October 27th, 2017
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 a round-up of some of the best marketing podcast episodes you can find, spanning the entirety of the 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?
In a world dominated by social media, PR is often misunderstood and therefore underutilized. Small business marketing expert John Jantsch recognizes this and wants to make sure his listeners know how to take advantage of valuable press coverage. In this episode, Media Maven founder Christina Nicholson walks John and the rest of us through the wild world of press pitching and what steps are needed to be successful—all in under 20 minutes!
Takeaway: Reporting staffs are stretched thin and don’t have the bandwidth to chase stories like they once did. Christina recommends providing everything a reporter could ever dream of on a silver platter, including video and photography. The more complete the pitch, the more likely your story will be published. One of the best takeaways from this episode is to always position yourself (or your client) as an expert. Reporters are far more likely to contact experts for a story they’re writing than other professionals in the industry they might know, so market yourself appropriately!
When pitching reporters, always position yourself (or your client) as an expert. Click To Tweet
If you haven’t heard, Apple released the iPhone 8 a few weeks ago and no one really cares. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but the hype is more for the iPhone X, the other device that was announced last month. In their latest episode, authors, speakers, and marketing leaders John Wall (EventHero) and Christopher Penn (SHIFT Communications) discuss the new capabilities phones like the X will usher in for the marketplace, including an interesting take on how parents can encourage their children to use Animojis when communicating online.
Takeaways: Outside of the animal faces, Wall and Penn talk about IKEA’s new VR initiative to “show” how products would look in your home, Amazon’s brilliant Polly Text to Speech tool (which apparently is advanced enough for podcast-level audio!), and the ramifications of Facebook’s crackdown on hate speech. These two gentlemen have been partners on Marketing Over Coffee for a long time, and if you aren’t already subscribed to the show, it’s 100 percent worthy of the precious space on your phone. Christopher Penn is one of the smartest people, let alone marketers, I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting, while John Wall owns one of the best podcasting voices you’ll ever hear. This duo brings information and insights you’ll only find here, so it’s definitely in your best interest to pay attention when these two publish.
Creating leads is a tough job. Not only do you need to generate traffic to your site, but you then need to convince visitors to convert by sharing additional information. That’s a lot of commitment from someone who just might not be ready! Fortunately, we know that Smart Passive Income’s Pat Flynn is one of the best in the biz to ask when it comes to executing against consumer behavior. In this short, seven-minute episode of AskPat, we learn exactly how Flynn works his magic and succeeds in even heavily crowded markets.
Takeaways: Pat suggests leveraging the ACE formula (Access, Convenience, Exclusivity) for getting people to take the action you’re seeking. Access means offering access to you, whether it’s through hosting a webinar, holding office hours, or simply being more transparent via specific social channels. Convenience means saving people time, whether it’s through compiling an ebook of all your blog posts or some other relevant content aggregation, or offering value by saving your audience the hassle of trying to navigate your entire website for the info they want. Finally, Exclusivity is content that is reserved only for those who provide additional value (i.e. your customer receives meatier information and you receive their email). Armed with the ACE formula, we now have no excuses for generating qualified leads—let the good times begin!
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 in the comments!