Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Sally Hogshead Value propositions are a sales and marketing staple. It’s very difficult to get a purchasing conversation started unless the potential buyer understands some way in which a product or service they are considering adds value in a way that is somewhat unique from other offering. Lacking a strong value proposition lands one in the commodity pile. What about people though? Can a salesperson have a value proposition or unique ability to add value? I think they most certainly can and one of the keys to standing out in a competitive sales landscape is to discover, communicate and amplify your greatest strength as your individual value proposition. Every organization must provide value through its offerings first and foremost but as a buyer considers options the value proposition, reputation, process and brand of the individual sales guide can play a role in the final buying decision and certainly plays a huge role in customer loyalty in the long run. How you sell is just as important as what you sell and who you are dictates your best way to teach, advise and sell. The fist step to using this notion is to gain a better understanding of your personality strengths and how you impact those with which you interact - your value proposition. Simply considering this notion will make you a better salesperson no matter the circumstance. To take this step I suggest a couple of bodies of research. The first is the work of my friend Sally Hogshead who’s best selling book Fascinate must be on your reading list. Sally is this week's guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast and famously shows people how to fascinate using their own unique "archetype" in eight seconds or less! The second is the work and insight of something called the Kolbe Index. Both Kolbe and Hogshead focus on helping people discover their unique ability with an eye on using that in a way that benefits all around you rather than trying to shore up weaknesses or be more of something you’re not. Perhaps you’ve taken personality tests in the past or been told you have a certain makeup that’s perfect for sales, but I contend, and both of the above resources support this, that there is no right or wrong personality for sales. Sure, if you’re job calls for you go out and cold call all day, you might want to have a certain Teflonlike makeup, but if you understand that your job is to educate and bring insight in order to create a better sales process than your competitors, than understanding your core strength and figuring how to use that to add value is the most important way to differentiate in a meaningful manner. I suggest every business owner, entrepreneur and salesperson take both the Kolbe Index and the Fascination Advantage Test or better yet take this idea to your sales and marketing departments and have the entire team assess their personal brand strengths. Hogshead graciously gave me twenty-five free access passes to take her Fascination Advantage Test to share with my readers. If you're reading this and it sounds like an awesome idea (and you're one of the first 25 to read this - go to HowToFascinate.com/VIP and use the access code:DUCTTAPE) One of the first things that many people who take this step commonly experience is that it’s very empowering. In some cases simply knowing what to lead with clears up a great deal of confusion about the way you should work to be most effective. Many personality tests measure how you see the world, but these two also work on helping you understand how the world sees you. The Fascination Advantage is a science-based personal brand assessment, incorporating results of 125,000 participants. The test was created by Sally Hogshead, and developed by the team at Fascinate, Inc., this test will reveal how your personality adds distinct value. The Kolbe A Index measures a person's instinctive method of operation (MO),

Marketing podcast with Jay Baer - author of Youtility. Integration and convergence are the two concepts I’ve been drilling on most for the past few years. Quite frankly, marketing has always worked better when integration is considered, but today’s markets, buyers, humans want and expect more than consistent messaging across platforms. What’s driving the market today? People want and expect content that is educational, useful and personalized. People want and expect marketing that provides utility and purpose People want and expect to interact and engage with brands on many fronts People want and expect to join and participate in community in addition to completing transactions. Organizations that get this, that foster this and that build marketing strategies and campaigns that take full advantage of this, will build customer loyalty and word of mouth lead generation in ways that cannot be matched by competitors trading on lower price. More is not the answer - better integration is. You don't need more content, more followers, more engagement, more marketing - you need all of these things to work together more effectively to create a more useful experience for customers and prospects. Below are a handful of key questions and suggestions related to each of the four drivers leading the marketing challenge today. Content – The best path to increased long tail SEO and customer loyalty – Key Question – How can you use existing and new content to create engagement and opportunity? Content based autoresponder series – series of videos on how to do X. Dynamically displayed content based on search term. Invitation to content series based on a series of questions YouTube Video channel selector Geo location-based content Turn Q and A into knowledge base Figure out what visitors can’t you find and create it Utility – Using marketing to be more useful – Key Question – How can you make your marketing so useful people would pay for it? Personalized video responses to questions Create a Q and A platform (Quora) Geo-location self-serve information This is the point where I need to tell you that this week’s guest on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Jay Baer, founder of Convince and Convert and author of Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype. Baer's book is chock full of ideas and campaigns from brands that get this idea in a big way. Youtility is a quick read and a must read if you want to start adopting a mindset of usefulness and true integration. If you want to explore this important driver in-depth you must pick up this book. Social – Increase sharing and decrease search engine dependency – Key Question - How can you use social media to increase friend reach and create new customers? Google+ Hangouts to YouTube YourBrandSuggests – Monitor Twitter to make industry related recommendations (great example of this in Youtility) Visualize industry related data – most popular X on Twitter, aggregate industry related tweets Facebook lead capture Facebook contest by market segment Surprise upgrade program Facebook advertising content series Message of the day promote across staff social networks Community – Leverage referability to build trust and awareness – Key Question – How can you turn your customer base into a vibrant community? Market segment hosted communities Proactive referral programs Crowdsourced database or app Membership programs with customer led content or moderation And the biggest question of all - How can you create more integration and convergence?

Marketing podcast with Tom Asacker A few months ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a healthier economy. This is the final post in the series. You can catch the entire Recover You series here. I have spent a great deal of time over the last decade or two trying to understand and sort out the role of purpose as it relates to work. And you know what? - it's a lot easier to consider in retrospect than to try to grasp by looking towards some far off horizon. In this quest I think you can indeed consider what brings you joy the most, where your passion lies and even what legacy you want to leave behind, but until you succumb to the fact that what you are doing right now must be your life's purpose you'll always feel cheated somehow. Now, this isn't one of those you must live in the moment posts. What I'm saying is that I discovered my purpose in work when I finally realized that it's the experience of what I'm doing and living my work with passion that defines my purpose. Giving in to that idea is how purpose finds you. The struggle to find that perfect thing you were meant to be is what causes untold amounts of pressure while the very thing you were meant to do is experience what you're actually doing more fully. When you realize that one distinction you can start to change the world around you by building new beliefs. Every thing we do in business and in life is dictated by our beliefs and changing this one belief is how you change your existing reality. I recently sat down with Tom Asacker author of several critically acclaimed books including his latest, The Business of Belief: How the World's Best Marketers, Designers, Salespeople, Coaches, Fundraisers, Educators, Entrepreneurs and Other Leaders Get Us to Believe to talk about the subject of purpose and beliefs for an episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Asacker first approaches how our beliefs dictate, right or wrong, every action we take. To me this notion also rules how we think about purpose and passion. Many people don't find purpose in their work because they don't think they can or should or that purpose must represent something much grander than what they are about today. Asacker's book also shows how marketers and others can use the power of belief for good and evil, but ultimately this short read is all about getting you to take charge of your beliefs so you can change your view of purpose and passion. To me the missing piece in the struggle to bring purpose to the workplace lies in the words of Buckminster Fuller. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” So, in order to work more fully on purpose you must make your existing model of work obsolete. I think every business owner should carve that quote into something permanent and persistently visible!

Marketing Podcast with Adele Revella I think it's pretty easy to get caught up in marketing speak when it comes to customers and think in terms of target markets and market share and the like, but in the end, even the buyer at the big corporate purchasing department is a person. Defining and sketching the make up and personality of your ideal customer, you know, the ones you love to work with, is something I've been preaching for years. The impact of narrowly defining who makes a great fit for your business - meaning who you can actually deliver the most value to - is astonishingly simple and profound. It helps you first and foremost spot business you should not take. It helps you attract the right kind of customer and it guides how you simplify and communicate your marketing message. Over the years marketers have come to call this sketch of ideal customer segments customer personas. I love the terms as it draws heavily on personality traits and behavior - two of the most important elements of a good fit. The term persona originates in the theater world, which translates wonderfully to the world of business where character development, story lines and emotional connection are staples. The idea behind a persona for the sake of marketing is to describe or sketch in elaborate detail exactly what a customer segment looks and acts like as though they are a real person. This might involve a character name like Mary or a descriptive term like Techie as well as an image. But the key is that Mary or Techie's behavior is described in a way that gives clues to what they expect and how to spot them. For example in my world you might meet: Bob - The Learning Focused Business Owner - Bob owns a business and realizes that he loves to learn - he soaks up everything he can and knows where to find more. He reads books, attends online seminars and can spout the latest business lingo. He researches before he makes a decision and relies heavily on information from his network. He craves a combination of coaching, teaching and DIY and demands the ability to dive deeper into subjects on his own. He wants help on things he does not understand and validation on the things he is working on to make sure he is on the right course. To give more insight into the notion of customer personas I visited with Adele Revella, president of Buyer Persona Institute and author of the eBook The Buyer Persona Manifesto Revella describes what she calls 5 Rings of Insight that are required to accurately create customer personas. 1. Priority initiatives - What's important to your customer right now 2. Success factors - What would success look like to them 3. Perceived barrier - What might hold them back from buying 4. Buying process - How do gather information and make a purchase 5. Decision criteria - How do they come to a decision Revella's work is focused primarily on large organizations but the considerations for any size business are the same. Have you ever considered the factors above as you consider your ideal customer? Discovering and using customer personas is part gut feeling from your own experience, part stepping back and considering things like Revella's five rings and part consistently asking your customers and prospect why they do what they do, why they don't choose you, how they make decision and why they chose you. Take all of that information and put into a set of characters your business is built to attract and everyone in your organization will learn how to attract the right kinds of clients.

Marketing podcast with TopRank's Lee Odden Does it makes sense for companies to invest in SEO as an independent activity? Can you influence search without content and social? Those are some of the questions I asked Lee Odden, author of Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing and founder of TopRank Online Marketing for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. I think it's easy to say SEO is dead. Certainly it's not practiced the way it once was but does it still have a place as a stand alone marketing practice. The practical matter is that when you're in a competitive environment it's not enough to put up good content. There's still a need for content and digital assets to align with keywords and that takes intention. Social media participation and authority are increasingly important so as Odden shares in this interview - "you've got to be doing it all." Content marketing is perhaps the future of SEO right now, but it's not just content - it's content marketing. The implication being that the content has a purpose and a specific intent. Odden's recent blog post titled - The Truth About Content Marketing and SEO makes this distinction very clear.

Marketing podcast with Mitch Joel I've been sensing a change these days. Actually, like most change, it happens in a way that is imperceptible, until you step back and look at something like a six month window. Then you can see it. The world of marketing has changed - social, local, mobile - all powered by content, has happened, it's not a fad - and yet businesses are still acting as though they can treat it as such. But here's the really scary thing - it's changing again. For this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I visit with Mitch Joel, CEO of Twist Image and author of Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It who, in dramatic fashion, describes this state of denial that many business owners and marketers are living in as purgatory. The change we are undergoing right now will dwarf what we've seen over the past five years. Every bit of data and information we share and consume is headed towards a single source or, as Joel calls it, a single pipe. We are moving beyond customer service and marketing messages to a era where businesses must be built to interface directly with the customer at every level. The customer and the direct relationship with the customer is an organization's greatest asset and greatest risk. An organization's ability to respond directly and in real time will determine success and failure. Proactively leveraging opportunities in real time is the new landscape. One of my favorite lines from the book sums this up - "Instead of asking people to like us Facebook – why not trying liking them first." In the world we are heading towards marketing and advertising must become more useful. Advertising must become so useful that people would keep your ad on the home screen of their phone. Messages must become so useful that people are willing to pay for them! Information no longer wants to be free, it wants to be worth paying for. Media must become both active and passive. The move towards socializing every event or show has created an environment of fatigue. There are times when we just want to read something, or, if we want to engage, it's got to fit the experience. More content isn't the answer. Better content, relevant content, content that fits what I am doing right now or content that my trusted friends say is the best, is the answer. It's time once again to reboot business and reboot how we do business, how we work and what we call an office and a career.

John Jantsch talks about podcasting Podcasting is making a comeback thanks to a growing consumer demand for content. If you're not listening to podcasts, or better yet, producing your own audio content, you better reconsider. I’ve been publishing the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast since 2005. I got into podcasting as a way to create content and unlock opportunities to get in front of leading authors and industry experts. Back then, podcasting was new, iTunes had just burst onto the scene and an army of podcasters embraced this new RSS driven way to syndicate content. But then social media came along and things like Twitter and Facebook made podcasting seem so last decade. (Heck, people even starting suggesting that blogging was dead!) But then, a funny thing happened on the way to the evolution of all things digital. People started to rediscover podcasting as a tremendous way to package and deliver content in a new and intimate way. All of a sudden, everyone had a podcast listening device in their pocket (otherwise known as a smartphone), and the new iPhone even came with the iTunes Podcast app preloaded. As a result to the easy access, podcast listening again began to surge. Some people still shy away from the term "podcast" much like they did "blog." Here's the deal, just like a blog, forget what you call it, creating audio content is a great way to tap the fact that people want to listen to content on their most personal device - their phone - and why wouldn't you work your tail off to get invited into that place. How I podcast There are dozens of ways to podcast and I am by no means an expert on every aspect of the technology, but I will share what seems to work for me. Blue Yetti USB Mic - This a high quality microphone with lots of professional type settings and will set you back about $100, but the quality sound is worth it. Skype - I do all of my interviews over Skype as my guests are from around the globe. I use a SkypeIn 9 didget phone number so my guests can call from a phone if they like but more and more people connect directly via Skype these days. I also use a Skype add on called Call Recorder so I can record directly in Skype and it also lets me split the tracks so I can edit them independently. Garage Band - I edit on a Mac and Garage Band does a great job. I level the sound, add music, and edit some things out before saving to iTunes. Libsyn - I use Libsyn to host and stream my podcast. I pay about $10 a month for this and it keeps my podcast separate from my web hosting. Blubrry PowerPress - This WordPress plugin creates a player for my blog and handles the RSS technical stuff including passing the podcast to iTunes. I run my podcast on my regular blog and use the category RSS feed to splice those posts off. Rev.com - Sometimes I will transcribe my podcasts as a way to essentially take one form of content and make another. Rev.com is fast and very affordable. If you want to learn more about the technical aspects of podcasting, check out Podcast Answer Man – Cliff Ravenscraft. My personal listening list 2012 became the year that a number of very well-known content producers embraced the podcast format, producing and distributing audio content in a very big way. The following podcasts have become very popular in iTunes and offer tremendous content for those inclined to consume their content while driving, working out or simply hanging out plugged into a pair of earbuds. Seth Godin's Startup School: Recently launched on the Earwolf network, the Startup School podcast features highlights from a workshop Godin conducted with 30 up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Social Media Marketing Podcast by Michael Stelzner: Social Media Examiner's Michael Stelzner helps your business navigate the social jungle with success stories and expert interviews from leading social media pros. The Human Business Way by Chris Brogan: Business with a soul. Improve your impact.

Marketing podcast with Brian Solis. The more things change, the more they change. That's my take anyway and it seems like we are in the middle a significant change once again when it comes to marketing. Search revolutionized the way we find things and altered how companies are chosen. Blogs and social networks shifted the playing field dramatically once again just a few short years ago. Today, you can't open up an RSS reader without bumping into a torrent of content on, well, content. Marketers get it, they need more content. The problem is, consumers don't need more content, they need a better experience. And that's the future of marketing. Now that we have mastered a new tool set my gut tells me we are preparing for a trip back to the future. My guest for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Brian Solis, Altimeter Group analyst and author of What's the Future of Business?: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences. Solis and I discuss the coming fusion of innovation, leadership and engagement. Our presence in the lives of our customers is approaching a saturation point. The only thing left to invest in is creating better experiences using data, access, culture, sharing and community. I interviewed Lee Odden for an upcoming episode and he plainly stated - "The best investment you can make in marketing is the quality and experience of your product." This is where we are headed and many will continue to play catch up - I've been saying this for years now and I believe it's simply come to pass.

Podcast interview with Chip Heath There's a running joke in my family. When my girls were growing up I would often shout out to each of them as they were off to the next party or outing - "Make good choices!" While I was completely sincere in my words it never failed to draw a big smile from them and their friends. (They've given me several gifts over the years immortalizing this phrase - see image above!) While making good decision in life and in business is a great asset I wonder how many people really know how to do it well. Most of what we do all day long is make choices. We choose when to get up, when to eat, when to go to bed and how to react to every word, deed and thought. Of course, business only multiplies the choice making buffet. We get to decide how to position our business, what color our logo should be and even who to hire. Some decisions are certainly more vital than others, but what tools do we generally use to make them. If you're like me, it's mostly gut, experience and a boat load of emotion. Sometimes this works well and other times it plays right into my blind spots. For this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast I chose to interview best selling author Chip Heath. You may recall the Heath Brothers penned Made to Stick and Switch. This month they are back with a new release Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. As the title and subtitle imply, they aim to teach us all how to make better decision. The book focuses on a 4 part decision making approach that is a bit of a systematic process that can be applied to most any situation. The trouble with most of us is we make decisions that tend to validate what we already think and doing so blindly or without recognition can lead to trouble or repeating a history of less than stellar decisions. In Decisive the Heaths suggest the following path: Widen your options - never limit choices to one narrow set, get options and suggestions from others. Reality-test your assumptions - this is a great one. Make small choices and see what the market has to say rather than betting the farm. Attain distance before deciding - this is the good old "sleep on it" option - so many career and relationship ending emails would remain unsent if more of us did this! Prepare to be wrong - At first I found this odd advice, but what it allows us to do is move to plan B. So often we get so attached to out decisions we dig deeper holes. Every decision is choice, whether to embrace love or fear, raise your prices, launch a new product, all choices. Next time you face a decision think about the four points above and by all means decide to read this book!

Marketing podcast with Dan Martell Have you ever wanted to seek out and find very specific advice for a really big thing you're wrestling with? Or maybe for just that little thing that needs a specific experience or skill? If you're in business I'm guessing you have that thought several times a day. What if there were a storehouse of people with all kinds unique expertise just waiting to hear from you? And what if you could dial up one of those experts and "pick their brain" for a minute or two? Well the good news is there is such a place and it's called Clarity.fm. Clarity was founded by Dan Martell, a Canadian entrepreneur and angel investor. Some long time readers might remember another company Dan started called Flowtown, as I profiled it years ago before he successfully sold that venture. The idea behind clarity is both simple and brilliant. It borrows from the current shared economy trend that creates markets from available capacity - Think AirBnB, Lyft, RelayRides, Uber and Sidecar. Clarity is a marketplace for available expertise. People with experience register and create a profile, set an hourly rate and make their expertise available to people who need it. What makes the marketplace run is experts create the product, those in need buy the product and Clarity brokers the process. While clarity is a potentially lucrative revenue source for consultants and advisors, I think the challenge it really addresses is the "pick your brain" syndrome that can present a problem for any entrepreneur. Budding entrepreneurs are hungry for advice that successful entrepreneurs often love to share, and Clarity creates the process that makes it work for both. Many experts on Clarity donate proceeds to charity causes and fees range from $1 minute to, well, Mark Cuban prices per minute. Seems like a Clarity profile would be a natural way to extend and monetize both a blog and a LinkedIn profile. I got to visit with Martell while he was speaking at a conference and I present his story and advice for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. By the way, here's my Clarity profile.

Marketing podcast with Jonathan Fields A few weeks ago I started a series of posts I’m calling Recover You. The series is focused on practices and habits that I believe lead to a healthier mind, body and spirit, a healthier business and ultimately a...

Marketing podcast with Bernadette Jiwa Perhaps one of the most primary objectives of marketing is to get people talking about your business. Sure, you actually want them to buy from you, but when there's buzz, when people think what you're doing matters, there will be sales. To me there is no more important job than building your business in a way that allows you to stand out from everyone else. But, how do you create something that will get people talking? How do you build a story that people want to share and become a part of? How do you not be boring? Not being boring doesn't mean you have to create controversy or fanfare, it means you have to do something in a way that others don't. It means you have to do something better, faster or with more soul. There are two parts to beating the boring equation - first you need a value proposition that allows you to both stand out and deliver something that no one else is. And then you need a story to carry your value proposition. What most of us are really trying to do in this world is build a loyal community and few things build community like a story worth sharing. The first element, the value proposition, however, is actually the harder part to get right. So often we want to tell the world about our product or our service. These might be nice things, but the reality is they don't build community. Community forms around ideas, process, common language or what I've come to call "Method." In order to truly tap the power of a value proposition you must fully develop your way of doing business, your method for standing out and delivering value. When you get this part right, the story people tell and build practically creates itself out of the common language of the community that forms around your unique method. And that's how to not be boring! To expand on this notion I visited with Bernadette Jiwa, author of Make Your Idea Matter: Stand out with a better story for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Jiwa's book is a tremendous resource in arena of storybuilding and making your business one that people can't live without.

Marketing podcast with Matthew Dixon I’ve been spending some time writing about how the job of sales has changed dramatically over the last few years. In recent posts I outlined what I called the Disciplines of the New Sales Professional and followe...

Marketing podcast with Martha Beck It's a tough enough thing to scratch out a vision for your business and perhaps even tougher to keep it alive. As the owner of a business you're expected to create the vision, impart it on the troops and hold them accountable for bringing it to reality. But who does that for you? Who reminds you when you've veered off course, who helps you think bigger when everyone around you is doing the opposite? No matter how big your dream or vision is you need someone to hold you accountable to take the leap of faith that makes it real. I've focused my content this month on coaching and consulting and my guest for this week's episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Martha Beck. Beck is undoubtedly one of the most well-known life coaches, author of multiple books, including Finding Your Own North Star, columnist for Oprah's O magazine and all around fascinating human being. In this episode she shares her coaching model and point of view about success. I posed some typical questions small business owners wrestle with when it comes vision and accountability and if you listen closely you'll hear me getting pushed to take my own leap of faith. Here's what an effective coach can do for you. Push you to discover why you do what you do Help you uncover the things you need to give up Unlock how you get off your current plateau Show you how to make money doing what you love Help you dream bigger and get clearer Here's my advice - hire a coach. Share you vision, ask them to push you and make you keep your vision alive. Thanks Martha!

Marketing podcast with Randy Gage Back when I started my own business, some twenty-five years ago, I was a bit of rebel. I was taking a leap and doing something that many considered terribly risky. Well, the game has changed dramatically since then and now not starting a business, not figuring out how to be paid well to do something you truly love or not taking a leap of faith is perhaps the only risky thing left in the world of work. This month I've been meeting with and interviewing coaches and consultants that help people chase what they were meant to do and I'm sharing their advice and stories as part of my monthly content theme. People like Martha Beck, Jonathan Fields, Pam Slim and Randy Gage appear on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast this month. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single interview! For this week's episode I visit with Randy Gage, prosperity coach, speaker and author of nine books including Risky is the New Safe: The Rules Have Changed . . . Technology change, political change, human develop have led to a time where security is all together a different thing than it once was. Some of Gage's nuggests: Opportunities to solve problems are abundant and that's where wealth is created. We are all now in charge of creating our own channel and communicating that with the world. Technology makes audacious ideas reachable today. Nobody has a money shortage we simply have an idea shortage - come up with the right idea and money will be plentiful. Ask the right questions about every industry - Who owns the moon? What are the three things that keep my market awake at night? What's going to happen with every form of technology in my market? You must understand cyclical, linear, hard and soft trends to predict the future. If something is impossible, how could it be possible?