The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast

Looking for data-driven advice on how you should be using video to engage your audience? Want fresh approaches to standing out on YouTube and getting more views? Want to discover the latest tactics that are working for video marketing?

Taking a human-centric approach to SEO and digital marketing will go a long way to getting you in front of your most ideal audience, versus just pushing out ad impressions to the masses. That's exactly the approach that Jason White and his team at PMG are taking to help some of the biggest brands out there. The key is to use your analytics and data – combined with creativity and technology - to drive your marketing efforts on multiple channels.

Your business is more than just a commodity, so price should not necessarily be the differentiating factor between you and your competition. Brand message expert Jeff Shaw shares how to create innovative branding strategies around the specific audience you wish to target and how to speak to them in their own lingo. Integrating your customer's language into your communication will make all the difference in separating – and elevating – you from your competition.

By now we've all been told time and again about the importance of your email list when it comes to creating your marketing campaigns. But there's a bit more to it than just shooting off a few emails. Aweber's Jill Fanslau has helpful and insightful tips and strategies that you can immediately put into action when it comes to your email marketing plan, with proven success.

It is a proven fact that one of the largest influencing factors for gaining local visibility in Google is by optimizing your Google My Business listing. After all, Google My Business is essentially your nerve center for controlling how the way your business's information is displayed on Google and Google Maps during searches. If getting search engine traffic is important to your business, then Bradley Benner of Semantic Mastery has a thing or two to teach you about diving deeper into SEO to help build a solid foundation for tour business that will translate into marketing success.

We're all used to video marketing on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok…the list goes on. That's great for one to many communication and marketing. But how about leveraging the power of video—the visceral eye-to-eye, face-to-face style communication—in our emails? Our outreach emails. Our follow up emails. Our proposal emails. We speak with Ethan Beute of BombBomb on how to embed video communications in your emails to increase your open rate, click through rate, and engagement rate, and how to get metrics to know if and when people are opening your emails.

If you find the process of Facebook Ads to be overwhelming, you're certainly not alone. But besides having great content, an audience, and an ad budget, Facebook Ads expert Amanda Robinson can't stress enough the importance of building a solid foundation for your ads, and of course testing the heck out of them in a way that will definitely tell you which ads are working and which are not. Because no one wants to waste their ad dollars.

How do you market to people who don't even realize you, your business, or your industry exist? How do you best use social buttons on your website? And how many branded domains should you be renewing each year? Answers to these questions and more on this week's episode of the Agents of Change podcast!

Looking to rank higher in Local Search? Want to reach page one in the Map Pack (aka the Local Pack?) Should you focus on reviews or on Google Posts? In this interview, Local Search Marketer John Paglio answers all these questions and more as we look to help you get found for all your local searches.

One of the most important things you can do after a big event, launch, or campaign, is to review it and figure out how you can do it even better the next time.

By now we've all learned that appeasing Google's authoritative and ever changing algorithm will go a long way in helping us rank higher on the search engine. Structured data takes a technology-based approach to SEO, where it helps to better organize the data on your website so that it's more easily processed and analyzed by Google, and they can have a better idea of what your website is all about. Pioneers in this area, such as Geoff Atkinson from Huckabuy, guarantee that taking this approach will see your website ranking higher, you'll see more organic search traffic, and search engines will better index your pages for keywords more relevant to your business. Most importantly, this is a best practice that both large and small businesses should be adopting.

Thanks to Siri, Alexa and Google Home – among other devices – voice search is having a huge impact on content marketing, and will account for nearly half of all searches by 2020. Which makes sense when you think of the consumer convenience it offers with better efficiency and cool tech options. But as Courtney Cox Wakefield reminds us, optimizing your content for voice search is a totally different beast than optimizing for text. So if you want to be found in voice search, you need to make some changes to your current SEO and content marketing strategies.

One area that nearly all businesses struggle with is how to price their products and services. Add to that the pressure of knowing that how you price is a direct reflection of your brand's position and value in the marketplace. According to Paul Klein, it's not just a matter of charging more or raising your rates, but rather it's recognizing the circumstances around your products and services, and then positioning for maximum value for both you and your clients.

Podcasts are gaining in popularity. As a business owner, does that mean you should care? According to Ben Shapiro, "Absolutely!" There's no better way to tell a story and connect with your audience than through the power of a podcast. Even better, there's really no set "rules' when it comes to podcasting, and there's very little needed to get started. Imagine the power of positioning yourself as an expert in your field, all while reaching a new, targeted audience, and giving them the ability to consume your content in such a convenient way. And with so many great tools out there designed to help take the guesswork out of podcasting, you really have no excuse not to get started. So what are you waiting for?

Facebook groups offer a great way for folks to get together and rally around a product, brand, or service, as well as other related topics. Success starts with the advice of Facebook Group guru Bella Vasta, who stresses the importance of starting with a clearly defined goal for your Group. From there, your longevity and success will hinge on how well you keep it fresh, valuable, informative, - give them what they want, need and deserve - and market it so that you're not only retaining current members, but also enticing new members to join.

If you've been looking for another way to reach your clients, have you considered online courses? Once you have determined the major pain points and problems they're having and know definitively how you can help them, creating an online learning course for them is a creative way to reach them and earn revenue at the same time. Janelle Allen is here to offer her step by step guide to help you figure out how to create and market your own successful online courses.

We are living in an age of video, and it's only continuing to grow. With mobile devices making it easy and convenient to consume video content, they're aso making it easy to create and distribute it. Smart business owners are looking to experts like Monique Johnson to help them leverage this power to grow their businesses by connecting with their customers, establishing authority, and selling their products, all while using the power of live video.

You've decided to start a podcast - Congratulations! Maybe you've already figured out your platform and format, contacted possible guests, and perhaps even decided on the first few episodes. But how about your marketing strategy? According to Laura Pence Atencio, you should be starting this at least 90 days prior to your launch date. Unlike the field of dreams, if you build it, listeners won't just magically come to listen. You should be priming your prospective audience so that they're expecting and anxiously anticipating it by the time it actually launches.

Marketing a local business comes with its own unique set of challenges. Local business marketing expert Stacy Tuschl is here to remind us not to assume that people already know who we are, and also not to just copy what our competitors are doing.

With paid search advertising continuing its rapid growth, it's becoming more competitive and more difficult to generate great results. That's where Tim Jensen comes in, to help you inject innovation and creativity into your advertising to boost your ROI and lead gen. You need to understand not only your customers but also your competition – and test, test, test – so you have the right data that allows you to build powerful keyword lists and a campaign that spells success.

When considering a website redesign when you already have an established audience, the last thing you want to do is change everything on them that's going to give off not only a different look, but a different feel. Chris Dayley urges us to remember that your website is not for you, it's for your users, your customers, and your clients. And you need to keep that in mind when you're undergoing a redesign. There needs to be a strategic approach when it comes to website redesigns. That includes a great deal of testing, research, and analysis to figure out what works and what doesn't. It also helps to take advantage of tools like heat maps and customer surveys.

We've been told time and again that we need to be measuring our marketing efforts. But what exactly does that mean? Checking your Analytics is a good first step, but any measurement marketing expert, like (Chris) Mercer, will tell you that you need to go deeper and be able to turn that basic data into insight and outcomes, and use that to drive strategy for your business. Luckily, doing this has never been easier thanks to products like Google Data Studio, which allow businesses to manage data from a variety of sources and across multiple platforms. It will save you advertising dollars, increase conversions, and redirect your marketing strategies based on what the data is actually telling you.

With its convenience, ease, and variety of offerings, more and more people continue to do their shopping online. And with Google's current algorithms, good guys really do finish first. So experts like Dale Bertrand are here to teach you the importance of creating an e-commerce site that will build trust, authority, and rank high with Google. And for that to happen, you should be focusing on things link building, reputation, content, and how you're setting up your category and collection pages.

Every good brand needs three good, strong legs to stand on; verbal identity, visual identity and value identity. When one of these legs isn't aligned with the others, it can throw off the entire balance of the brand. Mike Kim has been working with top brands to help them find that balance within their marketing. Everything from the copywriting, to the design elements, to the blog posts & emails, and even the titles to your podcast episodes, all of these things need to speak one unified voice that consumers recognize as your brand so it's positioned exactly where you want it to be in their minds.

Business advice I'd give my younger self

Do you frequently find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day to get everything done? Or perhaps wish you had a way to clone yourself so you'd be better able to stay on top of things.

We've been hearing quite a lot lately about how adding video into your content marketing plan should be a vital part of your strategy. But there are still many out there that think it's only something that can be done in certain industries.

Too often, business owners think they need to be everywhere to get ahead. But in reality, it can be a real waste of time, money and resources to chase your audience where they're not even searching or hanging out. By niching down to a specific area of expertise, Jessica Stansberry found success and grew her business through video marketing, specifically, YouTube.

These days, a strong marketing campaign will also incorporate video into the mix. Video marketing experts like Amy Landino understand and appreciate the effect that video has for boosting conversion rates, increasing click-through rates, and building trust and authority for your brand.

As messaging applications have become a way for brands to reach consumers, chatbots have become increasingly more important. Carrie Gottschalk has proven that chatbots can be part of your marketing initiatives and help push your customers seamlessly through your sales funnel. Especially as they become more sophisticated and versatile. Chatbots can perform tasks that are both simple and repetitive at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone, and still provide a seamless user experience for customers.

Whether you were born with the "gift of gab" or not, there is no excuse when it comes to why you're not killing it in the sales game, according to Matthew Pollard. Regardless of your industry, if you're not prepared with stories to engage your client or prospect, and you don't know the right questions to ask, then you're not ready to make the pitch.

LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity for people and brands to communicate in a more deliberate and intentional way. Michaela Alexis has successfully helped entrepreneurs and small businesses make waves on LinkedIn that resulted in business growth as well as building a smart network of like-minded, relevant people and opportunities. LinkedIn has so much more to offer than as just a place to park your resume. The newest LinkedIn Live feature offers endless possibilities including showcasing your products or services, utilizing your personal profile and company pages to best attract the right people, host your blog, as well as a place to publish content and build a following that knows, likes and trusts you.

Video advertising is becoming the dominant force in the digital marketing space. Mobile is king, and attention spans are dwindling, so you need to be able to connect with your audience through visual content, and nurture relationships that way, all within the span of about 2.8 seconds.

Podcasting can be a powerful marketing tool for your business, regardless of which side of the microphone you're on. As a podcast expert, Matt Johnson teaches that everything comes down to the foundation of what is the clear and compelling idea of why people should listen to you. If your podcast doesn't build a sense that you're the expert, then it doesn't accomplish the mission

If you've been think about creating a blog and aren't sure where to start, Leslie Samuel can teach you how to become a blogger and create content that inspires others and keeps your audience coming back. It's vital to first know who your audience is

Quora is one of the largest online communities for questions and answers, as well as one of the highest quality user generated content platforms. As a Quora evangelist, JD Prater knows firsthand how leveraging the power of Quora's user intent makes it a smart new option for marketers. While it offers many of the same options for marketers that they have become familiar with and embrace on platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook, Quora also offers unique opportunities for businesses and brands to build their expertise on given topics, as well as directly answer questions coming from actual users and potential customers.

With content, less can be more if you ask Daniel Daines-Hutt, as long as the content that you are putting out is of the highest quality and has proven it has what it takes to get attention and convert customers. He has proven that by writing far less often than most industry experts generally swear by, you can actually get more traffic and higher conversions. But just as important as the content you're putting out there is how you're promoting it. The way you target and test your content will directly impact how much you're paying for your ads and how that relates to the lifetime value of your average customer.

One of the important things that Melanie Diezel stresses to all content marketers is to make sure they're not just sharing the content they want to share, but to ensure it's the content their audience wants - and needs - to receive.

If you're looking for a new and exciting way to reach out and deliver content to your customers and prospects, Jen Lehner has the inside scoop on the newest tool, Alexa Flash Briefings!

Being everywhere doesn't necessarily get you anywhere, or so says Andrew and Pete, so they've created a 90/10 rule that they believe is the backbone to great content marketing strategies. Rather than try to be a jack of all trades, be remarkable at on

What does it mean to be authentic in the digital age? How can you be authentic online? Is this something just for big corporations with huge marketing and communications teams, or can any small business or entrepreneur succeed? What if more businesses worked together instead of against each other? It is this focus on collaboration that Nicola Smith believes is going to be a key to how businesses grow in the future.

Video marketing can attract an audience, but do you know what types of videos close sales? Marcus Sheridan does, and he's been sharing that secret with businesses looking to grow. Thorough transparency and authenticity that only video can deliver, businesses gain not only trust but also brand awareness. Further, by using Marcus Sheridan's "Selling 7" tips for which kinds of videos you should be making, you'll develop a steady stream of new clients.

Steve Chou has cracked the code on how to effectively communicate with his customers online. By successfully utilizing Facebook Messenger's marketing opportunities – i.e., chatbots - he's been able to find an alternative way to communicate with his customers outside of email, find new ways to get his content out there, use customized segmentation for different audiences, and increase his open rates and revenue per subscriber. It's all about spreading things around and having multiple ways to reach people, instead of just putting all of your eggs in one basket.

After running a couple of pizzerias and having to figure out the promotion and advertising on his own, Bruce Irving turned his pizza shop business into a full on restaurant marketing juggernaut, helping not only his own businesses, but others see dramatic growth as well. Since he started in those pre-social media days and was still finding success, he quickly saw the advantages that social media could play – especially in local business – and adopted marketing plans on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram because of their incredible targeting abilities, as well as the reasonably priced paid marketing options, ability to run promotions/contests, use video, and even chat bots.

When businesses go looking for expert advice on how to drive business growth through LinkedIn, AJ Wilcox has earned that reputation for knowing exactly how and when to utilize LinkedIn's numerous advertising options.

If you're going to invest time and money into creating videos for your business, you want your ideal customers to find them and watch them. And since no one serves up more views than YouTube, your focus should start there. So how do you get those views? Tim Schmoyer understands what YouTube wants, and he helps people and brands create the type of videos that address YouTube's three main concerns. What are those concerns?

The goal in marketing is to reach, engage, and convert your followers, but how do you accomplish that? By creating content that people actually want and need. Michael Brenner knows the importance that empathy and storytelling play in marketing, and shares how brands can tap into this by acting as publishers instead of just creators of propaganda. This customer-centric approach to marketing will help you not only increase sales, but also appeal to your customers in a refreshingly organic and openly straightforward way.

As you know, SEO is constantly evolving. When I first started blogging, short posts (under 500 words) that narrowly answered a question was the secret to page one success. However, now Google is looking for longer form content from authoritative websites, aka "pillar posts." What are pillar posts? How do they work? How can you create one? We answer all those questions and more with the first episode of 2019, an amazing interview with SEO expert Christine Whittemore.

When you think about it, in marketing what we're really trying to do is influence people's behavior. Whether we want them to try something, or buy something, or buy it again, or whether we want them to open and read, or give up some personal data, or refer us to a friend. Whatever it is we're always trying to influence some kind of behavior, and behavioral science, social science, is ideal for that.

Of all the social media platforms, Facebook is probably the one that changes most frequently and most dramatically. What worked so well last year, or last month, or even yesterday, is dead in the water today. In today's episode we speak with Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner who shares with us evidence-based reasons on why they changed up their video marketing on Facebook and what they're doing today that's working better. He'll share both their current Facebook marketing as well as their online video strategy. What they've already learned could save you hours of frustration and thousands of dollars.