Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign hello, and welcome to another episode of Street Level Marketing with your host, Mark Lamplugh. We have a pretty good show for you this evening. Today I have Maxwell Pollock. He's a content and messaging expert. Maxwell, thanks for being on the show.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me, Mark.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: You know, I wanted to bring you on and talk about, you know, content. I think now this day and age with social media and you know, how fast the world moves you kind of.
I think I saw something where Gary V. Had talked about you needing like 200 pieces of content a day to keep engaged with your audience. And, you know, so now with I think all the AI tools and things like that, it makes a little bit easier for businesses to create that content, you know. So, you know, talking about, in this, you know, our first segment here, talking about the foundations of content, you know, that resonates, what are the key elements of content that grabs attention in marketing campaigns?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's so funny you just mentioned Gary Vee and sort of like the amount of touch points people need to convert, right?
I mean, I've seen 200, I've seen 50. I think 200 might be a little bit overkill, but If I see 200 pieces of content in a day, I'm done. I'm going to sleep.
Yeah. Content that really resonates helps address a challenge.
It helps address a pain point.
[00:01:51] Speaker C: Right.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Good. Content starts with pain.
So oftentimes it's not about the content format. The content format is important. Channels are important. But if your message sucks, right, like, if it doesn't really address a real challenge that people are facing, it's not going to land very well. So no matter how much ad spend you put in there, no matter how much money you pump into a campaign, if the messaging is off, people pick up on it. People are smart, right? And people are intuitive as well. So if they're not feeling your messaging, they're not going to buy from you, quite frankly.
So what is that too? Underlying all of that, underlying the warm and fuzzy, is trust.
People have to trust that whatever product they're going to buy from you or solution or service is going to do what it says. It says you're, you know, do what you say it's going to do, but also deliver on something that's reliable and there's some sort of outcome or light at the end of the tunnel that they can envision.
So really, content that resonates, it starts with that pain and it also delivers a relatable context.
[00:03:01] Speaker C: Right?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So a lot of people, a lot of marketers especially in the B2C area. Now I'm a know technically from the B2B, but it's the same in B2C. Two people focus on the hook instead of really focusing on the context of the hook.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, there, there are different, you know, examples of that in the wild.
And I just saw. Actually saw an example from Turbo Tax the other day and it really caught my eye because. Or caught my ear, rather. It was a sort of on while streaming music on Spotify.
But this guy's voice comes in and goes, taxes is.
And my copy brain, you know, just went wild. Taxes is. Taxes is a plural noun, you know, and said taxes are. And then I thought about it. No, forget that. It's not about that. They're doing that on purpose because it's approachable and it's conversational. And taxes is a concept.
[00:03:59] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: It's an activity as well. Doing your taxes.
[00:04:02] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: They don't have to say doing your taxes is. They can just say taxes is.
And what else is approachable and conversational? What else is easy to use, you know, easy to approach? TurboTax.
So it was a perfect, you know, message delivery because they got nailed the context of their product and they also nailed the audience that they were trying to reach.
Yeah.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: So how do you balance authenticity and persuasion when crafting messages, you know, For a local audience?
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, for a local audience. That's really interesting.
You know, I'm in the South Jersey area and. Yeah. And close enough to Philadelphia.
[00:04:42] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:44] Speaker B: And I think there's this lawyer named John Morgan, and it's so funny, like his billboard, instead of writing his name out as John J O H N, it's J A W N Morgan.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: And I, I'd assume a tourist, you know, just driving through Philly might be like, why is his name. Why is the name spelled that way? That's so weird.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: But if you're from Philly or South Jersey or even the Tri State area, you're gonna go, oh, that's. That's Philly slang. You know, that's. That's totally Philadelphia right there.
So, you know, John Morgan knew his team, knew what they were doing when they put up that ad.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: And so they did their research. They know about local customs in the area, and they developed something that really resonated. And it's funny and it catches your eye in like three seconds or less. Right. And that's another key point of, of, you know, making sure you're advertising correctly. But I think to go back to your original Point, the underlying theme of that is know your market.
Like, know the locality in which you're operating.
That can include, you know, cultural competency research.
Go to. Go to where people are and ask them questions.
[00:05:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: It could. It could include market research. You could do a more formal survey. You could hire a couple teenagers to stand on a street corner and ask people questions and, you know, film a TikTok and then learn from that. So there are a lot of different ways where you can learn about what your local market needs.
And then the other, of course, at end of this is Google, because most people are typing into Google, you know, Thai restaurant near me or Italian restaurant near me or pizza near me.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: Plumber near me. And so if you can kind of understand, you know, what people are searching for on Google in your area through usually a research tool like Semrush, or you can even just go into Google and just do your research there. I mean, Google is almost like an SEO tool in itself because it wrote the book and because it's the engine itself.
[00:06:37] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, so those two things I would say are really important that knowing the local customs, knowing the local lingo, knowing how people speak, and then reflecting that in your messaging. Speak like the local people speak.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: And then number two, you know, doing your research, you know, under the hood. So making sure you're, you know, doing your keyword research and understanding where your local opportunities to seize that market exist.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: And speaking of Philadelphia, I'm. I'm from just outside Philadelphia too. And growing up as a kid, there was an attorney that always had advertisements on. T was the Alan Rothenberg, the injury lawyer.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: To this day, and I'm talking 30 years later, I still remember the phone number to his. I could call him now, you know, and I haven't seen him years.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
Cool.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Just goes to show you, it works.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yep. So what role does storytelling play, you know, in making content memorable?
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Everything.
The story is what people will remember.
And, you know, obviously there are a lot of famous. Way more famous markers than I am and more stat, you know, way more reputable.
Like Simon Sinek.
[00:07:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Start with the why.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Like what you're not selling your product or service. That's what you happen to.
That's what you happen to do.
[00:08:04] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: That's what you do is your product or service. That's not why you're doing what you're doing.
So you need to make that very explicit in your story.
It's one thing to say, this is a very famous example, but Apple has been pretty Pretty genius at marketing their products. I think we can all agree on that. But one thing, when they rolled out the ipod, they didn't say, hey, it holds, you know, three gigabytes of memory, right? They said 10,000 songs in your pocket.
[00:08:37] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: That's what you care about. Like, that's the why behind. Why they invented the ipod is to give you convenience to stream, you know, to music, to listen to music. So. Or, you know, ingesting media.
So again, why. Why is your brand doing what it's doing? Tell that story. What's the why behind your product? If you can unpack that in an advertisement, for instance, like that, you know, ipod example, that's a great way to do it. Same thing with public health. Or, you know, it's, it's kind of a similar format. You know, it's one thing to say, you know, nobody, you know, nobody has time for, for diabetes, right? That's a better way than saying, like, manage your blood sugar. You know, it's like they're different frames that you can, you know, there are always going to be infinite frames for your story.
But the why of, like, time. I think people really treasure their time in general, right? So if you can hit them with, with a more important why in that messaging and then relate it back to your brand or relate it back to your mission, you're going to succeed. Nine times out of ten, how do.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: You adapt content to different cultural and neighborhood, you know, like different neighborhood vibes?
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. That's a really interesting, interesting question. I think it's, it's becoming more and more important, too.
I mean, I gave you the example of Philadelphia that's, you know, obviously using, using the jargon of the area is really important for that.
But you have to know, you have to know first what people are going through in that neighborhood.
[00:10:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:10:14] Speaker B: Or going through in that community, and you can do your research on that. I mean, let's take the legal example again, right? It's like, if you notice a surge in car crashes in this one city or one area and you cover, you know, injury law, you probably don't want to put up advertisements about, you know, workplace injuries. You probably want to put up advertisements about auto injury, right? And we'll, we'll, you know, we'll get you compensated for your auto injury. So it's, I think, you know, doing your research is really important. And where do you start with that? I think you start with talking with people.
You can also do market research, and then you can also do your statistical research on the back end, obviously, with AI tools that we have now, like Perplexity, is a really great one for research.
You can surface these insights quite easily. So it's all available. It's just about putting two and two together and then making sure you're crafting messaging that's going to resonate with those audiences. And then the most important part is to verify that that messaging is actually working and converting well.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: We come up to, you know, the end of this first segment.
We're going to go to a commercial break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about, you know, messaging strategies that drive a great engagement.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Sounds great.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host, Mark Lamplugh. Here talking with Maxwell Pollock. And we're talking about content. And in this particular segment here, we're going to talk about messaging strategies that drive engagement.
Maxwell, how do you craft a call to action that feels natural in a campaign?
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question, Mark. I think people like to be invited to things, right?
If I'm inviting my neighbor over for dinner, right, let's say, or inviting a friend over for dinner. Some people don't like their neighbors. My friend over for dinner, I wouldn't say, you know, I might say, if I'm really, really good friends with them, I might say, hey, come for dinner on Tuesday night.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Or on Saturday night, whatever it is.
If I don't know them that well, though, let's say it is my neighbor, I probably wouldn't say that.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: But I would invite them, you know, hey, I'm having a dinner, you know, on Saturday night. Why don't you come over?
[00:12:42] Speaker C: Right?
[00:12:43] Speaker B: That's a much less demanding tone than you should come over on. You know, you should come over on Saturday night, please. Right? There's an air of desperation behind that. So with cta, I think it's really important to just understand you're inviting a prospect or a customer, potential customer, to come and know your brand, trust your brand, and ultimately buy from your brand.
So I think that it needs to start with that invitational tone and then test, test, test, right? Like, test out that cta. Does this phrasing work better than this phrasing does? Want to learn more question mark work better than learn more today, right? There can be, you know, again, you can. You can slice the CTA pie in 50 different ways, but unless you're out there doing the work and then testing it, you're not really going to know, and you're going to be flying blind.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: You know, what's the Difference between like messaging in, you know, in the digital space versus like messaging in other areas, like in brochures. I mean, do you have to change it? Do you keep it kind of, you know, similar?
[00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's similar. There are similar principles, don't get me wrong, there's similar principles, but there are differences too.
And I think the main difference is people are on their phones all day.
They, we live in a digital era now and people are just saturated with digital information in their home.
[00:14:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: It's not just like going to work and using a computer anymore.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: People, everyone has a smartphone, they're on 24 7.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: So actually what works in digital a lot better than I think in print media is disruption, disrupting someone's LinkedIn feed, disrupting someone's Google feed, whatever it might be.
You want to make sure you're giving people almost a pause from their digital fire hose instead of adding to the noise.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Right. That makes a lot of sense. How do you keep the messaging consistent across your flyers, your posters, your face to face?
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah, honestly, doing that work upstream, I'm a big fan of internal messaging documents putting in processes and systems in place to make sure that your marketers understand the messaging.
They understand how the product or service works.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Your salespeople understand how the product or service works. They understand the messaging.
Because how you message something can completely change the frame of what you're selling.
I mean, I saw something the other day, someone's like, yeah, if you don't believe in marketing. I just pitched salmon to my 4 year old as pink chicken and now it's her favorite meal.
[00:15:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: It's like depending on how you message your product, I mean, it'll make or break your sale. So at the end of the day, you have to do that work upstream, make sure everyone's prepared and then make sure that's also reflected in all of your print collateral, in your billboards, in your sound bites, whatever it might be.
That's what's going to drive momentum for your brand.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: What's your go to method for like testing a message before it hits the streets or before, you know, you put it out there?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Talk to your trusted advisors.
You know, nobody should work in a vacuum.
You know, the, the only savant out there was probably Mozart. It could, you know, be a first drafter.
[00:16:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Most people, they need several iterations and to talk things out with people before they actually land on something that's viable.
So talk to, you know, talk to a few people and give them several options, come to the table with a few different options that you're ready to pitch people. Get, you know, ask them for their honest feedback too. Maybe don't go to your mother, but go to your.
Go to your spouse or maybe go to your. Your friend who likes to critique you and poke at you. So that's what I would advise, definitely, you know, test it out with trusted people.
Another thing you could do as well is we have AI now, right? You could pop that message into ChatGPT and just say, hey, make 30 variations of this slogan or 30 variations of this copy, and then it's kind of your little accomplice in advertising or marketing, where you can bounce ideas off of it, and you might pick and choose maybe three or four of them and combine them and come out with something even better than what you thought of initially.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Another thing, too, especially, you know, thinking about that and you know, where to test is.
You know, if you're a smaller business, you can test with your employees, families, you know, and, you know, they're. They're kind of in your circle because you're.
They're kind of a. Extension of your team.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: You know, and also utilizing past, you know, clients or customers.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, totally. Mark, in the B2B world, we beta test.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: And you can do that in B2C too. It's. It's in both. But, you know, pick a trusted customer who isn't gonna rip your head off if this new solution doesn't work out perfectly for them. And say, just be honest. Hey, we're testing this out. It's gonna be no charge to you. We just want your honest feedback on it.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: How do you use humor or emotion to connect with people?
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a tough one. You don't want.
It's interesting because some people use humor really effectively, and it lands, and you get it right away, and you're like, wow, that was brilliant. Like, some super bowl ads do that really well. That's what I think of when I think of humorous marketing. I mean, yeah, I'm trying to think of the one from last year or this past super bowl, but, yeah, there was one with, I think, like, it was sealed. A singer. And then, like, he was like. So he was like. Like, it was just weird. Like, his face was on an actual seal.
It was just like. And clearly he was in on the joke, Right? Like, he went along with it, which was so cool.
So there can be a lot of those really interesting ways of using humor that kind of give you an eyebrow raise, but are also kind of silly and funny.
Certain industries lend themselves better to that than others.
You know, I, I mean, I think like in healthcare, which is where I work predominantly, it's really tough to be humorous.
These are people's bodies, their health ailments. Right.
Nurses are going through a lot. Doctors are going through a lot.
So someone comes in and they're kind of poking fun at your profession or poking fun at your illness. That's not really a good look for your company.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: So it's very tough. You, you can be more sort of witty and clever. So I think just being aware of the industry you're in and then, you know, using humor in that regard is good. Just make sure it doesn't drown out the actual product message or the pain point that you're trying to solve.
That's really the key part.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: I'm kind of with you there. I come from the healthcare background, was head of marketing for very large oncology practices and behavioral mental health. And.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: No. No way. Cool.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: You, you can't use the humor, but you do use a lot of emotion, you know?
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: To draw people in.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the biggest difference too, between B2B and B2C.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: You know, B2C. Like with oncology practices, you're basically a B2C.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: B2C marketing. Your patients are the customer, essentially. And it's totally emotional. It's emotion driven.
You're telling people, hey, you know, I mean, let's say from the pharma example, you know, take this pill, you know, and you'll feel better.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: Right?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: It's a feeling thing. You'll. You won't feel tired, right. You won't feel this way.
It'll help with your nausea, whatever it is. Take me some X and you won't have a fever anymore.
[00:20:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: It's very feeling oriented. B2B. That doesn't really work. You have a highly informed audience that knows what they're doing. Their businesses, business owners, some of them are marketers themselves.
So they're trying to tick the box off of like, what features do I need from this product? And it becomes a little bit more of like, okay, I need to be able to get in the head of a business owner, get in the head of a business person.
What do they want?
[00:21:11] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: They usually want to save time and money. That's like, it's a more practical sell.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: What. What role does word of mouth play in amplifying messaging?
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Huge word of mouth sales tend to convert the quickest, so you get a really, really quick conversion. Think about it like dating, right? Like, if If I were to, you know, I'm married now, but let's say my buddy was interested in a woman, right? And I knew her. If I made the introduction, right? That's a warm and fuzzy right there. That's a word of mouth, right? It's. It's like being the wingman. It's like, this guy's great. He's amazing, super nice guy. You guys go talk, you get to know each other. I mean, chances are they'll go on a date, right?
Same thing in business. I mean, it's the same exact thing in marketing.
So how do you, how do you help with that? You can offer referral programs, right? Acorns and like all these different apps do that really well. So refer a friend and get up to 500 bucks or whatever it is.
I know in some industries it's kind of frowned upon or not. You actually can get in trouble for that. But, you know, let's just say for most businesses, you can offer some sort of referral bonus.
Another way is just to make sure you treat your customers really damn well.
Make sure you're just doing everything you can for them on their behalf, and they'll refer you out, Right. They'll be your brand cheerleaders.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: How do you handle pushback or skepticism from an audience?
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't had to deal with that too, too much, but I think, you know, when people get furious, get curious. It's one of my favorite, favorite, favorite sayings ever.
If you just kind of like leave the noise, kind of cancel out the noise a little bit and you think about, huh, why is this audience skeptical? Or why is this audience furious? Or why is this audience, you know, giving us push back right now?
Try to have a conversation, you know, with somebody. I, I actually said this on another podcast or on a podcast recently.
I like sitting in on exit interviews or reading, at least reading the notes from an exit, you know, from an interview with a client that's leaving a company.
Because people get real honest during a breakup, right?
[00:23:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: They will tell you exactly how they feel and exactly how you wrong them.
And then you can kind of message around that.
Right now the company needs to make some important.
They need to do the work of actually improving, right. On the flip side, like, the lived experience has to match the marketing for a product or a service to be successful.
So at the end of the day, marketing can do. But marketing can learn a lot, right, from these customers who are disappointed or skeptical of the product. They can go back to the drawing board, work that into the messaging.
Let's say the problem isn't money. Let's say the problem really is just time. You know, it's like, well, I don't care how much the solution costs. That's not a problem for me. I want to know if it's going to save my, you know, doctor's time from writing in their ehr.
[00:24:28] Speaker C: Right.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Okay. I'm gonna message around time. Like, I'm gonna double down on time now because that seems like the most important issue at the moment.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: I wanted to cut you off there because we're going to come up to another commercial break. So stay tuned for Street Level Marketing after these messages.
Welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host Mark Lamplugh and Maxwell Pollack. And we're talking about content, how to create that content and make it resonate.
And, you know, this segment here, I want to talk about, you know, building brand reputation through grassroots efforts.
Maxwell, how does marketing influence a brand's reputation compared to traditional advertising?
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Marketing can. Marketing and pr, I should say they can both work hand in hand to cultivate trust.
Paid advertisements don't really cultivate trust.
I mean, they can give you a veneer of trust. Right. You can go pay for a commercial with a, let's use the oncology space. Right? You can pay for a commercial, have a patient talking about their experience at the doctor. And at the end of the commercial, though, it's, hey, come on over to whatever hospital and we'll take care of you.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: And look, that can lend some social proof to your, to your, you know, to your cause. That's all great stuff. Advertising is a necessary part of marketing.
[00:25:59] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:00] Speaker B: But where PR and marketing can really, I think, improve the total revenue cycle and improve the reputation of a brand is by cultivating trust at the very base layer.
And how do they do that? By unpacking the results.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Getting them in front of people where they actually operate.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Where they're actually operating from their day to day. When we talk about Street Level Marketing, we're talking about people at barbershops, you're talking about people at, you know, shopping. Whatever they might be doing, reading the news is a big one.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Right?
[00:26:37] Speaker B: So like, if I were Dell Computers and I were releasing a new product focused on helping, you know, individuals with blindness use a computer. I wouldn't put out a bunch of marketing about how great Dell is because they're creating this new computer product for people who suffer from blindness.
No, nobody likes to hear a brand talk about themselves. Right? And you're not really making it about the customer at that point and getting them to hand over their trust to your brand.
So what do you do? You could put an article and you know, pitch an article to a newspaper about an employee that you're already beta testing with that suffers from blindness. And by the way, they happen to be using a Dell computer.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Right.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: So it's a more subtle sell. But marketing and PR can work hand in hand, I think, to really build that trust. So by the time you start marketing to them and start advertising, they're already pretty much ready to buy and acquainted with your brand.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: The next question I have kind of is like a personal, a touch point to make is I recently left, but I joined a company that had a horrible reputation.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Due to some past situations that the company was in. How do you, what is the first step in like repairing a shaky brand reputation at a grassroots level?
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Acknowledgement.
We suck.
We messed up.
[00:28:10] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: It's like a great apology. You have to apologize. Like you got to take accountability after that though.
This is how we're changing.
[00:28:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: People have short term memories. It's really funny. Like that's why I think politicians get away with half of what they get away with because people just forget by the next week they're like, oh, I don't even know what they did. You know, I don't remember that.
So it's one of those things where acknowledge it happened.
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Get that over with.
Just we sucked.
Now we're different.
This is how we're different. And then to go back to our earlier point mark, things better be different.
The company has to then improve.
[00:28:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: Without that improvement, without that shake up, marketing can do all it's going to do on the reputation end of things.
It's just a veneer.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think a, a big point of the change with the company was hiring people with better reputations to help elevate and bring in change.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Fresh faces helps. You know, I think that's, I mean obviously that's as much of a market. It has to do with marketing.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: But I think it does trickle out to the marketing because especially when it comes to customer service, if you have some legacy folks who are there, I hate to say it, but you have some legacy folks there who are just disgruntled and you know, used to doing things a certain way, it's very tough to retrain them. It's going to be very, very tough. And sometimes you do have to shake up your team.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: How do you hand, how do you measure the impact of street Level efforts on brand perception.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: It's very tough.
This is the greatest question of all, Mark. And whoever answers it deserves a Nobel Peace Prize or something.
Attribution and content marketing is near impossible.
Let me rephrase that. Accurate attribution in content marketing is near impossible. So I can put out an advertisement, show you a certain amount of impressions, right?
But what did it really do? Unless someone's going on and filling out a form, right? And then we're talking about, like, lead generation while someone's going onto your website filling out a form and you can track them, right? Because it kind of like goes from an advertisement. It they click on that utm, what we call a UTM link, and then you can actually see where they're going on your website after that.
But unless you're filling out a form, you have no idea. And even if they fill out a form, this might not be the first time they've seen your advertisement, Right? This might not be their first interaction with your brand.
Let's say you're. Let's say your car dealership.
You know, maybe they saw a commercial, and then maybe they went online and looked you up, but they didn't fill out anything.
And then maybe they spilled coffee on their computer. They had to pause for a second, and then maybe, you know, they had, you know, some catastrophe in their life where they just totally forgot about you. And then they saw a commercial again and they went, you know what?
Let me go look at a car in this from Mark's dealership here. And then they go on and they fill out a form.
Well, all I would see is they went on and filled out a form, right? Direct traffic to our website, fill out a form.
So it's very tough to measure the impact in an accurate way. But I say this, and I'll say it time again, time and time again, the only metric that really matters at the end of the day is momentum.
If your lead. If your leads are growing, your sales team is flush with ripe opportunities, and you're seeing, you know, those vanity metrics go up, you're probably doing something right.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Can you share an example of a brand that turned its reputation around?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Oh, personally, I actually have had the honor of not working for companies that have had reputation issues. So that's great. Yeah, there was one.
There was one that had a reputation for laying off people multiple times a year. Like, they had several different riffs, but that was something they just didn't care about. And they're no longer around.
So there's, you know, usually some repercussions that, that can happen from stuff like that, from bad reputation.
They did have good reputations and good reputation in other areas, just not in employment.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of companies don't really think about that aspect of that impact impacting a business. But now what you, you know, yet with all the, you know, the employment websites, that falls into your marketing and your brand perception as well, and you don't think about that. And then once it happens, it's kind of too late because you got all those, that negative feedback that you got to get rid of.
[00:33:06] Speaker B: And you know, who wants to fire somebody, right? Firing some. I've had to do it. It sucks. It absolutely sucks. It's, it's heart wrenching. It really is awful. I, I hate even thinking about it. But it's a natural part of business.
It often happens. And you know, it's one of those things everybody wants the, the key part, like there's some kind of magic, you know, pill or something or panacea for preventing the fallout afterward. And it's very, very tough. Even, even if you have a really buttoned up HR department, really know what you're doing. My only advice for, I mean, obviously I'm going to employment advice right now, but for that reputation angle is internally, you should try to help someone get their next role right. Especially if they were a good employee and it had nothing to do with, yeah, you know, nothing to do with performance and nothing to do with like their character or anything like that.
Try to, you know, be like, hey, look, it sucks this happened. I'm here for you. I consider you a friend, consider you a colleague.
I'm gonna look for some open positions for you and see if there's anything in my network where I can help you out.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Usually pretty easy to do.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: It's not a lot to ask. Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: How do you ensure the messaging aligns with the brand's core values?
[00:34:23] Speaker B: First of all, knowing what those core values are, I think a lot, probably 98% of companies have no idea what they're core value is because they think about what they're doing, they don't think about why they're doing it. And they coast on that.
[00:34:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Because at the end of the day, you're still consuming a product or using a service, but they're missing out on probably, you know, exponentially more revenue than they're pulling in right now because they haven't nailed down what their core purpose is.
That's not a difficult task. It's just something that you have to spend Time on, you have to decide as a company and you have to put pen to paper, Right. And make sure that that's actually published and continues to be published and reinforced.
So it starts internally.
The core message, the core. Sorry, the core value has to be embodied by the company itself. And what is a company? It's the people who work for a company.
So the culture of the company has to be healthy first.
[00:35:20] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: It has to align with those core values.
And then it's like, okay, how do we unpack this and make sure we're amplifying this to our audience?
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: So if the. Why from a marketing perspective, I want to help people win.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: Right?
[00:35:37] Speaker B: That's my, that's my mission. I want to help people win.
So how do I impact that? You know, then, okay, you say like, hey, this is, this is how you can win with content.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: You give advice to people, make friends with people.
You help people by letting them bounce ideas off of you.
[00:35:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Notice I haven't talked about a sale yet. It's like, I'm not trying to sell you, I'm trying to help you win.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
Well, we're out of time for this segment, so we'll be back with Street Level Marketing after this. Commercial break.
Foreign welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host Mark Lamplu. And I'm here with Maxwell Pollock. And we're talking about content and, you know, how to make that content work at your company or your business or your service or, you know, whatever you do, you know you need it for.
And, you know, the last segment here, I wanted to talk about adapting and innovating in a competitive landscape. I mean, you know, with digital and all companies being online, I mean, it's competitive out there and a lot of businesses fail, you know, so getting the messaging correct and, you know, and sticking to that structure, you know, is going to make you successful. How do you keep content fresh when competitors are targeting the same audience?
[00:37:06] Speaker B: Going back to an earlier question, you know, content always good content starts with pain. So one way you could do it, and I've done this a couple times, is go to your competitors, reviews, look at the weak points and start messaging the opposite about your brand.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: Right?
[00:37:27] Speaker B: So if the weak point is terrible customer service, I can't get a hold of anybody. Start messaging around 247 white glove service whenever you need us.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Like that sort of tactic will help you stand out from competitors because chances are the customer is probably right about that. There are probably some problems at that company and you can opportunize on those issues and kind of position your brand as the foil to those issues.
You might get some attention from your customers because they'll say, hey, I haven't heard about this brand before, but maybe they're a little bit different.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:01] Speaker B: And then get specific.
[00:38:03] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:03] Speaker B: Like. Like I said 24 7.
[00:38:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: If you actually offer 24. 7 customer service, say it like, don't say the best customer service in. In Philadelphia.
[00:38:12] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:12] Speaker B: No, say like 247 service.
You know, friendly, ready when you need us.
[00:38:18] Speaker C: Right?
[00:38:18] Speaker B: Like really simple conversational language, but also be very specific with that messaging.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: What's the most innovative campaign you worked on or have you seen recently?
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Without getting too deep into the details, there is this campaign that is something I've never really done, which is advertising for a brand that has five sub brands.
So different audiences, same general industry, but different audiences, different segments of that industry.
So they all have different challenges, right? Different pain points, etc. But they all have things in common as well.
So that's been interesting and challenging. And I think that's why I like it, because it's sort of like playing 3D chess.
[00:39:11] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Number one, you have the bandwidth issue, which is how the heck am I going to make content for five brands and the parent brand associate brands.
The next issue is how am I going to make content? And, you know, obviously not lose my hair, but it's like, how am I going to make content for these brands but also make it effective and make it high quality?
[00:39:33] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:33] Speaker B: Like, how is it actually going to deliver? I can't just make content without results on the other end of that. Yeah, so that's the other thing. And then the third thing is how do you advertise for all this?
[00:39:47] Speaker C: Right?
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Like, how do you segment your audiences? Where do you find those audience members? And information is another key part. And also where are they living? Where are they discussing their challenges so we can understand that better. So that's what I think is really cool about it. AI has been a big help, which is also making it a very innovative initiative.
AI is here to stay. I'm a big AI fan now. I think at first I was like a little bit of an eyebrow raiser when it came to AI because I've seen solutions come and go. And then, you know, probably like Midway 2023, I was like, all right, this is. Yeah, this is hearsay.
And it's helped a lot with streamlining workflows. It's helped with just getting ideas flowing sometimes, like if you're just hitting a wall and you're like, you know what, let's see what chat says about it. Maybe it'll spur on some other ideas here.
And it can also be a good sort of devil's advocate. You know, you can feed it a piece of content and say, like, what's wrong with this piece of content for this audience?
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm with you there with the AI. I use it every day. I. I think the, one of the struggles I've had with it recently is there's so many new tools coming out. You know, you start using one and then two days later you're getting ads for all these new ones and you want to try those, and, you know, you're. You end up in a pigeonhole going.
[00:41:06] Speaker B: All over the place and buyer beware with that stuff. You know, I think I actually happen to do content work for a. An AI developer, and I learned a lot about AI while I was there.
And most of these solutions are using the same core technology, so you're not going to really get that much of a big difference between them.
That's why I like ChatGPT. Honestly. It's like, it's OpenAI. It's very transparent about it being OpenAI. I know what it is, and it's very flexible and intuitive.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
How do you pivot your messaging when a campaign isn't hitting the mark?
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Honestly, get rid of it.
If it's not landing, what is it doing for you? Get rid of it. Move on to the next thing if it's not hitting the mark. You know, I mean, maybe you could look at the messaging. Okay, maybe you could use like a small tweak here.
Run that ad again and see if it changes anything. It probably won't. It's probably just discussing a challenge that's not highly relevant right now. Or it's not, you know, connecting the dots between the challenge and your product, or the challenge and what you're trying to offer.
And I've been guilty of this before, you know, trying to squeeze too many things into an ad. That's usually the biggest killer of any sort of ad campaign is how many things can we squeeze into this? Let's, let's put a big number, a big statistic here, and then let's ask them to download a guide. It's like you drew them in with this statistic. That's great.
Like, just say, learn, you know, learn more about how we solve this. Right. They want to solve that problem. They don't want to read more about their problem. Like, they want to solve it at that point.
So, you know, they're, they're different messages that will work with different people, of course, but in general you can look across ads and be like, hey, this one is, you know, this one had 20 conversions yesterday, this one had nothing. Let's let them run for another week, see how they're doing. If this one's still, you know, underperforming, let's ax it, let's stop it, let's create a new one.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: How do you inspire a team to think outside the box for content and reputation wins?
[00:43:24] Speaker B: I think the biggest.
Before the, before that happens, you need to have a, the right people on your team.
So that's where recruitment and talent becomes so indispensable.
Like if you have a bunch of order takers on your team who are just sitting there waiting for you to give them directive, you're screwed. They're not going to think outside of the box. They're gonna collect their paycheck, they're going to make a cool piece of content and then just set it and forget it until you ask them to do something else.
[00:43:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: And they might be good, they might be very talented, don't get me wrong. And some people, sometimes you just need someone to like write a piece of content or write a landing page or write an email sequence or whatever it might be.
But more often than not, the type of people you want in your team are the ones who are going to think outside of the box. And those are self starters.
So prioritizing self starters in your recruitment process and asking pointed questions during the recruitment process and asking for specifics is a great way to do that.
And if you see those red flags as someone who's just not a motivated person, you know, probably don't hire them.
The other thing. So that's number one, right? It starts with the talent, the recruitment.
Number two is to schedule time for creativity.
It's really easy to get caught into the humdrum of the day and just start cranking out content, working on tasks, getting things done. And we all like to get things done and you need to get things done on time, but you also need time to think outside of the box.
If your day is so cluttered and over scheduled where you don't have time to think out of the box, that's a problem.
And there needs to be better project management and time management.
So setting those allocated time blocks for, hey, as a team we're going to meet like with my team, I have a monthly social media meeting where it's like first Thursday of the month, an hour we just bring to the table. A few ideas that we saw out in the wild from competitors or even from outside of the industry.
[00:45:22] Speaker C: Right.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: It can be from a totally different industry. It doesn't matter.
Just anything we saw that really caught our eye and we thought, that's brilliant.
Like, so bring at least one of those to the meeting and see if we can incorporate into our social media strategy.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Well, we're coming to the end of the show and I want to make sure I give you time, you know, to tell the viewers, you know, how to get a hold of you and I appreciate you coming on.
We learned a lot in this episode.
So, you know, how can the viewers get a hold of you?
[00:45:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
Hop onto my website.
It's maxwellcpollock.com spelled just like my name, maxwellcpollock.com and hit me up, press that contact button and. And we'll link. I like making new friends.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Well, like I said, thanks. Thanks for coming on the show. We, you know, we got through a lot of information here and I think, you know, people can pick up a lot. We'll make sure we put the show up on the screen so, you know, viewers see it.
You know, the viewers. Thanks for watching and stay tuned. You know, join us next week for another episode of Street Level Marketing.
[00:46:32] Speaker C: This has been a Now Media Network's feature presentation. All rights reserved.
