The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast

When most people think of search, what immediately comes to mind for most advertisers and marketers is usually Google. But don't dismiss the power of Microsoft's Bing. What many don't realize is that Microsoft actually gets much farther reach than they think, thanks to Microsoft powering a plethora of other search engines as well (AOL, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc). Microsoft ads and strategy expert at Big Click Co., Lisa Raehsler, is here to remind us not to forget the power of Microsoft search, with over 13 billion global searches, including being a leader in the voice search realm. This episode is all about what you're missing out on by not utilizing Microsoft ads.

As marketers, we all wish we had that magic crystal ball that could tell us exactly what out clients want. Well, there is a way we can put ourselves in our customer's shoes by zeroing in on their emotional needs. Because the truth is, most people buy based on emotion over logic. Today's guest, Wes McDowell, helps small businesses do exactly that by incorporating psychology into their websites. Find out how using certain wording can encourage a sale to go one way versus another, and how honing in on a few areas can really make all the difference.

In this current world of social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, we've all no doubt seen the influencer marketing boom hit like a ton of bricks. Celebrities, and even once unknowns, are thrust into celebrity courtesy of their ability to influence their large group of followers, are called upon by brands and companies to collaborate to market products and services. But Jason Falls, digital strategist, and author of Winfluence, cautions us to ask ourselves, do you just want people posting about you, or do you want them to influence an audience? There is a difference, and today we're going to learn all about influencer marketing versus influence marketing.

Every digital marketer could lecture you for days on the importance of SEO and why your business absolutely needs it in order to succeed in the online search game. But what they also should be stressing, is how to prove the ROI of SEO. Because after all, how can you improve on something - or even know it's working - if you aren't measuring it? SEO consultant, Roger Bryan, helps us understand different marketing techniques and opportunities, with a focus on the data. The numbers don't lie and they tell a great story, you just have to learn how to listen to them and take action accordingly.

How do you know if you have a content gap on your website? How can you find and fix what isn't actually there? In this week's episode, Alex Valencia shares with us how you can do a competitive analysis to uncover what content is missing from your website and keeping you from generating more leads online.

It's no secret that more and more people are using their mobile devices to access the web on a daily basis, outnumbering those using desktops. Google has recognized this, and in order to ensure the very best user experience, it is taking a "mobile-first" approach to indexing websites. From an SEO perspective, what's the difference in optimizing for desktop versus mobile? What does it take to rank at the top of the Google search these days, and how important is mobile to that? We posed all of these questions and more to Cindy Krum, CEO & founder of MobileMoxie, where she's been optimizing for mobile even before the iPhone was a thing. She'll update up on all the changes and what you need to be doing for yourself and your clients.

It seems like once one platform adds a new feature, the others all rush to create a similar one, making them all that much more similar to each other. But after seeing an article discussing how one company boosted their traffic by over 500% using the new Google Web Story feature, I obviously had to check it out. So we went directly to the source, the author of the blog post – and the creator of the Web Story in question – Andrea Volpini. In this episode, Andrea breaks down how Google's Web Story feature is different than the other Stories you see from Instagram, Facebook, etc., and how you can put on your Director's hat and create "trailers" for your other written content, such as blog posts.

When it comes to navigating the world of SEO, it's an everchanging landscape. There are definitely some hard and fast rules that everybody follows, and then you have a few people making their own mark and creatively stepping outside the box. One of those innovators is Areej Abuali, who we talked to in this episode. She offered some new and exciting insight and ideas into addressing SEO issues for our clients as well as our own businesses. She also looks into the crystal ball with us and shares her thoughts on the future of search, including up and coming new search engines, and its effect on the almighty "Google ranking".

When it comes to inspiring others to dig deep to find their passions and turn them into success, John Lee Dumas - the Entrepreneur on Fire - is the luminary that immediately comes to mind. JLD is constantly finding ways to inspire entrepreneurs, and his latest passion is no different. We talk to JLD today about his latest book, and how he's using that to embolden others who might be stuck on their path to success and financial freedom.

Whenever a platform releases a new app or feature, we go straight to the experts to learn more. When we heard that Instagram rolled out their new Guides feature, we called on our good friend and Instagram "It Girl", Jenn Herman, from Jenn's Trends, to help get us in the know. Jenn shared with us that this is Instagram's way of allowing users to post longer-form content and filled us in on the latest news and tips on how to utilize this new feature perfectly for B2B marketing.

Curious about this new Clubhouse platform, we decided to dig a bit deeper into it and find out just what it was all about and why so many business professionals – and well-known names - were flocking to it. We reached out to Mike Stelzner, from Social Media Examiner, to get his take on this since he's always ahead of the curve. And he did not disappoint. In this episode, Mike gives us the quick and dirty lowdown about what Clubhouse is, how it works, who's hanging out there, and the many ways you can be leveraging the platform for your business.

We often discuss the importance of email marketing on this podcast, and this episode is no different. There is no other platform that allows you to own your continually curated list, and no fear that it could all disappear tomorrow if Facebook or any other platform you use to market on suddenly disappeared. That email list of yours is still there, and it's still your property. We spoke with Jenna Tiffany of Let's Talk Strategy, who also is an evangelist of email marketing. She got us excited about some new email marketing trends to look out for this year, and clued us in on some of her tired and true tips – including building and keeping your list clean -that continue to help propel her client's businesses forward.

What metrics are your company looking at to gauge your performance - and that of your clients - when it comes to marketing? How could you do a better job marketing, measuring and reporting those results? The answers, according to Dustin Clark of Element Three, lies in your marketing value chain. By using this strategy, you'll be able to not only see your bottomline, but explain exactly how and why you got there.

Have you noticed that your blog traffic is dropping off? Or that certain posts aren't bringing in as much traffic as they used to? Perhaps you've been blogging since 2005 and you've got a lot of blog content that's no longer relevant. If any of th

As marketers and business people, we've all struggled with outreach and figuring out how to start that initial relationship. Should we go email or try for an introduction? We certainly don't want to come off as too salesy or overstep our bounds. But at the same time, you need to remember that taking a one size fits all approach is a recipe for failure. If you want to be successful in your outreach efforts, follow the advice of Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro, find a way that is novel and unusual, and always put the focus on them and not yourself. Make sure you're offering value to them, backed up by research. In other words, do your homework and put in the effort, as opposed to just asking for a favor. You'll find you'll have much greater success.

This past year has been hard for networking, especially those that rely on that and referrals for their own business's survival. So how can you continue to network when you can go out there and plan meetups with large groups? Well, you take it 2D! Christel Wintel is a professional networker that hasn't let the pandemic stop her, as she has managed to successfully continue her referral group's regular networking meetings thanks to Zoom and a little creativity. By following a few simple rules with a positive attitude and a willingness to dive into something a little bit different, you can still benefit from networking in the current world we're living in.

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.