Michelle Brammer

Probably an unpopular opinion, but aggregating viral content to your company's social media platforms isn't a winning strategy. For some companies, content aggregation is great for brand awareness. If you look at groups like Funker530 (Ronnie Adkins), who aggregates and commentates on combat footage, or North American Rescue, LLC, who aggregates and provides comprehensive write-ups on trauma medicine, it's a great strategy. The ticket here is that the brands who do this well and thrive are adding value to the content that they're aggregating. If you're just posting the flavor of the day with very little additional value, or jumping on the next viral trend or video in the hopes that you'll get more eyeballs than the next video in the infinite scroll, you're going to have a rough go of things. Instead of aggregation, build your own team of motivated in-house content creators. People who can connect with your customer in a personal way. Provide them with the freedom of movement, tools, and time they need to create engaging video and copy that provides value to the individual's time spent scrolling endlessly through social media. This will help you stand out and above the static noise of infinitely scrollable short format content. If that's not an option for your business, then connect with groups like Clandestine Media Group or one of the many independent photographers and videographers like Collin Perryman and let them do the work for you. And, if your business can't afford that yet, solicit more user-generated content by adding in cards to your packages asking customers to tag you on social media or send out an email with a photo contest that ends in a giveaway so that you can, at the very least, aggregate relevant quality content. I would love to hear what unique things your business is doing for creative content strategy down below. I know it can be a struggle, especially for a young business with one owner/operator trying to do everything from running machinery to building out the marketing strategy, but you can do this. Feel free to reach out if you need help or advice. My DMs are always open. I'm always happy to chat and share ideas.

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🙋 Raise your hand if you’re a one-person marketing team Let me guess, it’s your job to: ✅ Plan events ✅ Write blogs ✅ Buy ad space ✅ Start a podcast ✅ Get media attention ✅ Develop a paid ads program ✅ Create educational collateral ✅ Handle all the social accounts ✅ Be the company spokesperson ✅ Design graphics and edit video ✅ Probably handle internal and crisis comms Stressed yet? Having fun? You’re expected to be a unicorn. Even though we all know unicorns don’t exist (shhhh, don’t tell my daughter). You’re probably thinking all the time: “I just need support.” I get it. I WAS that one person marketing team when we were growing Franny’s Farmacy. Everyday was overwhelming. And that’s part of the reason I started a fractional marketing company. To give those unicorn marketers the support they REALLY need. You don’t just have to decide on one hire. You can get an entire team for the price of one FTE. We bring in a crew of experts, each with a very specific specialization to help you reach your goals. Ready to design your website? We’ll bring a team in. Gearing up to put out content? Enter our team of subject matter experts In a big product promo period? We’ve got folks to make high-converting ads. You shouldn’t have to do the role of 5 different people as a marketing director. If you want some support, feel free to reach out to see how we can help!

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Well, my non-teardown of Chili Piper might be my best-performing post of all time. If you missed it, it's here: https://lnkd.in/gVkeSEZG I wasn't quite sure what to expect, so I'm pleasantly surprised. My goal was to create something I had never seen before, which was a bit maddening to do. It wouldn't have been possible without Alina Vandenberghe 🌶️'s candor and generosity with her time. (And I did kinda, ahem, borrow Josh Lowman 💈's video style, which he was very gracious about...thanks for that, Josh.) I do want to call out one tidbit out of the 1,637 tibdits in my somewhat packed asset. This header. When I think about positioning multi-product or muti-use case platform companies, I always look for what I call "the glue concept." It's a framing of the platform or product portfolio that makes it all stick together. I think this is a particularly excellent example of a glue concept that lands on all levels. - It's not grandiose - It speaks to a tangible problem that different buyer personas want to solve - It presents product use cases as a unified whole - The visual breakdown makes the whole thing easy to internalize Getting to the glue concept is one of the toughest challenges in positioning a platform product, especially one with disparate buyers like Chili Piper. Very nicely done.

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Baseball, Hot Dogs, and Tips for Buying Marketing Software... CRM and marketing automation SaaS solutions have long used some version of the “get them hooked and then hit them with the add-ons” sales approach, but it seems to have become more common and complex lately. It reminds me of a baseball game I once saw…but more on that at the end. Following are tips to help marketers at small- mid-sized organizations navigate the game of tiers and add-ons. **Check Payment Terms Up Front. The monthly price that’s quoted sometimes isn’t. Some software providers offer a monthly purchase option for a higher price in addition to a discounted price for an annual subscription, but some others attract interest by quoting a monthly fee when an annual commitment is required. If cash flow is a factor in your decision, confirm the payment options before spending a lot of time researching and demo-ing the software. **Ask About Set-Up Costs. Also, many firms don’t include one-time set up or configuration fees in their online or initial quotes. Ask up front about these costs. **Scrutinize Limitations of Lower Tiers. Almost all CRM and automation software is sold in tiers. Look carefully at the limitations of the tier you are purchasing, including both functionality, such as limits on customizations and reports, and quantity, such as maximum number of contacts in the database, limits on API calls, etc. The best way to do this is to have your requirements, processes and workflows mapped out in advance and check that the tier you are looking at has all the functionality you need to get the job done. **Be Wary of Third-Party App Integrations. Be wary of using third-party apps to fill in missing functionality. Use online resources to carefully research how well the integrations work. (Often not that well.) **Consider Consulting Costs. If you decide to go with a higher tier of a software solution, investigate how much of the added functionality is truly out-of-the-box and how much will require external consultants to get the software to really perform how you need it to. Hiring a good consultant can save a lot of time and money in the long run, but make sure to factor the cost in up front. It all reminds me of a baseball game on TV a while back. It was free hot dog day at the stadium, and one of the fans in the TV shot directly behind home plate was sitting there unaware that he had a big blob of mustard on his face. The announcer joked, “That’s how they get you. The hot dogs are free, but napkins cost $10 a piece.” Buying marketing software can feel a lot like that. For assistance researching, purchasing, and configuring CRM and marketing software, contact us. Marksense Marketing Solutions https://lnkd.in/gSff6UD4 #MarketingTips #SoftwareBuyingTips

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I think this will be a train wreck for ads. You think it's more ad inventory. I think it's a sign of the end for Meta. Here's my take. Zuck and his board are sitting in their board room trying to figure out how to make more rev dollars. They see brands spending less than usual. Market conditions, inflation, and competing platforms are eating away at their user base. Meta's making more money now but not because more people are spending more time on platform. More brands are spending on other channels because Meta ads has been widely volatile. So Zuck and his board are asking, "how do we squeeze more revenue out of what we have?" It's either - more inventory to deflate CPMs - jack up CPMs - subscription model - live selling - more users to spend more time on platform They're doing some of that except optimizing for "time on platform" Here's why this is bad for biz. 1. Forcing ads on someone is ONLY GOOD for Meta....short term. They are forcing a user to consume an ad to watch what they want. Before, a user could swipe past what they do vs don't want. Meta will get more ad dollars now by cheaper CPMS so brands will spend more. Users will get a worst experience. Ads in these new placements will have the worst engagement, CVR, and CTR's you've ever seen. Ever run on Youtube, Display? 2. We should be scared for Meta. Yes they are having great profits at the moment but when you screw with the users experience they will go else where. It's a sign of the end. This to me is screaming Meta is prioritizing profits over experience. And they see the only real path to keep growing is to force ads on people. - they can't get more inventory by having people stay on the platform longer - so they have to force more inventory Why do I say that? Ever been on Facebook lately? They have non-skippable ads on some videos and it's horrible. It makes me not want to watch the video I intended to watch and I literally leave because I don't want to be forced to watch. I spend the least time on Facebook than anything other platform. 3. Users will see your ads as an invasion vs a shoppable interest. Right now users get to control what they watch. Like walking down a mall with friends. You can pick where you go. Yes they get ads but they don't have to watch it. They can scroll right past it. They are in control. So when they do watch an ad they chose it. - they liked it - it intrigued them - they feel in-control It's the most fair mutual experience for advertiser and users. With non skippable ads they lose that choice. You must not know human behavior. When we get to choose what we like we think it's our idea and are more likely to take time watching "what we are choosing" Forcing it on people is an invasion. Saying, "you must do this" people don't want to do it. Ever had kids? lol Not good for ads or experience. I am an advertisers. A very good one. I love having cheaper CPMs. But I don't see how this ends will for both long-term.

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How I draft up LinkedIn posts in seconds: (saves far more time than using ChatGPT) Tried using ChatGPT for post-generation? The outputs? Typically general, clunky, bland. (Plus a few rocket emojis thrown in. Love those.) The better option to use here? Of course, RedactAI. Help with topics. Post in YOUR voice. Fewer rockets. And the process is mega easy. 1. Insert or generate a topic. 2. Select your writing style. 3. Generate your post. 4. Linkedin publish. 5. Time = saved. Use your ideas, YouTube videos, blogs... Your style recreated. Your words repurposed. Your reach + impact extended. In a few clicks. Test it out for free → https://lnkd.in/grSYBm-U P.S. How much time do you think AI saves you per day?

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Love it. People often ask me what I miss the most from the startup world - and I always start with, let me tell you what I don’t miss coming off of two back-to-back startups. Everyone thinking they are a marketer! I’m very lucky I have a leadership team who would never dream of having this syndrome and the analogy to a CMO never telling a CFO what to do is spot on! #marketing #leadership

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In Andy McCotter-Bicknell 🥦 's Healthy Competition (join us - no cookies, but wholesome people), Evan Huck from UserEvidence shared an inteeeeresting insight from their not-boring whitepaper. Out of 600 tech professionals they surveyed (200 buyers, 200 marketers, 200 sellers), the biggest gap in their customer story libraries? Competitive proof. No surprise there. Everyone wants proof you're as good as you claim. What's interesting is how large the gap is. A full 55% of sellers reported the lack of competitive proof as their top issue—well ahead of industry-specific proof points at 35%. So, what does this mean? First, customers trust their peers more than your marketing. Even 95% of Gen Z say they trust their friends more than the internet (shocker, I know) And second, showing how you stack up against competitors builds trust. Prospects are already doing their homework. If you’ve done it for them and can prove you're the better option, you’re halfway to closing the deal. DM if you want to chat about CI - Grow + Scale is adding 1-2 clients at the end of October.

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I've sat in on dozens of marketing agency pitches. The best ones all had these 3 things in common: 1) Representation from the day-to-day team. There’s nothing worse than sitting in a pitch meeting with only senior executives from the agency. They're not the ones working on the day-to-day of your account. If you fire off an email, it's an account executive who's going to reply — and that’s perfectly fine. It's always good to meet that account rep in the final pitch meeting. I think the onus is on the agency to make sure this happens, but you can request it to make sure it happens. 2) Recent, relevant case studies. Too many agencies make the mistake of showcasing their all-time best, award-winning case studies. It's a mistake when these case studies are years old. The people who worked on these campaigns are long gone. And frankly... I don't think clients even care about awards. It's the agencies who drool over this type of clout. So as the client, ask for success stories from within the past year. Ideal if they're from businesses or audiences similar to yours. 3) A no-strings-attached gift. Pitches are time intensive for agencies, no doubt. But they're also time intensive for the client. Considerate agencies are mindful of this, and they offer up a gift to thank the client for their time. There's an art to this. The gifts that made me uncomfortable felt like a form of bribery: a spa gift card, or a bottle of expensive champagne. Great gifts offer knowledge — intel that the client can’t or doesn't have time to source for themselves. Some ideas for agencies: - Set of Notion templates for a customer journey map, brand book, and ads planner. - One-pager of adjacent, fast-growing sectors sourced through Exploding Topics. - List of influential podcasts discovered through SparkToro. More advice on my latest blog post. https://lnkd.in/gTQCAwZM

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Hiring a PMM?? 🤔 If you're wondering who should be your startup's first marketing hire, this piece is a must-read. 🌟 In his insightful article, Matt draws from his extensive experience building marketing teams at industry giants like Atlassian, Intercom, and Loom. He advocates for starting with a product marketer and explains why this role is crucial for a startup's early stages. 💡 Key Takeaways: 🔵Product marketing is foundational: It helps communicate the value of what you've built, ensuring that customers stick around after their initial visit. 🔵Traits of top product marketers: Exceptional communication, curiosity about product and market, storytelling prowess, analytical skills, and deep empathy for customers are just a few traits that define the best in the field. 👉 Whether you're a founder looking to make that crucial first marketing hire or someone interested in the intersections of product development and marketing, Matt's reflections offer invaluable guidance. #ProductMarketing #StartupHiring #MarketingStrategy #Leadership #BusinessGrowth

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“It’s between you and one other vendor.” After years in MarTech Intelligence, I know nothing fuels as much anxiety for vendors as a potential client uttering these words… So when you’re neck and neck for the contract, how do you edge out the competition? I recently sat down with the Operations Director at a $500M apparel and accessories retailer making this exact decision on a new CDP for one of their brands. Here are the factors he’s considering:  (Hint – save these insights to ace your next RFP!) >> CDP Option 1 << He likes how: - Easy to use - Straightforward - And effective it is And he loves its functionality: “It tags all the site stuff to help record customer interactions even if they’re anonymous. Then it works to de-anonymize them!” All in all, “it’s a great product for tracking and pushing data to the data warehouse,” he says. “Plus it’s at a great price.” But while he loves Option 1, the brand’s team is leaning toward a second option… >> CDP Option 2 << The brand’s team likes its: - Ability to test content across their site, - Collect effective data on consumer behavior, - And create a cohesive and compelling site experience. Because this brand is 100% D2C, the team cares less about de-anonymizing data and more about creating a compelling site experience with testing and customer insights. >> Bonus Considerations << Most of the retailer’s other brands are just 5-10% D2C and could all leverage CDP Option 1. Plus, one of his top goals for 2024 is to identify and quantify customer data in offline channels. So he naturally prefers Option 1. But Option 2 might be a better match for this brand’s unique CDP needs.  ___ How will this buyer decide? Ultimately, it’ll come down to the priority that takes first place for the brand and the overarching company. Tl;dr — Make sure you invest time in truly understanding your prospect's goals. Then use those insights to frame your MarTech’s value prop so it’s personally relevant to them. After working with 100s of buyers, I can tell you firsthand this is one of the best ways to win their RFP.

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Struggling to build your email list? 😰 Today, I’m diving into part 2 of my 10-part series: 🔻Crafting irresistible lead magnets. 🔻Understanding your ideal customer. 🔻Using research tools for laser-focused campaigns.

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Should our top of funnel blog content just be micro social posts instead? I'm thinking specifically of "thought leadership" topics with little to no search intent. And little to no conversion attached to them. The ideas could be great. They could drive demand around the larger “why” of your company. But it’s not worth writing a 1500 word post that gets no traffic. Social is a content platform. Not a distribution channel for links back to your site. Companies desperately need to start using it like one. PS. Not everything has to be a blog :)

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Could LLMs replace traditional survey-based market research? They already are. You don't have to take a vendor's word for it. There's even academic research on the subject. We covered one incredible study on The Marketing Architects Podcast this week. It's called "Determining the Validity of Large Language Models for Automated Perceptual Analysis" by Peiyao Li, Noah Castelo, Zsolt Katona, and Miklos Sarvary. They found LLMs like ChatGPT can replicate and enhance traditional survey-based market research. To be specific, they found the agreement rate (the percentage of times the data sets gave consistent answers) between LLM and human survey data to be over 75%. The researchers also tested whether LLMs could replicate more nuanced tasks, like brand attribute ratings. (Ex: How car brands rate on attributes like safety, economy, or sportiness.) The LLMs aligned closely with human-generated ratings. They even found LLMs could accurately reflect differences in consumer preferences based on demographics like age, gender, and income. And match actual market behavior. Why does this matter? LLMs will reduce the time and investment it takes to conduct certain kinds of market research and understand customers. Hopefully, better marketing follows. Link in the comments to the study + the pod episode. 👇

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Action Items for the Growth Marketer: Implement referral incentives and optimize sign-up processes to boost user referrals and engagement. Diversify marketing approaches to balance modest viral growth with other acquisition strategies. Let JoeMarketing assist you with your PLG motion. Learn more about our GTM, PLG, and SLG services here, or contact me here.#PLG #ProductLedGrowth #GTM #GoToMarket

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Does your CEO really want to know how many MQLs and SQLs your marketing produced this month? Probably not. Today's marketing playbook vastly differs from the one that worked so well two years ago, including what gets reported internally. I was recently invited to speak to the Arizona Innovation Marketing Association, and I chose to discuss how my marketing playbook has changed. In my talk, which I titled, "The Rebellion of ROI: Why It's Time to Throw Out Traditional Marketing Playbooks," I shared five game-changing shifts forcing a complete rethink of the playbooks we used two, even five years ago. And the first big shift is to admit your CEO doesn't care about MQL's or SQL's. I call it a shift because they used to care about them. Not that long ago, marketing teams were being told Sales needs more "top of funnel LEADS." So Marketers created a bunch of gated assets and threw a gazillion "Marketing-Qualified Leads" over the wall to Sales. Except they quickly learned that someone downloading an eBook is almost never ready to book a sales demo. And in the end, while Marketing could claim success by generating thousands of leads, CEO's and CFO's were focused on driving revenue, not leads. This led to questions like "so how many leads do we need to produce $X in revenue?" In Q2 of last year, I stopped reporting lead numbers. The traditional "MQL" was simply too disconnected from revenue. At the same time, we also took the radical step of ungating all of our assets, which naturally caused our lead count to plunge. Instead, I shifted to reporting inbound pipeline and outbound pipeline produced through marketing outreach efforts (our SDR sits in Marketing, not Sales). The only leading indicator we report is inbound demo requests. Guess what? I've not been asked for MQL or SQL counts in more than a year. The reality is investors are no longer funding growth without profitability, so aligning our marketing efforts to revenue helped prove that our modest marketing investments are producing pipeline. Reporting on pipeline also enables us to report Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) tied to pipeline and revenue (10X and 29X respectively for last year). How has your marketing reporting changed in the last two years?

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I have to give Rand Fishkin credit for articulating something I'm sure all marketers have thought of, but weren't sure yet what to do about it. And of course to Ann Gynn for summarizing it so well (I confess, I read Ann's summary - I did not watch the video). Over the past few decades, a lot of effort has been put into tracking where every marketing touch (visit to a website or landing page) came from. This one came from a social media post, that one came from a Facebook Ad, this other one came from an email blast, etc). But with Apple creating a closed ecosystem, Google retiring 3rd party cookies, and almost one third of Internet users using ad blockers (which block tracking too), that level of detail is increasingly no longer available. So how do we track the effectiveness of our marketing? And sometimes the obvious answer needs to be stated. We go back to that way we used to do it before that detailed tracking was available. We track broader trends over longer timeframes. Just like we used to. I mean, what else can we do? https://lnkd.in/gYDq3HbH

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If I could distill years of experience into one takeaway about healthcare marketing, it’s this: Don’t confuse complexity with quality. True quality is intuitive and clear, with benefits that are immediately apparent. Yet simplifying the messaging for complex healthtech solutions is no small feat. It takes deep understanding, experience, and time to uncover the core story that resonates. Here’s the truth: Healthcare boils down to two essential goals: 1️⃣ Taking care of patients. 2️⃣ Supporting those who take care of patients. Every healthtech solution fits one or both of these goals. If your messaging doesn’t trace back to patient care in a few simple steps, it risks losing its focus—and its impact. Here’s a challenge for all healthtech marketers: Resist the temptation to overcomplicate. Instead, ground your communication in the real value your solution provides—whether it’s saving time, reducing costs, or improving outcomes. At the heart of it all is patient care. Stay connected to that purpose, and your message will resonate.

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Intensity of action is arguably the number one determinant of success. Being able to act upon information -- as fast as possible -- is a massive competitive advantage. I can't tell you how many companies, brands, and agencies I've worked with that move like molasses. One of the promises of AI and technological automation is the ability for us to reduce or eliminate "mundane" tasks. Some of these tools have proven significantly better than others, and the barrier to entry is lowering all the time. A mantra I like to live by is: "If there's a right answer, I don't want a human figuring it out." In the context of running a growth marketing program, that generally means asking discrete, objective questions. Things like: • Which week had the lowest CAC in the last year? • What was the total ad spend of that week? • What was the breakdown by channel? • What products did those first customers mostly buy? Those four useful questions might take someone 15-20 minutes (assuming their datastack is super organized and they have all of those dashboards, and maybe a passing knowledge of SQL). But now, having a conversation with your marketing data is getting easier and easier. I'm very well versed on the technologies and partners that are out there, and have seen some impressive things (MagicDash, Moby, Einstein, etc). At Power, we wanted to build something that was unique to US. Everything we've built here has been out of pragmatic necessity, and one of the things we pride ourselves on is our SPEED and INTENSITY. Speed to identifying problems, planning solutions, and activating them. That now has taken a massive leap forward with nova Insights AI. Eligible clients of Power are being granted closed beta access to nova Insights AI. We're going to be putting it through the ringer and making it better, faster, and more intuitive. We already sit on over 300 million unique datapoints, so I'm excited to see how this plays out. Feel like your team is slow? Feel like your agency partner can't answer basic questions within a couple of weeks of an analysts' time? Maybe Power can help. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gySxzC2X #ai #growth #dtc #marketing

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