Tag: social media marketing

Digital Superheroes: How Agari Makes a Bold Mission Real

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Digital Superheroes: How Agari Makes a Bold Mission Real

What do you need to make a big splash? A big ship, one would assume, is a terrific place to start. So that’s exactly what Agari used to launch their new brand, the purpose of which is written loudly and proudly on the walls of their headquarters: “Agari protects digital communications to ensure humanity prevails over evil.” That’s a pretty bold way of explaining that your company is an advanced cybersecurity firm for email. But a bold mission statement is exactly what companies need to grow. At Agari, this statement is deeply woven into the community fabric, from the board members down to rank-and-file employees.

On this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite, Armen Najarian, CMO, discusses how they made the mission real, and how having that meaningful guidance of saving and protecting the world of digital communications, helped drive brand, product development, company growth, and more.

For full interview: http://bit.ly/2YW1Vco

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How the Control Freaks at UTAK Are Cutting Through

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

How the Control Freaks at UTAK Are Cutting Through

What’s your brand truth? Actually—let’s pull back a bit: what is a brand truth? You could give it a few different names, but in essence, your brand truth is a concise guiding principle that informs virtually every aspect of the company’s operation and, importantly, can’t be dismissed. In the case of UTAK, a toxicology quality control provider (serving chemistry labs, forensics experts, and more), they nailed it in two words: “Control Freaks.”

On this episode of RTU, CMO, and Chief Control Freak, Matt Kopp joins the show to discuss the origins of “Control Freaks,” and how two simple words have influenced every arm of the company, from product development, to customer engagement, to marketing. He also dives into the benefits of bringing in an outside agency (Renegade LLC) to develop the idea, the importance of internal buy-in, how to stand out in a crowded B2B market, and more.

For full article: http://bit.ly/2KhWCQx

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Chatbots: Keep It Human With Your Bots

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Keep It Human With Your Bots

Call an Uber, order from Amazon, book a hotel… You can do all of these things instantly—even at 4 AM. People today want commodities quickly and with round the clock access. Believe it or not, your B2B buyers are also people, and they probably want the same. Now, most businesses can’t man their websites 24/7 (unless you’re shelling out for night shift employees or lots of coffee)—this is where the chatbot comes. But there’s an art to the bot—they shouldn’t replace humans, but should help facilitate conversations with customers. Proper use can result in tremendous boost to lead generation, and can radically speed up a company’s growth.

Dave Gerhardt, author of Conversational Marketing and VP of Marketing at Drift, joined RTU for a chat bot chat, and really digs into the value, and ideal usage, of these automated critters. Beyond that, Dave touches on a few broader subjects, including how marketing efforts need to be rooted in empathy and humanity. After all, you’ll always be marketing to people.

Hear why businesses big and small can benefit from chatbots—listen in!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

Conversational marketing: why you should nix your lead form

When Drift nixed its own lead form, they did so to teach the market about conversational marketing! Drift needed to practice what it preached. Drift utilizes bots to capture leads. Instead of a form submission, there is a conversation with a potential customer. Dave shares that a form is binary while a chatbot allows a conversation to occur. Today’s technology is so good that from a single email address, your company can get ample information. Because of this, companies should feel free to focus on the conversation.

For the whole article: http://bit.ly/2U8k33i

Timeline

    • [2:40] Get to know Dave, and why he was first attracted to Drift
    • [6:15] Information from his book, Conversational Marketing
    • [11:11] Is there every information on a website worth gating?
    • [14:03] Why chatbots
    • [20:20] Embedding a calendar-like function to a chatbot
    • [25:20] The point of moving from a chatbot to livechat
    • [28:16] Why speed matters!
    • [31:37] The importance of empathy in sales conversations
    • [35:40] Using chatbots for customer service and post sales
  • [39:35] CQL’s and why they will save the world

Connect With Dave Gerhardt:

    • Connect with Dave Gerhardt on LinkedIn

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Eating At Their Own Restaurant: How SurveyMonkey Powers The Curious Internally and Externally

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Eating At Their Own Restaurant: How SurveyMonkey Powers The Curious

“Eating your own dog food” didn’t sound so appetizing, so folks started “drinking their own champagne.” SurveyMonkey didn’t want people thinking they were sipping too much bubbly on the job, so now they “eat at their own restaurant.” Put simply, they lean heavily on their own offering to strengthen their marketing, grow their company and—as they like to say—power the curious!

From finding out how much a person uses technology, to determining how a company’s culture is developing, the options are endless on what info you can gather with SurveyMonkey, and their marketing efforts put that to test. Leela Srinivasan, SurveyMonkey’s CMO, chats with Drew on how everything at SurveyMonkey—from campaign development to internal culture—is about creating and supporting a world of curious people.

Don’t miss what Leela has to share!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

Power the Curious campaign

Prior to going public, SurveyMonkey did a brand refresh with its Power the Curious campaign in 2017. The company defined its mission as Powering the Curious. SurveyMonkey’s products and solutions enable organizations everywhere to measure, benchmark, and act on feedback. If these organizations can listen to this feedback and have a curious attitude towards it, then the feedback can drive growth and innovation.

Leela shares that she loves the notion of curiosity for two reasons. One, the notion of curiosity was one that their audience was leaning into. The smartest people display curiosity. Secondly, if you think about the idea more broadly, the value proposition for employees is massive. This campaign not only set SurveyMonkey up to market to the business realm but to employees and potential employees. SurveyMonkey could be the place where the curious come to grow, which is exactly what bright minds are looking for in a workplace.

How to build a culture of curiosity internally

SurveyMonkey uses its own tools to build a culture of curiosity. Leela shares that SurveyMonkey leverages its own platform to obtain living feedback from its employees. These surveys measure employee engagement and to find places that can be improved to make a company with more inclusion and belonging. All leaders in the company are given scores for their departments, and they are shown how their scores stack up against other departments in the company. All of this information pushes SurveyMonkey to be curious internally. They are given results and scorings that can drive its leaders to be curious and search for solutions on how to how a healthy organization.

Big drivers to marketing SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey partnered with 4 influencers to show that curiosity is self-defined. Serena Williams, Arianna Huffington, Draymond Green, and Jeff Weiner each created concise surveys to engage different audiences. These surveys were advertised on social media, billboards, and more to let the world engage with these influences. Curiosity was at the top of the whole thing. Success was measured by the volume of responses, and there was a lot of engagement. Throughout this campaign with these four influencers, a conversation was generated that said, “you can do this every day of the week by using SurveyMonkey. Find an idea you want to tap into. Bring these ideas to market and explore the things where you are involved in the world.” Be sure to look below in the resources mentioned for the findings from the influencers surveys.

Timeline

  • [3:07] Who is Leela Srinivasan
  • [9:07]] Launching the Power the Curious campaign prior to going public
  • [15:42] How to build a culture of curiosity internally
  • [21:00] How to teach curiosity
  • [26:05] Big drivers for marketing at SurveyMonkey  
  • [29:50] The Curiosity Conference
  • [32:35] Lessons learned from rolling this campaign out  

Connect With Leela Srinivasan:

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Not Your Grandma’s Banking – How to Market Banks When Everything is Going Digital

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Not Your Grandma’s Banking – How to Market Banks When Everything is Going Digital

Whether you’re a small business catering to a consumer, or an enterprise tech company targeting fortune 500 giants—the changes in how banks are approaching branding and marketing can provide a great template for successful marketing in the modern era.

When most people have a banking issue to resolve, they usually open up their mobile app, or visit a website—in-person banking is starting to take a back seat to digital mediums. That’s the shift Paul Kadin and Sarah Welch, of analytics and advisory firm Novantas, are wrangling. In this episode, they discuss how banks are evolving, and how those banks are championing new, universal principles of successful B2B and B2C marketing.

Listen in! You won’t want to miss this episode.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

What banks need to do to succeed?

Paul and Sarah share that successful banks have three things in common. They satisfy what people expect from them. A bank will not succeed if it does not offer basic customer service or features. Secondly, successful banks are distinct. They answer the question, “Why should I choose this bank over another bank?” Their products and service must set them apart. Lastly, successful banks make their voice heard in the marketplace. Banks can have all the right feature but must spend sufficiently enough to raise their voice enough to be heard.

Banks that are distinctive and why

Paul, Sarah, and Drew discuss multiple banks that are killing it on being distinctive.

  • Huntington Bank markets itself as being on the side of the customer. They are living and breathing their value proposition on products, pricing, marketing messages, and customer experience.  Banks are known for nickel and diming customers, but Huntington extends a 24-hour grace window, allowing customers 24 hours to write a check to cover an overdraft, before incurring a fee.
  • First Republic is a bank that goes above and beyond, helping customers. This bank is very specific on what companies and individuals it takes on as customers, and focuses on the more affluent. Because it has a more niche customer base, First Republic is able to serve its customers how they would like to be served.
  • USAA is a bank with extreme intimacy around one focus group – those who have served in the military and their families. If you are in this target group, their service is unbeatable. They also hire retired service people, so they hire from the target demographic they serve.
  • TD Bank has branded itself as America’s most convenient bank. Everything they had decided is based on convenience. For example, they are open on Saturdays and Sundays.

Marketing banks: finding an emotional pitch and making it real

Marketing banks is hard. Banks have thought about things in terms of creating new features and improving functionality, but there is a whole other dimension: emotion. Money creates emotion: anxiety or satisfaction. Banks have to appeal to the emotional side of the customer, but this must also be lived out in experience. As banking moves away from person to person and towards digital, banks must figure out how to be emotionally connected through a digital relationship. To make this happen, Sarah and Paul share that banks must have a clearly designed core target, and then drive experience around it. All experiences, whether in person or digital, need to be serving the bank’s brand.

Timeline:

  • [1:55] Introduction to Paul and Sarah
  • [8:50] Bank branches are decreasing, but brand, marketing and digital are increasing
  • [10:24] What banks need to do to succeed
  • [14:19] Which banks are distinctive in today’s market?
  • [17:43] How focussing on a designed target can help banks
  • [21:33] How banks (and other businesses) can distinguish themselves
  • [24:30] The need to find an emotional pitch and make it real
  • [31:07} How to make media spending cut through the noise
  • [35:51] B2B vs. B2C marketing for banks
  • [40:54] What is state of the art in attribution modeling

Connect With Paul Kadin and Sarah Welch:

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Be the Big Fish in Many Small Ponds

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Renegade Thinkers Unite recently moved to renegade.com! As a subscriber, you should have received an email with the subject line ‘Activate your Email Subscription to: Renegade Thinkers Unite’. It may be buried in your inbox, or even the spam folder, but if you click the link in that email, you’ll continue getting notifications when each week’s new episode is published, only now it’ll be to renegade.com.

Be the Big Fish in Many Small Ponds

You’ve heard it said, “be the big fish in a small pond.” But have you ever considered being the big fish in many small ponds? Sage Intacct, a provider of cloud financial management, is doing just that. To pull this off, Sage Intacct first defines different “micro-verticals” by breaking down larger marketplaces, like manufacturing, into more granular categories, like toys, planes, and cars. Following that, they become experts in the field, and begin producing valuable, category-specific sales materials and insights.

Vice President and Head of Marketing, Ian Howells, chats with Drew on this episode about how his employees get to know these different markets—or ponds if you will—and the rigorous process of becoming the biggest fish in each.

Be sure to join in!

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – or Podsearch

What You’ll Learn

1% penetration to a desired goal – how to get started in micro-targeting

Ian shares the process of penetrating a new market. Sage Intacct works hard to reach out to multiple companies to conduct interviews and research. It is Sage’s job to understand this customer and understand what is going on. What are the pains of the customer? Are there similarities between this company and others Sage Intacct work with? Ian’s interviewers must gain understanding and draw correlations between companies in the same micro-target. This interview process gives understanding into a micro-vertical. The more companies you interview, the more you know about this subset of the market: associations, key influences, key applications… All of this information affects positioning and messaging for that micro-vertical.

How to know you have achieved success in a micro-vertical

Many times companies believe they have achieved success in a micro-vertical too soon. Ian explains that you have achieved success in a current micro-vertical, and should add another when you have at least 20 clients with the same pattern and pains, and you can predict what the client will say. This shows you understand the current micro-vertical, and you are in a position to begin learning about a new one.

The importance of website content and collecting data

Sage Intacct’s website overtly lists its competition. It compares what it offers to various companies.  Ian explains that you must over communicate what your company does and why it is the best. By comparing Sage Intacct’s products to others, clients can quickly see why Sage is different and the best for them.

On several demo videos, Sage Intacct stops the video to collect viewer information. This is important for several different reasons. Collecting information allows Sage to know what industry this person is from. When the video resumes, the viewer gets personalized content. If you’re from a nonprofit, you get specific messaging. By pausing the demo, Sage is also able to collect data from potential clients and know how interested the viewer really is.

Timeline

  • [2:04] What Sage Intacct does
  • [4:30] Ian’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment
  • [13:16] How Ian got started in microtargeting
  • [16:40] The process from 1% market penetration to your goal
  • [19:45] How to get interviews, who conducts them, and where they’re shared
  • [25:49] When to add another micro-vertical
  • [29:00] Telling customers stories
  • [30:17] Over communication on website content
  • [34:51] When to move on from a micro-target

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Resources & People Mentioned

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