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5 Tough-to-Pull-Off Marketing Activities That Are Worth the Effort
403 Plays1 year ago
Low-hanging fruit is great. But sometimes, you need a high-effort, high-impact program to make a splash in the market.
In this episode, Susan and Jess share their top big-whale marketing efforts that actually pay off — and WHY they're worth the investment.
Referenced in the show:
Descript explainer video
That's Marketing, Baby is sponsored by the incredible people at ércule (ercule.co) and their free SEO tool, ottimo (ottimo.cool).
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Transcript
Introduction to 'That's Marketing, Baby'
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to That's Marketing, Baby, the weekly show where two marketing besties talk all things marketing in the world of B2B and B2C. I'm your co-host, Susan Wenegrad, and I've spent over 20 years in marketing, focusing on paid media and email marketing. And I'm Jess Cook, copywriter and creative director turned content marketer. Every week, we'll tackle a topic that's on our minds and hopefully yours too. Ready? Let's go.
Air Cule's Organic Growth and Automo Tool
00:00:32
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Air Cule. Air Cule is an agency focused solely on organic growth for B2B SaaS brands. I've worked with them before and I can tell you I've never felt so confident and in control of my content strategy, SEO, and analytics.
00:00:48
Speaker
They also have this great free tool, Automo, that translates Google Analytics into actual usable data. Which pages are killing it, which ones are declining, and what you can do about it. Check them out and give Automo a whirl at ercule.co. And now, on with the show.
Post-Holiday Marketing Excitement
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the winter season. That's marketing, baby. It's been a minute. We decided to take a little time over the holidays to reset, refresh. Jess was selling into a new role and we were like, let's just clear our heads and have fun over the holidays. But now we are back and we are bursting with marketing things we want to talk about. Bursting.
00:01:28
Speaker
Yes, we are kicking off this season. How
January Challenges and Creative Slumps
00:01:31
Speaker
are you doing, Jess? I'm great. How are you? Fantastic. I feel like the COVID of January, we're like finally going away and our brains are working again. That's really why we did this. We had to get out of the worst month of the entire year. It is the worst. It lasts forever. It is 68 days long. I know.
00:01:50
Speaker
It's gross. I haven't seen the sun. I don't think the entire month. You gotta love Michigan. It was 76 here on Saturday. That's nice for you. Isn't it though?
00:02:02
Speaker
But I think we started brainstorming ideas at the beginning of January. And we're normally so efficient. I think it just took us forever. We're like, I haven't thought about this in
High-Effort Marketing Strategies
00:02:10
Speaker
so long. And I ate too much cheese for a month. And now I don't know what's happening to me. I just declocked my brain. Exactly. Yeah. So one of the things we were thinking about as we were heading into 2024 is, especially when you see there's been all these layoffs and marketing teams are expected to do more with less,
00:02:28
Speaker
We started talking and thinking about what are the things that are really just kind of a heck to pull off. But if and when you get them right, they pay really, really good dividends, right? So it's like they're not easy wins, right? I feel like we talk a lot about kind of the low hanging fruit or the things you could start doing today. But then we're like, what's the opposite?
00:02:47
Speaker
What are the things that take a long time and they're a pain and they're, you know, those things, but they're so, so, so worth it. So that's our topic for today. These are those high effort, but high impact kind of things on the quadrant of effort and impact, right? And yeah, they may take months to, you know, plan and execute and get out the door. But once you do, if you've kind of used the learnings that you have from maybe some of your
00:03:12
Speaker
lower effort campaigns or programs, they can really just get you to your goals a lot, a lot, lot faster. So we each have a couple we want to talk about and I'll kick things off if that's okay. That's
The Role of Explainer Videos in Marketing
00:03:25
Speaker
fine. My first one is the explainer video.
00:03:31
Speaker
I love this topic. Maybe we need to have a whole episode on what makes a good explainer video. I feel like we totally could because we had to get those right when we worked together and it was hard. When it's a product that's difficult to explain and it's kind of a theoretical thing, explainer videos are really, really hard. You can't use the cheesy ones that you would just get off of Fiverr with the whiteboard drawing. It needs to be a pro level thing.
00:03:57
Speaker
They're high stakes and typically that means there's a very large approval pool. It usually goes up all the way to leadership, right? Probably the CEO or the founder is wanting to take a look at it and really make sure we're like nailing it. So that is really the basis of the difficulty is like you have to get the story right and it has to be portrayed in a way that's going to live for a while because explainer videos are not cheap if you do them right or you do them in a really interesting different way.
00:04:25
Speaker
and they have to build up the brand. Like they have to kind of be the thing that stands for the brand for a while, right? So there's a lot at stake and that's why it's such a big deal to pull off and do it right. But when you do it right, you know, I think I always think of Descript is such a good example of just a brilliant explainer video.
00:04:48
Speaker
What it can do for you is like, one, education is huge. Like, especially if you're kind of a new thing. That's why you're making an explainer video, right? Obviously you need to be explained. And if you can do it right, it gets people like, oh my gosh, this is exciting. Like, this is a different way of doing things. I really want to try it.
00:05:04
Speaker
Also, if you do it right, it can get someone excited just about the brand, right? Like, oh, that was a cool video. I want to see more from these people. I'm going to go follow them. They totally do. I think that's the other opportunity to establish like, oh my gosh, they are fixing that thing that has driven them insane and I didn't think there was a solution for it. Yes, totally.
00:05:23
Speaker
So very high stakes, but just can have a huge, huge payoff and can be the basis of a lot of other pieces of marketing, right? Like you can use that as kind of a cornerstone of your messaging for how do we explain what we do, who we are, the problem we're fixing, the market that we're a part of. It can be a really great evergreen piece of content, not just as a video, but as a kind of foundational piece of messaging as well. I totally agree.
00:05:50
Speaker
I think the thing that's so funny too is it's hard for media people because we're just like, oh, create four versions and we'll test it and see what works well. But it's like, these are very time intensive to make. And they usually, to your point, are not cheap. So that's always the thing that's scary is they're hard to test. That's not an easy thing to test and see because just one version of it is usually a pretty big investment of time and resources and money. And so it's not as simple as like, oh, we'll just turn out four of them and see which one resonates. It's like you're pushing
Mastering LinkedIn Ads for B2B
00:06:19
Speaker
kind of all your chips in the middle
00:06:20
Speaker
the table on some of these. Have you seen anyone test an explainer video well or like storyboard it in a way where they could kind of modularize it? That's a good verb. Usually what I see them do is the graphics stay the same. I usually see them switch out the voiceover in the text.
00:06:38
Speaker
Oh, see? That's smart. Yeah. Because that's the most resource-intensive part. So they'll have an initial concept that they think will work well, but typically what they try and figure out is that first three-second opening, what's the headline that gets the attention that shows? It's usually that stuff. It's elements of it that can be swapped out easily. Because once the video is made, it takes almost no time to create different versions of it with just text.
00:07:04
Speaker
So I see that a lot. I have seen ones where they'll kind of chop it up and do stuff in a different order, but a lot of times it's still using the initial concept, right? It's still that initial, what are we covering? What do we have to create for it? And then if there are versions of it, it's just going to be iterations of that. It's not like it's three completely different concepts. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's usually what I see.
00:07:26
Speaker
I think the second one, at least from the paid media side that I would say, and it's going to sound like a very general statement, but I promise I will explain myself. I think the one that is so difficult to pull off, but once you crack the code, it works amazing is LinkedIn ads.
00:07:44
Speaker
The reason I say that is it's kind of the same as the explainer video in that it is high stakes. It is expensive, relatively speaking. I don't think it's expensive for the type of targeting they have because it's unmatched for B2B, so I get why it's as expensive as it is. But when you think about
00:08:01
Speaker
As a media person, how much testing you need to do? It's one thing to do $1,000 worth of testing in Facebook ads. It's another thing to only do $1,000 of testing in LinkedIn. So it's like that money does not go nearly as far. So that's the first piece of it. So that just lays the groundwork of this is the environment you're in, like high stakes poker table first.
00:08:22
Speaker
So then you're sitting, you are in the high roller room. Isn't that what it's called? We're doing our, it's our analogy of the episode. We have one every episode. Analogy corner. So now we are at the poker table. So you're at the high stakes poker table, right? You're dressed on, you got your jewels. If you melt back, the chin is tucked. So that's the next problem. Here's the thing. The LinkedIn ads do not work.
00:08:47
Speaker
if they are just it's if they operate in their own little vacuum and you try and accomplish something they are not going to work you need to have really good content you need to have a linkedin presence there's a lot of things that are tied to your ability to have good content marketing that make linkedin ads work.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so it's kind of like going to the poker table and being like, oh, this is a $10,000 bet. Here's my $1,000. I'm going to put it in and see if I can make a 10. It's like, it doesn't work. And so I see this over and over with, you know, there'll be a B2B company where they're like, we're running a webinar and so we want to run webinar lead formats.
00:09:27
Speaker
And I'm going, do you ever talk to these people? Are you in front of these same audiences promoting your contents? They know who you are. There is such a massive difference between the companies I work with that take the time to do things like run engagement campaigns, promote their best content to people, and then slide in a webinar. Those perform so much better than like, we haven't done anything in six months, but we're going to run a lead format and fill our webinar. It's not going to happen. And then one why.
00:09:53
Speaker
No one filled it out. Yeah. They're like, no, what did you do wrong with the media? Right. That's the first question. Like nothing. You just do LinkedIn wrong. It's a problem. So I think that as a platform.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's not something where you can just kind of randomly do well. It's like you can kind of stumble your way through Google ads usually a little bit. You can stumble your way through Facebook ads. LinkedIn is not one you can stumble through. It requires a really strong foundation. And so if you haven't taken the time to do that, it's like you're trying to just jump to the finish line and that's difficult. So if it's a company that doesn't have a content strategy or creates content no one cares about, you're not going to fix that by putting media money, right? As I've said before on here, all media money does is highlight what is and isn't working that you already have.
00:10:35
Speaker
That's all it does. It'll basically put a huge magnifying glass on. Here's where you suck and here's where you're doing great, right? That's your hook for your next LinkedIn post. That was good. Oh, thank you. I like that. I think that when you look at LinkedIn, it's so hard to crack, but then the companies that understand how not only to do that part well, but how to measure it. I think that's the other piece is a lot of places don't have the multi-touch and correlative
00:10:58
Speaker
you know data visualization need to understand so a lot of places that i worked with when they start putting forth money in linkedin ads when they stop the mentality of how many demos did i get off this and they start looking at things like here's how much we posted here's how much we spent on promoting here's the thought leadership as we ran and then they look back.
00:11:17
Speaker
at how many SQLs or MQLs they got, they see that, and you can say correlation is not causation all day, but you will still notice that there is a precipitive change. It's usually in like a 60-day rolling period. It's not right away because you have to be consistent like you would have been in a social platform, but those are the companies that understand the benefit of it. So they don't get bogged down in the, this one thing didn't work. They're like, if we keep laying the foundation and it's doing well, again, if we throw money at that, it's just going to amplify that.
00:11:45
Speaker
So that's the part that I think companies really stall out on. They just look at the LinkedIn metrics. They look at their last click
Research Reports in B2B Marketing
00:11:51
Speaker
attribution, and they're like, this doesn't work. And they give up on it really, really quickly.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, breaks my heart. Cause then they just don't know. I know. I know. And I get why. I mean, it's, it's not even a criticism really. Like I understand it's, it's a completely different skill set. And because LinkedIn is so expensive, it's usually the last platform people do. So they've gotten, you know, they're like, well gosh, Google ads, it does this. It's like, well, yes, that's bottom of funnel, my dear. They're not the same people.
00:12:16
Speaker
So they've done Facebook, which was cheaper, had more waste, but it was still cheap. So it's like they've been conditioned by these two other platforms that it should be this way. And it's a completely different operating system. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. All right, I have another one for you. Okay, what is it? Research reports.
00:12:32
Speaker
And I'm not just talking about like, Hey, I sent a survey real scrappy to a hundred customers or whatever. This is, I worked with an analyst firm. I paid probably close to six figures, if not more. We had a committee of people. We created a big old survey that's going to be able to slice and dice data all different ways. We ran the survey in front of a very large audience of the exact right people.
00:13:02
Speaker
We got the data back and we put this big report together. We got that report approved by all of the people that need to see it. We built a campaign around it because now we actually need to distribute this thing and get people there and make good on this investment we made in this thing. And now we got to get this thing live and actually make it happen. And again, I think the big recurring theme here is the things we're talking about are very high stakes.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, they're an investment, right? They're expensive and when they don't work, it stings and it causes a lot of trust to be lost in marketing, which isn't quickly built back. So, you know, with a research report, a couple things just that can help you out is
00:13:49
Speaker
You kind of need to know, you have to have a hypothesis of what you think the data you're actually going to get back is going to tell you before you even run the thing. Because you need it to align with your point of view, the reason your product has even been
00:14:05
Speaker
developed in the first place so that when you publish the findings, it gets people to come to you and think, oh, this is the solution to the problems that are quantified here in this report, right? So that's first and foremost, like getting kind of the idea of like, this is my hypothesis that we're going to find when we ask these types of questions to these types of people, this audience. And if we get that data back, here's what we can do with it, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
And then I think another thing is there are endless ways that you can repurpose that so that. So research reports are just like chef's kiss for repurposing because each data point
00:14:47
Speaker
is a piece of content. Themes that are built around a collection of data points is a piece of content. The way that you can split your data up and cut the data is another piece of content, right? Like there's just so many, so many ways to use it. And it allows you to like take the shelf life of that and extend it so much longer. And again, just like re-up the, what am I trying to say here? Just make that return on investment. Make that return on the investment, just- You're such a content person. Oh my gosh.
00:15:16
Speaker
I don't know why, because I'm a numbers nerd. Yeah, exactly. Right? Show that the value of that piece of content was way bigger than what you actually paid for it. So here's a question for you. Yeah. Have you run into situations where there was so much focus put on the report itself that then it was like, they're like, ta-da, here it is. And then there's not really a plan of what to do with it. OK. So I have not experienced that myself.
00:15:41
Speaker
Because I think- You heard rumors. I have heard tell, pray tell. That's not even how you use that. I don't even know. I have heard. There's a lot of focus that goes into like this thing we're building and no thought put into like, well, how are we going to get people to see it, right? And so that piece is just as important as the actual report itself.
00:16:02
Speaker
And again, a couple of ideas there are like, what are the three key like stats or five key stats that are in that report that are going to make someone want to get more information, right? That are going to pull people in. Like you got to figure that out. Where are you going to actually promote this thing? What is the best channel for it?
00:16:20
Speaker
Do you have paid media around it? What does the creative look like? What is the landing page for that look like? What, you know, the form fill kind of page, what is that experience so you can build ad creative that's matching luggage so that the experience feels like very cohesive to someone who's there. So I think it is just as important, maybe even more important than the report itself. The idea of how are we going to get this in front of people and make the investment in it worth it. Get as many eyeballs, qualified eyeballs or the right eyeballs on it as possible.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yep. That makes sense. I was just wondering if you'd encountered that just because it seems like something that certain companies would, that would be their MO, right? It's like, they'd be so excited about the report. And then they're like, we put up a landing page and we sent an email and no one downloaded it. So familiar. Well.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I have been in situations where we did a global research report. It was applicable to about seven or eight different countries. And our media budget, you'll appreciate this, our media budget was not commensurate to the bigness we were trying to get to.
00:17:22
Speaker
The
Implementing Paid Search Strategies
00:17:23
Speaker
media company kind of laughed at us and we're like, this is not enough. Go back and get more money if this is what you want to do. And we did, but we needed someone to tell us, hey, this is not going to do. You are not going to get the bang for your buck out of what you spent on the report media wise. Yeah, that makes total sense. I've got one for you. We're talking about platforms and stuff before. And this is specific to B2B.
00:17:45
Speaker
We've touched on it here before, and I think this is more like a, if you can get it to work in the ecosystem at large, it pays off. And that is paid search when it comes to B2B. The challenge that we have in B2B paid search is that you can't control really
00:18:02
Speaker
who you show for that's in your audience so you get a lot of waste from you know searches that might be consumer and or maybe you know you look at enterprise customers as your you know kind of who you want to get and you're getting a lot of smb type searchers right.
00:18:18
Speaker
There's a lot of problems with that. And one of the areas that I don't see really talked about or overlap, like overlapping enough is partnering with your organic search counterparts to better understand kind of what exists. Like I've worked at places where organic search team would cope these really good like comparison landing pages, right? Like, why should I use this over this? And they'll have like,
00:18:42
Speaker
checklist like really good comparison pages. And we didn't even like we didn't know they existed, right? So it's like we'd see searches all the time for like your brand versus so and so. And the content was being put out so quick, we just didn't keep track of it, we didn't know it was there. So there's things like that where if you can figure out two parts, really, one is their organic content that would make sense for you to drive traffic to because it is most likely your key person. And then the other piece of it is from a
00:19:12
Speaker
A cost standpoint is understanding how much is it costing us to get them to that page, and are we just better off with organic taking that over? Maybe we shouldn't be bidding on this. And I think that's also part of the reason why I always encourage places to think of a micro conversion. Every place is so focused on did they sign up? Did they get a demo? It's like, yes, that is ultimately the point of everything we do in marketing.
00:19:37
Speaker
The problem is that that doesn't happen within 24 hours for a lot of businesses, but they're not measuring anything up until that point. And so that's why it's like you and I have always encouraged things like create something that's a low barrier to entry, like a twice a month newsletter or something that they can opt in for that you can collect information on.
00:19:56
Speaker
so that you'll understand, are these the people we want? And the other thing that's starting to happen, too, is that now that we're moving towards a cookie-less environment, first-party data is super important in getting Google Ads to understand who you're looking for. So that B2B targeting is going to get even harder. If you close huge deals and you only have 10 deals a month, yes, you can feed that data back to Google. But that's not a whole lot of data for it to do anything with.
00:20:24
Speaker
So it's like, even if you can track, you know, minuscule conversions of like, you know, they signed up for a newsletter or they downloaded a white paper or whatever, the more of that data you can give Google, the smarter it's going to get. Right. Because it is becoming less about keywords and they've never been great at B2B. I think they are trying very hard to get there. And that's part of the reason why the importing of the offline data has become such a focus. They really push that in accounts now.
00:20:48
Speaker
So I think that that's one of those things like paid searches a lot more difficult in that environment, right? You you have to think through like what are things that I could be tracking that I could feed back to Google you have to think through a much further down and Think about measurement and conversions in a way that you probably aren't incentivized to I guess is the best way to put
00:21:06
Speaker
it, right? It's kind of like, they don't care, you know, a lot of companies are like, great, they got down paper, did they book a demo, right? Like, that's always the question. It's like, but did they do the thing? It's like, they will do the thing in time. These things take time, right? So I think that that's where paid search is very difficult for people because it is becoming less about the keywords and it's becoming more about the audiences. But B2B audiences are not something that Google natively does particularly well.
00:21:30
Speaker
And so the Reliance has been more on trying to be really obsessive about what you're bidding on and how it matches to search terms, but even that doesn't fix it because a lot of times it's not the right customer. It's a very fraught with frustration channel. And there are some B2B companies, I tell them just don't run it at all. Like you are better off focusing on LinkedIn. Your stuff is way too niche. And there's certain places like we've discussed that
00:21:54
Speaker
People don't search for those solutions, right? They hear about them or they ask for recommendations. So I think that's the other thing too is if you can get paid search to work, it's fantastic. But sometimes it is never going to be the right channel for you no matter what you do. Yeah, I think that's totally fair too, especially with like companies where maybe there's only
00:22:11
Speaker
a couple, like potential alternatives or it's a new category, right? Like those bottom of funnel terms that you might want to pay for, like those alternative, right? Like Slack alternative. I don't know. That's maybe not a good one. Click up alternative.
00:22:26
Speaker
right? Click up versus Monday. Those can't even happen if you don't have someone to go against or you don't have someone that's comparative to you or like that market that kind of that category has to get built up enough for those types of things to make sense to even pay for.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I will run into places too where they have kind of like an overly inflated sense of how many people search for these things and how often they should be showing. They'll put reports in front of me. They're like, well, this is our total addressable market. I'm like, it doesn't matter if they're not merging. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't matter how big your potential customer pool is. That size matters when you overlay a filter of how do they find their information.
00:23:04
Speaker
If your total addressable market is 300,000 businesses or whatever, that's great. But if you were to put on UV filters that would filter for the ones that would search for things and then take those off and put on the ones that would filter for those who would use LinkedIn to get referrals.
00:23:20
Speaker
guess which one is going to win, right? But it's like people kind of approach them like they're all, it's like their addressable market is the same amount and they all use these platforms. And it's like, but they don't, like they do use them, but not the way that you think they do. So there's an education piece of that, I think too, that people, they just know how they use platforms. So they're like, well, I use this every day. I'm like, okay, but Bob, you're not searching for IT infrastructure, enterprise solutions on there every day, right? Like you're looking for running shoes. That's a big difference. So I think that's where I see a lot of places go astray too.
00:23:49
Speaker
Totally. I want to go back in time for a moment because I feel like I talked about how hard research reports are, but then I never like followed up with like the big impact and like why it's worth it. Right. So, okay. I'm getting in my DeLorean going 88 miles an hour. I am back to like six minutes ago. We are here. Okay.
00:24:06
Speaker
So I think here's the thing with research reports, talked about how great of a resource they are for repurposing. I think one of the biggest things with research reports, if you can get some really interesting data out of it, is the PR possibility, right? I love that. You can get a ton of earned media on really great research.
00:24:28
Speaker
And I'm not talking about USA Today is going to publish it. I'm talking about your niche publications will be very interested in what you have learned in that report. So your PR team or your comms team or whoever it is, be pitching those things. Have a pitch kit ready to go. That's another thing to think about when you're thinking about distribution.
00:24:48
Speaker
And that can get you a lot of just like free earned media and coverage and site traffic and the kind of other side of the coin to that is shareability. A lot of people love to share those kinds of data points. They like to be the one who.
00:25:04
Speaker
Hey, I found this research report. I wanted to share it with you. Share it with your team or your boss. It makes people look like they are, and they are. It looks like, hey, I've done my research on this, or I found this new report. It doesn't just make you look that way. You did it, right? You found it. You want to share that with your team so that they can also learn from it. Shareability, pitchability to press are really big there and make the whole thing worth it.
00:25:27
Speaker
Kind of a bonus tip to that, by the way, that I've had work really well. And even like on places like if you start to go into Facebook, I mean, obviously you want your first party audiences in there and stuff. But where I've had that work well in the B2B world is running ads, but driving it deliberately to the article.
00:25:46
Speaker
So don't drive
Driving Traffic for Brand Credibility
00:25:47
Speaker
it to your website, but drive it to the article. And one of the things that you'll see, so some articles will agree to UTM tag your stuff so that you can insert that like, you know, where they came from. Otherwise it'll just have it as a referring link. But what's interesting to watch is usually we'd set like a very definitive timeline for when we're going to promote this.
00:26:07
Speaker
And we usually wouldn't do it the day that it dropped. There's usually like with the news, there's like a spike for a few days and then it dies, right? So we would wait until it died. So we had a better sense of like, this is the paid traffic doing this. And we wouldn't be smart to promote it. And we did this with a lot of consumer brands too, like small ones that happened to get a PR hit and they wanted to run it. They wanted to like milk it for everything it was worth. We would just drive to the actual article, whether it was like in vanity
00:26:30
Speaker
fair, wherever it is. And then we would watch the referring traffic in Google Analytics to see how much of it was full circle. So we spent X amount on media after the initial hubbub died down. And here's how much traffic came. Here's what we got from it, if they signed up for stuff or whatever. It makes you look so much more impartial. Whenever you can remove that from the brand and be like, this is what a third party cited about us.
00:26:56
Speaker
it looks so much better. Like it works so much better than driving them to your site. Like you could drive them to the site and say the exact same thing. Yes, it will not perform as well. It's like totally. And everyone knows like there's those, you know,
00:27:12
Speaker
easy advertorial sites that make things look like real clickbaity news articles. And you know what I mean? So it's, everyone's kind of paranoid about that at this point. But if you can set aside some cash to drive to that article, plus the journalists love it too, because it's more hits on their website, it helps them out. So it's a nice symbiotic relationship when you get those hits to do it that way.
00:27:30
Speaker
Great point.
Importance of Internal Documentation
00:27:31
Speaker
Loved it. I think all the points I had, did you have another one? I have one more. I think we can cover really quickly. Yeah. And this is a little bit different because it's not an external facing thing. And that is documentation.
00:27:45
Speaker
Everyone's favorite. Let me bring up the thing everyone hates doing. Super tedious, time-consuming. It doesn't deliver any obvious business impact. It's one of those things where it's like, in my spare time, when I have a minute, well, you never have a minute. You have to figure out. You never have the minutes. Yeah, exactly. You just have to do it. You just have to sit down and
00:28:11
Speaker
busted out, right? And these are the things I'm talking about is like brand tone of voice, or like, what is our blog publishing process? Or how do we get approval on x, y, and z? Or I don't what would be an example for you, Susan? Like, I think a lot of times it's how do we get the creative that we're going to run? It's like, it's funny that you bring this up, because it's so noticeable when you're the victim of it. You know what I mean? When you try and work at a place where there is no process, you're like the amount of time and back and forth we're doing is
00:28:39
Speaker
mind blowingly wasted money. Yeah. And you're like one document could solve this. Yeah, yeah. And it's so easy though, I think especially at startups too, is it's just like there's a thing the thing has to get done. And you're just you're so on the treadmill to just get stuff out the door, that it's so easy to be like, it's just faster. If I do it myself, I'll just do it.
00:28:59
Speaker
You know, and I'm so guilty of that. So it's funny because I've been on both sides of it where later I'm like, well, if I had just taken an hour to write this down, I would have saved the five hours of back and forth and slack with all the confusion. And I think it's like that for a lot of things. It's like that, things like not being consistent in how you name your campaigns, right? Yes. And you need to document that, right? 100%.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah. Especially with clients that have a lot of creative, how do we organize this? So it's not in an 8,000 email chains. Just make a folder in Google Drive. Here's the structure. Here's where things go. Done. The inefficiency piece is so rampant everywhere. And I really feel like that starts with management is to implement that because people have a hard time changing.
00:29:44
Speaker
I manage really huge teams and it's always hard. I've come into very disorganized situations like that and had to try and institute that kind of rigor. And it is hard. I mean, it is hard to change the habits of the way you've done stuff. So it's like, you have to have a lot of patience. And I think that part of the problem with the documentation thing, and tell me if you've experienced this too, is you'll come up with a way and then people don't adhere to it quick so that everybody just stops doing it. Yeah.
00:30:10
Speaker
Yeah. And you're like, remember that document I put together? That was a great, like, using my time. And it's like, you'll start a place like, yeah, I think there's some documentation, but like, we haven't looked at that in a year. And you know, it's just kind of like, so it is hard, it is herding cats. I mean, it really is herding cats to get everywhere. Then once you get it, and it's just part of the culture of how things are managed, it makes a big difference. But I think the hardest part is getting that started when that's not part of
00:30:35
Speaker
what people do, especially in a startup environment, getting them all to adhere to it is probably the hardest part. Again, to your point, so worth it if you do it, but really, really hard to get implemented. Yeah. And I think the reason it's worth it is like it helps you scale. Like you cannot scale without that documentation. The second you hire someone, you're going to have to sit and explain all of these things to them that could be part of a video or some sort of document somewhere or some sort of guide, right? Yeah, exactly. There's one thing right there.
00:31:05
Speaker
you're trying to build like a blog program. And if it's all in your head, how are you ever going to hire a freelancer? Like how would you ever give them all of the information they would need to write that blog post for you without having it written down somewhere, right? So it really just allows you to like be efficient and scale. And like an example is one of the first things I did when I started Island a couple months ago was I was tasked with like, you're going to be the owner of the content calendar, which makes perfect sense.
00:31:32
Speaker
But like, by the way, we've tried this four or five times and it has never worked. And so now I'm like hell bent. We did not have a friend like me. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm like hell bent. I'm making this thing work, right? You have to have an owner of that process and of that documentation so that somebody is responsible for keeping it up and making sure that like, this is actually the way we're doing it. And it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. Yeah.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah. And I think sometimes too, it's like it does take an assertive management type to do that because it's really easy to blow off a peer that tries to make you do it. You know what I mean? It's like it just doesn't work nearly as well. So I think that's the other part is it's like, I think a lot of times I see managers want to kind of.
00:32:15
Speaker
understandably have someone that does the work on that because they're the closest to it, but they're not the best person to enforce it. That's where I see things fall down a lot is that it's not owned by someone that has any authority to make people do it that way. And I don't think that people are deliberately ignoring them, but it's just like if you get an email from your boss saying, hey, can you please go back and do this in the right template versus Judy who sits next to you, you're like, Judy, I had lunch.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, good. So good. Forgive me. It's it's entirely different. Yeah, so for sure. Good point. This was so fun. Oh my gosh.
Conclusion and Future Topics
00:32:53
Speaker
I feel like we've said that like four times. We're like, you know, this is a side gig. This is a fun thing for us. Kids were, you know,
00:33:02
Speaker
I know. I'm happy we're back though. Me too. I do love it. We have so many topics. We have this document of like, here's 80,000 things we want to talk about. So finally making the time to do it. But it was lovely to see you again, my friend. You too. Thank you everybody for tuning back in.
00:33:19
Speaker
We've missed you. You have been missed. I know. I would say it's lovely to see you, but we can't see you, nor can we hear you. So I would say it's lovely to yap at you. Yes, it's lovely to know that you're there. So thank you for continuing to support us. That's right. And we will get back with you soon. Yay. That's marketing, baby. That's marketing, baby. See you next time. Bye-bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to That's Marketing, Baby. If you dig what we're putting down, be sure to subscribe and share with your marketing besties because, you know, hot marketers don't gatekeep.
00:33:47
Speaker
And if you're like, this is not enough, I need more, we got you. Ranson Raves is the official newsletter of That's Marketing Baby. Every week, Susan and I share one thing we love and loathe in the world of marketing. Get on the list at thatsmarketingbaby.com. Okay, bye!