Podcasts are a great way to educate yourself. Whether you’re on the train, in the car, at your desk, or anywhere in between, this medium is an incredible vehicle for supplementing your industry knowledge. Every week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the best marketing podcasts around, spanning the whole marketing landscape.
Whether you’re new to podcasts or you’re a seasoned listener, I know you’ll find value in each weekly round-up. Let’s get listening, shall we?
Six Pixels of Separation # 605: Next Level Negotiation Skills With Chris Voss
Have you ever had to negotiate as if your life depended on it? I know—it’s certainly not what you were expecting from a podcast recommendation column. But Mitch Joel’s latest guest, Chris Voss, has done it. In a former life, he was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI and representative the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group as a hostage negotiator. Yeah. INTENSE. These days, Chris teaches negotiation at USC and Georgetown University and wrote “one of the best books [Mitch] has read in a long time.”
Takeaways: Chris wants us master “no,” not “yes.” This flies in the face of traditional negotiation tactics, but Chris says “yes” is a trap. When people say no in any situation, especially in a negotiation, it makes them feel safe.
“We have been so battered by people trying to get us to say yes to something,” Chris says, “that it’s a ground-ball to get them to say no.” Intentionally going for no makes any interaction go much smoother, even though it may not seem the best way forward.
Chris finishes his point with a story of how a recent political campaign lead by one of his Georgetown students used the “no” approach with great success. The campaign called Republican voters using both “yes” and “no” methods as a means of an A/B split test. The results? The calls conducted using the “no” script yielded a 23 percent greater donation rate compared to the “yes” script. I think it’s about time we begin to master our “no!”
CONEX: How to Create a Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy
In their true “first” episode of the new Conex (which stands for Content Experience) Show, hosts Randy Frisch and Anna Hrach interview the show’s co-producer, Jay Baer.
Those of you reading this likely know Jay from all the things he does here on his home site. But you may not know that he’s co-writing a new book focused on the underrated power of word of mouth (WOM) marketing.
Given the sheer competitive volume that now exists through social media and content marketing, we as marketers and business operators need to find more cost-effective avenues to getting in front of our customers. Fortunately, Jay lays out the path to leveraging WOM marketing in 2018 and beyond.
Takeaways: According to Engagement Labs, 19 percent of all US purchases are driven by word of mouth, with up to 40 percent of these purchases influenced by WOM. These numbers are even higher in the B2B space, given the heavy pull that a trusted perspective can have on a very important business decision.
In order to make WOM work for your business—to give them a story, as it were—you have to do something outside of the frame of their current expectations. Jay shares a very cool quote from his co-author, Daniel Lemin, which states, “Same is lame.” It’s catchy, and it’s true.
When you do something original, something that will make you known (shoutout to Mark Schaefer), you create something worth sharing. This compels your current customers to tell their friends, which marks the start of an excellent WOM campaign.
Jay mentions this early in the podcast, but I believe it connects perfectly to what he describes later in the show: “If your content isn’t an experience, what’s the point of doing the content?”
He then goes on to pose his own question: Unless the content you’re creating for your audience is their “favorite”—favorite podcast, favorite YouTube channel, favorite newsletter, etc.—then why are you doing it at all?
Are your company’s story and content something worth experiencing?
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Marketing Smarts: Personalizing Your B2B Marketing to Supercharge Lead Gen—Adobe’s Drew Burns
Host Kerry O’Shea Gorgone invites Drew Burns, the senior product marketing manager for Adobe Target, on the show to discuss the best ways to personalize website and business experiences for B2B companies. With Drew’s extensive background in content targeting and testing, he was the perfect selection for this terrific topic. In this episode, they dig into lead generation, personalization, and of course, how to optimize it all.
Takeaways: According to Drew, the B2B companies that will succeed are the companies that use personalization to their advantage. He is already seeing from his analysis that companies who are not implementing these personalized approaches are losing business. Customers are looking for something that speaks to them directly—and immediately. When they don’t find it, they move on.
Personalization can reduce the frustration a visitor experiences when they visit your site, especially that first time. By dynamically pulling in information from a generic Google search, your site may be able to guide the customer into an area more highly relevant to them than the homepage, creating a more effective experience.
Drew mentions that many of Adobe’s customers are seeing a massive, 25X return on their targeting and personalization investments. While it’s not always the sexiest work, it is damn effective and can yield remarkable returns when done correctly.
Does your site have the right personalization tools and strategies in place?
That’s all for this edition! I’ll be back with a new batch next week. In the meantime, share any podcasts you think I should know about with me @jwsteiert on Twitter or in the comments below!