging should be? Here are nine things to consider when developing out your own digital marketing plan.

Like many business owners, you're most likely always searching for new avenues to be seen and heard. Have you thought about podcasts? Getting featured on the right podcasts will increase your visibility, help build your credibility, and attract new qualified leads for your business. But maybe you just don't have the time to pitch yourself to podcasts, or maybe you just don't know where to start. Consider working with someone who specializes in just that, like Kristin Molenaar from YesBoss. Kristin has built a career around helping business owners double their new client leads just by being a featured podcast guest.

What's better than one social media marketing expert? How about 4 of them teaming up to create a Marketing super team known as "The 360 Marketing Squad". Covering all aspects of Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, this super group has the experience, knowledge and determination to help small businesses not only step up their marketing strategies, but learn how to track their progress so they know what's working and what needs tweaking.

If you're a baseball fan, you know that for the pitcher, pitching isn't just about their arm speed. There are far more processes that must all come together to make a pitcher effective. And so the same can be said for sales and marketing. Most people aren't struggling with their sales departments. What's happening is they're spending too much money on sales and underinvesting in marketing, because they are having to rely on sales to do all of this work. Business owners need to know how to market better and what to expect, but also what to ask for from their own internal departments. In this episode, Sean Doyle of Fitz Martin, gives us a scientific approach to sales and marketing, and shows us a more effective way to close the deal.

Business relationships are obviously different than personal relationships, but both are very important. In life, we look to connect with people that share similar interests, live close to us, or have kids the same age as us. But how do we go about initiating relationships with businesses, and more importantly, what criteria do you use to go about this? Annalise Worn takes a creative approach to helping businesses with relationship building as part of their marketing plan. Learning how to foster customer loyalty and long-term engagement by providing information that is directly suited to your customer's needs, will go a long way in helping you build trust and move the needle and drive sales.

There's no better time to explore how your small business can use Instagram Reels as a part of your marketing strategy. Reels is the newest way for you to create entertaining 15-second multi-clip videos with lots of new and creative tools to help you drive traffic and sales. Take it from The Instagram Expert herself, Sue B. Zimmerman, if Instagram is where your followers and ideal customer avatar are hanging out, then Instagram Reels is a great opportunity to take advantage of adding music and other effects, while also allowing you to share educational, step-by-step and behind the scenes content. This mobile-only option is also a great way get out a quick video while on the go to let everyone know what your business or brand is up to.

Making connections is an important aspect for all businesses, and we often rely on face to face and in person opportunities to achieve this. But in a time like this with COVID-19, when social distancing has become the norm, how do businesses and brands go about making those meaningful and emotional connections that are so vital to building trust and often lead to sales? Kevin England, CEO of Vonazon marketing agency, reminds you to first get back to basics with the four main senses; touch, vision, hearing, speaking. You want to make sure that you're always educating, regardless of where your potential client is in your funnel.

If you fancy yourself a bit of an expert in your field and are looking for yet another opportunity to get your name out there and build brand awareness, consider leveraging the power of sites such as HARO to exert your expertise and knowledge on a given topic. Greg Heilers, earned media guru and pitching machine from Jolly, reminds us that media pitching to sites such as HARO offers a multitude of benefits aside form just getting free publicity. Think about the benefits of finding potential collaborators, reaching your target market with you poised as an industry expert, being featured in high profile publications like The New York Times, as well as driving more traffic to your website.

Every business wants to rank high with Google, that's a no brainer. But what are the top ranking factors that really matter, that will help to get you the top spots? Aside from the obvious things like links, mobile-friendliness and page speed, what are some other factors that rank most for SEO, and pass the ever-changing Google algorithm test? Darren Shaw, Whitespark founder and local search guru, advises you to start with claiming and optimizing your Google My Business profile. Invest your time here and worry less about citations. These days it's more about conversion optimization than it is about ranking optimization. And never underestimate the power of reviews.

This week we've got a two-fer for you. I've got John Paglio from flyte talking about SCHEMA: what it is, why you need it, and how to implement it on your site.

We've all seen business ads pop up in our Facebook feed every day, and you've probably scrolled right past a majority of them. But what about leveraging YouTube to advertise your business, products and services? Aleric Heck of AdOutreach has done just that, helping innumerable business reach over 8 figures in sales using the YouTube ads platform.

This week's episode is about moving beyond the pivot. No doubt you pivoted when COVID first upended the world and your business, but did you stop there? It's easy to fall back into a groove, but thinking things have "normalized" is the wrong approach. In this episode I share five things you can do to make sure you continue to evolve as your customers' needs do.

Do you ever wish you could get free business advice from someone in your industry, or who has been through what you're going through now? The answer may be in joining or starting a mastermind. We'll delve into what a mastermind is, how to start one, and how to run one successfully.

Influencer marketing could arguably be traced all the way back to the 1800's when the Conklin pen company wisely and creatively asked Mark Twain to say some nice things about their products. Influencer marketing has come a long way since then, especially if you're a Kardashian. But just going for the big name is not necessarily the best strategy, says Agorapulse's Mike Allton.

Successful SEO starts with keyword research. Moz's Cyrus Shepard reminds us that you need to rank for what people are actually searching for, not what you think they're searching for. That means truly understanding exactly what a keyword is, and prioritizing keywords by potential. Uncover more ideas by determining what keywords your competitors are ranking for. Yes, you can actually do that. Why recreate the wheel when they've already done some of the heavy lifting for you?

Like every industry, digital marketing also has their list of "best practices" that you're told to follow. And while there is certainly some truth to that, Caitlin Halpert from 3Q Digital, can attest that with a little creative "pushing of the boundaries", and letting the data from your creative testing do the talking, you just may find you're driving more growth and efficiency through these new ideas.

So there's lots of different things to be looking at when you're doing email marketing, but I would definitely say those replies are the most important part. And when you see a lot of people replying, that's when you know you've definitely hit on something that's important. And that you've got to talk more about that

Why is B2B marketing important? Creating quality content allows you to establish your business's brand and positional, as well as allows you to connect with your target audience and show your authority and credibility in your market. But as B2B marketing expert James Soto will attest, the B2B buying cycle is much longer than it is for B2C, and customer expectation is different, so you need to make sure you're adjusting for that throughout your process.

If you're an ethical marketer, you know that buying an email list is considered "shady" and Email Service Providers such as MailChimp won't allow you use use purchased lists on their platform. But Doug Morneau is here to explain that renting an email list is much different, and how it can help you reach more of your ideal, targeted customers. To break it down in its simplest form, email list rental – also known as "sponsored mail" – is really just another form of influencer marketing. It's just one more way of allowing your brand/product/company to reach potential customers via their email inbox that fit a certain demographic that they've already shown interest in. You're gaining a one-time right to contact them, but it's the email list owner who conducts the actual mailing for you.

In a nutshell, influencer marketing is really just a type of social media marketing that uses product mentions and endorsements from influencers – people who have already built up a loyal and dedicated following, and are perhaps seen as experts in their area or niche. So if the thought of riding the coat tails of a well-known or well-respected influencer while they talk up your products and services sounds like an easy win, influencer marketing expert Neal Schaffer is here to remind you that it's not always that simple. You could do more harm than good to your business's reputation is you aren't careful and calculated when choosing which influencers to work with. Ideally you always want to work with someone who is also aligned with what your business and brand stands for.

The question some businesses are asking themselves these days, "To bot, or not to bot?" But the reality is, chatbots are a fantastic automated solution that allow businesses and organizations the power to handle not only more customers at once, but to also do it simultaneously. Talk about some bang for your buck!

It's crazy to think that we've done 350 episodes of the Agents of Change podcast. That's nearly 7 years of content for a weekly podcast.

In this episode I share how my thinking on "Black Lives Matter" vs. "All Lives Matter" has evolved. Not usually the material we cover on the Agents of Change podcast, but I'm realizing how this movement touches every aspect of our lives, regardless of our color. I don't have any answers, as I'm just beginning the journey myself.

If there's anything this world of technology has taught us, it's that learning isn't just limited to the classroom. Creating online courses to teach people is proving to be not only an effective strategy, but a booming business as well. Creating online courses may seem like a daunting and time consuming job, but seasoned online course creator Steve Nixon reminds us that even if you don't have the experience or a lot of money to dedicate to this, there are plenty of great tools out there to help you along the way. Plus, online courses check off all the boxes when it comes to the benefits to you and your business, such as creating brand awareness, trust and authority in your given field, not to mention greater reach.

When it comes to creating the content on your website that will probably rank well and drive leads, it's got to be a combination of doing a little bit of keyword research, but also paying attention to the past conversations you've had with clients and prospects on your website and in person. This is even more vital with niche marketing.

LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to showcase who you are, what your expertise is, and make important business connections, all in front of a large, high-value audience. But unless you're truly optimizing your profile, you're not going to be able to take advantage of this opportunity, because people are just going to keep scrolling on by. Learning how to strengthen your LinkedIn profile will go a long way, according to LinkedIn trainer John Nemo, as it also strengthens your professional brand.

Pinterest aficionado Jeff Sieh – Pinterest isn't just for the ladies - living proof of that. He shares some great tips and tricks that he uses to boost his creativity.

Don't we all wish we could get inside the heads of our potential customers and find out what they want it will take in order to close the sale with them? Well, you actually can…kinda. According to neuromarketing expert, Felix Cao, you can apply certain brain activity measurement strategies to measure a subject's response to specific products, packaging, advertising, or other marketing elements to help persuade them into taking your desired action. So stop wasting money and time marketing to the wrong part of your customer's brain, and start implement strategies that speak to their primal brain.

Video has proven itself to be a valuable part of a good marketing plan when it comes to attracting and promoting your business to your target audience. It goes hand in hand with other strategies – such as SEO – as it can help to increase the time people spend on your website and pages, and position you as a trusted source in your field. But as Ed Lawrence and Dave Foulkes of Business Film Booth will attest, if your goal is to increase audience retention – and it should be – then you need to be following certain criteria to allow you to get your message out the right way in an engaging way that educates the masses, lands more sales, and proves your worth.

Every aspect of your operational process contributes to the success of your business. This means there is a lot to keep track of as you make changes along the way to grow and improve. And as Steph Nissen from Atomic Revenue reminds us, the whole point of a CRM is to make your life easier.

What message do customers want to hear from you right now? What can you say and do to nurture resilience in your team? In yourself? While these aren't usually the topics covered in the Agents of Change podcast, these are unusual times. So I turned to my dad, Dr. Robert Brooks, a clinical psychologist who researchers, presents on, and writes about resilience. I wanted to hear from him what we should be saying to our prospects and customers, as well as our team members, to nurture resilience and help them through this crisis.

There are many reasons why repurposing content is smart. First off, why reinvent the wheel? If you have a piece of content – whether it's a blog post, a podcast, or an infographic, that's done really good for you, it just makes sense to get more mileage out of it. Not only that, it saves both time and money. Top digital marketers, like Kim Garst, preach the benefits of content repurposing as part of their strategy to help businesses build, grow, and scale. After all, why bother spending all that time creating content if you're not planning to amplify it.

Have you ever sat down and thought about all of the life lessons you know now, but wish you knew when you were just starting out? Do you have some sage advice you'd like to pass on to a budding entrepreneur or upcoming college graduate? Business renaissance man, Guy Kawasaki, is here today dishing out advice, reflections, and truth bombs, and explaining that you're not going to find your dream job right out of college, nor is the path to success and happiness linear. And that's absolutely fine.

Like any social platform out there, LinkedIn is always changing and evolving, as is its algorithm. So you've got to stay in the loop and keep your profile and content fresh to make sure you're connecting with not just a lot of people, but with the right people. We gathered some of your top LinkedIn questions – and ours – and went to the LinkedIn Expert, Viveka von Rosen-Martin, to get her answers, thoughts and advice, on everything from how many followers you should have, if hashtags make a difference in LinkedIn, 'connect' button versus 'follow' button, and so much more….(including a ninja trick to make your headline longer.)

This is a special episode of The Agents of Change Podcast. I've been getting a lot of questions around how—or even if—you should market a business during the Coronavirus (COVID-19.) As someone who owns a digital marketing agency, (and runs a podcast on digital marketing), I've been giving this a lot of thought. Here's my take on marketing and advertising during a crisis.

Once upon a time LinkedIn was a very different place than it is now. It used to be that you kept your network small and tight knit, and it was treated more as a 'connect & pitch' platform. But Gaetano DiNardi is here to tell you that LinkedIn has transformed into more of a broadcasting platform these days, where you use it to amplify your content. To use LinkedIn strategically and successfully, your end goal should be to have a personal brand that is so big and respected that when you start promoting content or putting stuff out there, you'll get the engagement and support that you need from your network that you've built. And that's why it pays off to play the long game with LinkedIn.

If you're a small to medium sized business, you're probably short on both time and money, so you've taken a DIY approach to many aspects of your business. But when it comes to SEO, this can seem like an impossibly daunting task that only an expensive professional should tackle. Well, take it from Matthew Woodward, who's been taking the DIY approach to SEO long before there was even a name for it, who guarantees you can see immediate success on your own by following a few specific strategies and utilizing the help of some great plugins.

When it comes to digital marketing, content is king. But it's also difficult and time consuming to create. So how can you create content that works well in both search and social? Melissa Sciorra, who is the Senior Manager of SEO & Content Marketing for SmarterTravel Media, shows us how your content can do double duty.

We might think we know what our customers are thinking, but we're wrong, according to revenue coach, Kristin Zhivago. And in order to really go down that journey of better customer service, you first need to toss aside any expectations of what you think your customers are going to say, and actually be willing to start talking to them. By doing this, you get to find out your company's strengths and weaknesses. You find out the things you're really good at that you want to promote, and the things that you need to fix in the background. And once you fix them, then you can promote those.

Not getting the results you want from your most recent Facebook Ads campaign? Was it the creative? The targeting? The bid? In this week's episode we unpack a wildly successful Facebook Ad to better understand what works and what doesn't. Jason Hunt, of Merged Media, was gracious enough to share some details of a marketing campaign he recently did for a small local company that was a roaring success and the lessons he learned.

To some people, Public Relations seems like this mysterious and intricate job reserved for people that have spent their careers making a lot of important and influential connections with big names in various industries and professions. And although that may be true for some in the business, even a PR expert like Dmitry Dragilev promises that you can actually do it on your own and still achieve similar success. If you have a compelling story, you can get the interest of journalists. And once you have that, there are some tried and true strategies that will help you gain access to personal contacts, backlinks, and leverage yourself as an expert.

If we've learned nothing in this digital age of social media domination, it's that businesses need to up their game when it comes to customer service because it is more front and center than ever before. And as a brand advocate and customer experience expert, Jay Baer has seen how businesses can turn an unhappy customer into a raving fan for life, if they just follow a few key rules.

How we market and sell to our clients has changed over the years. Gone are the days of sounding like a slick, pushy, and overbearing used car salesman. As Nick Usborne will attest, you need to engage in a conversation with your clients, not just talk at them. Building trust can come through in tone and word choice, so opting to use everyday simple conversational wording over tech jargon will go a long way in building relationships and making sales. Discover how to "write for the web" and engage your customers by engaging in conversational copywriting.

When you hear the term "ADA compliant", you might immediately think of buildings and how they're supposed to be handicapped accessible for people in wheelchairs. But you need to think broader in this digital age. There's more for consumers than just visiting brick and mortar shops. These days, a great deal of shopping and research is done online. So Craig Kazda would ask you, "Is your website ADA compliant?" What are you doing to ensure that people with visual, auditory, or intellectual disabilities can access and understand the same information as everyone else who visits your site? If you haven't started to consider this and make adjustments to your website, you're not only losing customers and pushing away business, but you may find you're being penalized in the Google search rankings, or even worse, being sued.

One of the best ways to create a rapport with your customers and earn their trust is through storytelling. When you learn to tell stories that customers in all points of your sales funnel can relate to, you've made your product or service that much more valuable to them. The ideal way to create your stories is to have a brand script in place, with carefully chosen words that resonate specifically with your customers. Your brand is about customer perception, so you need to be able to tell stories that substantiate and embody the challenges and experiences of your customers. Josh Cantrell helps clients create these scripts using a 7 point plan for effective storytelling.

We've all see the ham-fisted approach many people use on LinkedIn, so when I saw Thomas Libby of Diversified Sales Solutions speak on how he uses LinkedIn, I knew I wanted to have him on the show.

Regardless of the excuses you keep coming up with for not including video as part of your marketing plan, if you're serious about growing your business, you can't put it off any longer. According to Lou Bortone, thought leader and video pioneer since the launch of YouTube, video is must-have marketing. You know the saying, "a picture is worth 1,000 words"? Well, video is worth even more. It's creative, it's inexpensive, it's easy, and it's incredibly powerful when it comes to connecting with your audience in a more personal way.

You may have caught our Press Conference on Facebook Live earlier this week, but if you didn't we announced some major changes to our live events for 2020.