Marketing Mashup

B2B video content at scale from the pricing experts - Patrick Campbell, ProfitWell CEO

James McKinven — Fri, 15 May 2020 23:00:54 +0100

I talk to the founder and CEO of ProfitWell, Patrick Campbell in episode 18 of the Marketing Mashup.

Episode links:

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This episode is sponsored by my own company, Striqo. We've launched a new service to help content marketers start their podcast, you can find out more here. If you'd interested and would like 25% off your order, use the code 'MarketingMashup'.

What we covered in this episode

Intro to Patrick
What ProfitWell is and what they do
Why Patrick started the company
Thoughts on remote working
Content production while remote
Why they started to heavily invest in content marketing
Why does niche content work so well?
How to produce a video content series for less an ebook ($10k)
How to your content in front of the right people
Patrick's thoughts on daily vlogging
The 3 biggest mistakes people make with pricing
Did Patrick really give up email for 4 weeks?!
ProfitWell has impressive Swag, why?
What is Patrick most excited for in the future, both in business and personal life?

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Why building a community is more important now than ever with Joe Glover

joe glover, marketing meetup — Sat, 18 Apr 2020 21:06:29 +0100

Joe Glover is the founder of The Marketing Meetup, a community of 14,000+ marketers across 14 locations in the UK and US, with monthly events, regular podcasts, workshops and loads more.

As with many founders, Joe created the Meetup as a solution to his need, which was to learn about his chosen craft and meet other marketers but in an environment which values listening and being positively lovely over sales and selfishness.

As a result of the success of The Marketing Meetup, he's also started his own agency - Empath Marketing - helping companies begin to see how the marketing department can be a value driver, rather than just a cost centre.

Intro to Joe
Let's talk about The Marketing Meetup which has scaled into this fantastic community of marketers with events across the country (and more). Tell me more about your mission "A positively lovely community for helping marketers get better at what they do."
Why is community so important? How do you make sure it's authentic and not just 'corporate community' that you mention in the Humans Come First podcast?
We're currently going through a period of extreme change and uncertainty, lots of people are worried for their livelihoods and their future. It's also a very important time for brands to respond in the right way. How can brands be kind and helpful with their marketing during this crisis?
How can we as marketers stay kind to one another? Can we do anything to help?
Due to the circumstances, you've had to adapt The Marketing Meetup. Can you talk me through some of the changes you've made to ensure the community stays strong?
Your content schedule for the next few months is fantastic, with a bunch of great events set up with people like Rory Sutherland and Dave Gerdhart. What is your process of coming up with new content and how do you ensure it's good quality and providing value for your community?
Following the success of the Meetup, you've set up your own agency. When did you know it was the right time to set up that agency and what do you offer for your clients?

Links

How Marketing Examples Breaks The Rules of Traditional Marketing with Founder, Harry Dry

James McKinven — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 12:58:08 +0000

You can now support the podcast by buying me a coffee here ☕

Harry is the founder of Marketing Examples.

We cover a bunch of ground in this episode:

What it's like being on the Indie Hackers pod
Harry's first endeavour turning tweets into canvas prints - 140 Canvas
Doing things that don't scale, sending in handwritten letters to YouTuber mailtime's
Why you need to market yourself
Importance of validating your idea
The story behind Yeezy Dating
- https://thekanyestory.com/
Buying billboards in Times Square
How Harry hustled his way into Yeezy HQ
Working for Crowdform. Harry lived like a 'real person' for 8-9 months...
While writing for Crowdform, Harry took those examples and put them on a marketing examples first page
How Marketing Examples was born organically
The importance of providing value natively on the platform
People don't like self promotion, but if you're giving people value they'll react well
How Harry got banned on the EntrepreneurRideAlong sub-reddit
What are the best subreddits to post in?
How Harry lost 27k of Bitcoin
Best practices to grow a Twitter following
- Using long Twitter threads and not linking away from Twitter
- @NoContextHearn; @NavalRavikantBot
- Using his website to bring people to Twitter
Why not having a background in marketing can make you a better marketer
The attention to detail in Marketing Examples sets it apart from anything else
- Podia's Competitor Pages
Growing a very nice sized email list (13k)
Utilising Product Hunt effectively
Using good copy to increase conversions
Refactoring UI
Using GIFs for marketing

Why the advertising industry is broken with Paul Mellor, MD of Mellor&Smith

James McKinven — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 18:37:46 +0000

Paul is the co-founder of ad agency Mellor&Smith and also started the event series #TakeFuckingRisks as a side hustle - which is now one of the biggest creative events in London.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...)

We covered plenty of ground in this episode!

Should you specialise or be well rounded
The state of the advertising industry today
89% of ads that people see are forgotten - can you imagine if this was any other industry?
"As an industry we are fucking terrible at our jobs"
What do we need to do to fix the industry?
- First admit there is a problem - although this doesn't serve the industry
- Having a backbone and standing up to clients
- Stop being addicted to digital and short termism
- Stop being fixated on data
- Make advertising based on what people do rather than what the algorithm says
Why clients don't trust agencies and what we can do about it
The public don't trust brands, we need to rebuilt that
Is the market research and insight industry broken too?
- Serial focus groupers
- Get down to the supermarket and see how people actually act
Why we shouldn't approach B2B differently
- They are still people, it's just not their money they are spending
- Any B2B brand using traditional media is going to win
How do you get clients to take risks?
Why social media metrics are bullshit
Is traditional media the most effective
Is it the fact that the advertising as bad or is traditional media broken?
Why influencer marketing is a con
The role of advertising is to get you noticed, not to make sales
What is "Take Fucking Risks"?
Why there is a lack of honesty in our industry
Why we need more trouble makers
How do you deal with disagreements with clients?
If you're so good at this, why are you only 11 people?

Links

CEO of Wistia, Chris Savage, talks brand affinity, raising debt and long-form content

James McKinven — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 23:54:20 +0100

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a video sharing and hosting company (and pioneers of the brand affinity movement). After graduating from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, Chris and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with over 150 employees (including 1 labradoodle). Before Wistia, Chris helped produce an Emmy Award-winning feature-length documentary and was named a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. I've been following Wistia's journey for the past few years and I'm delighted to welcome Chris to the podcast.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

What is Wistia?
How did it start?
How did Wistia originally position in the market?
- They were a private video sharing site and then pivoted to embeddable website videos. Then had to make the decision to fully focus on marketing videos.
- They then switched back to offering everything as people had lots of different use cases for Wistia, which was a mistake because then they struggled on where to focus and innovate. They had no differentiator.
When did Wistia take it's first set of investment?
- Took a year to focus on private video sharing - huge companies. They noticed they were onto something big so took investment and hired 2 people. They then started loosing $30k a month, which felt horrible!
- Stayed at 4 people for another 3 years.
- The greatest mistake they could make was not thinking long-term.
Their last funding round was in 2010, what have they done for the past decade to grow?
- As they got more profitable they took more risks
  - Invested in content marketing and company culture
- They got to £10m in revenue with a few million in profit
- People were saying 'if you're profitable then you're probably not growing fast enough'
- Thought they were missing out on growth
- Went from being profitable to running at a loss, hiring people, running ad campaigns
- Outside the business it seemed like they were doing great but internally they were creating a ton of complexity and a situation was bad.
- Lost the ability risks because of it
- Forced everything to be short term
- Compounding affect of losing $300k a month
At the point where you were haemorrhaging money, going further and further into the red, what were you thinking? What was next?
- This was the point where 3 life changing offers where on the table. Their intention was never to sell Wistia, but it got to the point where they were considering it.
- But they felt that if they sell, they would be failing.
- Then they started thinking about what they would do if they sold.
  - Start a new company
  - Idea of the brand, the people, the problems they'd want to solve
  - "If we want to build another company, we'd build another Wistia back to the £10m days and we wouldn't have screwed it up by putting the throttle down so hard"
How has Wistia been since raising the debt? Is it back to being a happy company?
- As soon as the debt was raised, there was about 6 months of turmoil with staff leaving etc, then they built back up to profitability, really quickly.
- It was a huge turnaround as they went from a $0.5m loss in 2017 to $6m profit in 2018
- It gave them profitable confidence again! Wistia could start to take creative risks again, such as One, Ten, One-Hundred and 16 weeks parental leave policy.
Is it possible to grow a successful business, like Wistia, without taking external funding?
- Depends on the mindset of the founder
- You need persistence, lots of persistence
- You need to have the right market, one that is growing. If the market is not ready for your product, if you don't have funding it will be very hard to keep going.
One, Ten, One-Hundred is one of my favourite bits of B2B marketing I've ever seen. What was the thought process behind making it?
- Was born out of a conversation with Sandwich Video founder, Adam Lisago.
- They had done a big ad campaign the year before, this was to try and build brand awareness, which didn't work at all. One, Ten, One-Hundred was an opportunity to document this ad creation process with Sandwich.
- What they found with this series is that time spent with brand was up massively, brand search was up and ultimately brand affinity increased.
Why does long form content work so well?
- Time with brand is such a hard thing to come by if you think about the amount of touchpoint customers have with your brand currently - cumulatively it doesn't add up to much.
- A key to any relationship is building trust and the more time you can get people to spend with you brand, the better.
- It was something people actually wanted to watch. It was entertaining and educational.
How did it perform?
- $10k video performed the best, but they all performed different jobs.
- The $1k video shows how you can make a creative video that showcases your product well, it doesn't need to break the bank.
- The $10k video showcases the sweet spot of how much you could spend to get a really high performing ad.
- The $100k video proves that if you need your brand to be this polished and have the money to spend to reflect that, then it is worth it.
It didn't just stop there with Wistia's long form content. What is Brandwagon?
- Ended up having conversations about brand, which sparked the idea of creating a talk show which let's the Wistia personality come through.
- The format means it is repeatable and they know exactly what they are doing, which makes for more efficient production.
Patrick Campbell of ProfitWell said on another podcast episode that they have got their production of their video series down to about $10k, which is the equivalent to the spend to create an ebook. If it's that cheap to do, why isn't every B2B marketer doing it?
- Patrick and the team are pioneers
- Some people don't understand the impact it can have
- They are looking at how a campaign can go viral, as opposed to thinking about how they can build brand affinity.
- The biggest brands are now figuring out that making good content that interests people really does work
- A place we're really seeing this taking off is with Podcasts. Podcasting is one of the most personalised, intimate ways a person or brand can communicate with you. You're building a relationship with your customer.
Is Wistia going to keep going with the long-form content? If so, what's next?
- "We're shooting lots at the moment but I can't get into too much detail"
Wistia didn't have a sales team until 3 years ago. Why didn't you for so long, and what made you create one?
- It's based on focus. When they started, of course they were doing sales, but they wanted to keep the business self-service and seamless with onboarding. They'd built Wistia up pretty big without any sales team.
- But things change! They started speaking to different companies and finding some that had bad experiences with Wistia! This was because there were people who liked speaking to people before buying, they need someone to help them through the buying process. This actually was damaging, especially upmarket. A huge pre-customer experience gap.
From the outside it looks like everyone is happy and Wistia has a great culture - which I don't doubt. But obviously throughout any journey you're going to have to make difficult decisions within the te...

CEO of Truffle Social, Ellie Hernaman, on what makes a good social media strategy

James McKinven — Wed, 04 Sep 2019 19:42:53 +0100

The social media marketing landscape is constantly changing, which I why I got an expert in to chat about it. Ellie Hernaman is the CEO of Truffle Social, a London-based social media agency. Ellie has been running Truffle for almost the last decade so it's safe to say she knows her stuff when it comes to social. In this episode I sit down and talk to Ellie about why she started Truffle, the challenges of growing an agency, her favourite campaigns and more.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

Things we talked about:

Ellie's time at Red Bull
What does Truffle do?
Why did you start Truffle?
How did you get your first clients?
How has social media marketing changed since you started Truffle, and how do you make sure you're adapting and staying on top of trends etc?
What makes an effective social media strategy in 2019?
Favourite campaigns and why?
Favourite campaigns you've worked on and why?
What excites you most about the future with Truffle, business, life?
Mental health in social

Follow Ellie on Twitter
Follow Truffle on Twitter
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Managing Partner at Wax/On, Paul Jacobs, talks startups, podcasts and the best marketing campaigns

James McKinven — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 10:28:49 +0100

Paul Jacobs is the Managing Partner at Wax/On and oversees the day-to-day running of the agency. Previously, he was Business Lead at Karmarama working with brands such as BT and Porsche and more recently a Director at Edelman, where he led the set-up of their creative services, working on global projects for Microsoft, Asics and Nestle. He also makes sure we all get enough sleep!

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

What we cover in this episode:

Paul's career, from Ogilvy in Australia to Business Lead at Karmarama (acq. Accenture 2016)
Why did he (and his 3 other co-founders) start Wax/On?
What does Wax/On do?
Why Paul is passionate about startups
Paul's startup community with The Drum Network
What makes a good podcast
Why Dave Buonaguidi and James Connelly are inspiring as entrepenuers
Some of the best campaigns Paul has worked on (and some he hasn't)

Follow me on Twitter.

Founder of Bulldog Digital Media, Gareth Bull, talks agencies, entrepreneurship and building a successful business

James McKinven — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 14:43:31 +0100

Gareth is the guy responsible for making Bulldog Digital Media happen. Way back in 2013, he sat down with the idea of creating an agency which could make a difference in the digital marketing world - and that's exactly what he did! When he isn’t working (which isn’t often), Gareth likes to see new places, go to the gym, and end his days with a Nando's.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

What we cover in this episode:

Gareth's background
Why did he start an agency
Why he admires freelancers
How to stay healthy as an entrpenuer
Starting an ecommerce business
Why it's important to have different revenue streams
Not being afraid to let money go as an entrepenuer
Creating a personal brand and putting a face on an agency

Follow me on Twitter
Follow Gareth on Twitter

Email Octopus
Bulldog Digital Media

4 years at GoCardless, cycled round the world, then built a company to $14k MRR (and sold it)

James McKinven — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 10:00:05 +0100

Grey Baker is the co-founder and CEO of Dependabot which is a service that makes it easy for developers to keep the third-party dependencies their code uses up-to-date.

Grey has had an interesting career, starting out at McKinsey to then helping grow GoCardless from 6 to 100 people before embarking on a 7 month cycle tour around the world and then settling back in the UK to build Dependabot to $14k MRR. It wasn't quite as easy as that though! In this episode, we talk about Grey's ups and downs of building a bootstrapped SaaS business, as well as a little bit of insight into his time at GoCardless.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

HubSpot's CEO Brian Halligan on Inbound, what's next in marketing and more

James McKinven — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 09:00:02 +0100

You probably know Brian Halligan as the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. Or as the person who coined the term ‘inbound marketing’. Brian is one of the B2B world’s most sought-after CEOs. He took HubSpot from a scrappy startup to a profitable (and enduring) public company. He knows what it takes to not only build a great company, but transform an industry in the process.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

In our conversation we cover a lot of ground talking all things marketing. We start off with a whistlestop tour of Brian's career and why he started HubSpot, to then getting into the weeds of marketing in 2019.

0:01 - Intro
0:47 - Brian's background and career
2:02 - Why did Brian (and Dharmesh) start HubSpot?
4:00 - How Brian met his co-founder Dharmesh
5:48 - What is the dynamic like between Dharmesh and Brian
7:18 - Do you need to find a co-founder with complimentary skills?
9:19 - How did HubSpot get the early customers? Brians FOB.
10:50 - Was Inbound a thing before they started HubSpot?
11:56 - What is inbound?
13:05 - It's so cheap to start making content these days
13:43 - What was it like introducing a brand new category?
15:51 - Is it still a good strategy to start your own category?
17:25 - Is there marketing buzzword fatigue in 2019
18:33 - The agency partner program - why did HubSpot put so much emphasis on it?
20:36 - Build out an in house team or use agencies?
21:33 - What does the future marketer look like?
22:39 - All marketers should learn how to code
23:33 - Why we're living in a great age for learning
24:28 - The HubSpot Academy. Why did they invest in the acedemy? Give away a lot and use that content to pull people in
25:38 - What are Brian's thoughts on Freemium?
27:30 - You'd be batshit crazy not to use HubSpot
27:47 - What is next for HubSpot?
31:07 - When did HubSpot start to shift to an all-on-one-platform?
33:00 - Adding value to HubSpot instead of competing with tools. "You're either a Hub or a Spoke"
33:58 - How does HubSpot stay agile to compete with smaller companies, or are they trying to work with them?
35:18 - Does inbound marketing still work?
36:47 - Success in marketing is very much the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet.
37:59 - How can new companies use content marketing to grow. It's a quality over quantity game.
40:05 - Why did HubSpot retire the funnel and introduce the flywheel

Scott Brinker Graphic

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jmckinven
Brains's Twitter: https://twitter.com/bhalligan

What is influencer marketing and starting a daily company vlog - Arron Shepherd

James McKinven — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 16:05:09 +0100

Arron is the co-founder of social and influencer agency 'The Goat Agency', along with his former colleagues Nick Cooke and Harry Hugo. The Goat Agency are a leaders in influencer marketing with offices in London, New York, Singapore and Monaco working with everyone from start-up companies to global brands such as UEFA, Lidl and British Airways.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

In this episode we cover:

What is influencer marketing?
What does The Goat Agency do?
Guaranteeing results as an agency
How to consistently deliver results
How to hire the best young talent
Why starting a vlog in 2019 can be so effective
Can influencers be used in B2B?

You can find their Daily Vlog here.

Arron's LinkedIn.

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Why we need more diversity in marketing - Mark Runacus

James McKinven — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 08:00:08 +0100

I'm joined by Mark Runacus for this episode of the Marketing Mashup podcast. Mark is the co-founder and Planning Partner of Wax/On, a new kind of hybrid creative and media agency. Previously he was one of the owners of Karmarama, the UK's leading independent creative agency. Mark is a man of many hats, alongside his creative and media agency he champions best practice in digital and data-driven marketing in his role as Non Executive Chair of the DMA (UK) Group. He is also the President of PrideAM, the world's first advertising LGBT+ network, lobbying for LGBT+ diversity in marketing and advertising.

Support this podcast by buying me a coffee (or 3...) ☕

As Mark puts on his PrideAM hat, we talk about the need for diversity and over representation in advertising and marketing. We tackle the issues that are sometimes overlooked in our industry. Mark cites that 54% of 18-24 year old are not 100% straight from a recent study, which is why brands need to change the way that they are approaching their marketing. However, sometimes change isn't quite as easy as we make out, so we also talk about how you can champion change from within your organisation.

There are some great initiatives that Mark and PrideAM are running, from their Outvertising v2, brand makeovers and more.

Here are some of the things we spoke about in this episode:

Follow Mark on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-runacus-2249091/

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#6 - Why we love Monzo & why we think their marketing efforts work - Chris Smith

James McKinven — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 16:00:00 +0100

Today, Chris and I talk about one of our favourite brands and a company that has a hugely refreshing approach to marketing, that is Monzo. Both of us have been Monzo users from the start and love how good their product is, it has fully turned us into brand ambassadors. We dive into their marketing efforts as we feel the secret to their success is having such a great product, excellent customer service and unique approach to building a community.

#5 - Our open letter to HubSpot, the best martech tools and what it's like starting your own HubSpot agency - Chris Higgins

James McKinven — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 18:12:00 +0100

What's it like being a HubSpot partner? Chris Higgins started his own HubSpot Partner agency called Electric Monk. In this episode we talk to Chris about what it's like being a HubSpot partner and some of the changes we'd love to see HubSpot implement with an open letter to Christopher O'Donnell, the SVP of Product at HubSpot. Not only do we talk about our favourite things about HubSpot and the new features we'd love, but we dive into our thoughts on the Inbound conference and our favourite new tools in the martech space.

Links referenced in this episode:

#4 - Why we need to be authentic with video marketing in 2019 - Jack Gaisford

James McKinven — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 17:22:00 +0000

In this episode I chat with Jack Gaisford, Jack is the founder and managing director of V21, a video marketing agency based in Kent. He also makes some excellent content on LinkedIn, building an audience of businesses, brands and influencers that engage with his content on a weekly basis. One of my favourite things about Jack is his perspective on video marketing and content in general, which focuses on quality, consistent video content as opposed to the one-off, corporate content we're all used to seeing online in which Jack says is not the way forward. This is an awesome chat where we cover a whole range of video marketing topics from how to utilise LinkedIn as a video platform, why you need to be authentic with video and the difference between video production and video marketing. Enjoy.

#3 - Following your passions & what really matters in marketing - Jack Mayor

James McKinven — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 21:27:00 +0000

Jack Mayor is the Marketing Director of System1 AdRatings, in this episode we take a dive down Jack's route to where he is today covering topics such as remote work, following your passions and what actually matters when you are marketing a product. A fantastic conversation covering a wide range of topics, hope you enjoy.

#2 - From agency to consultancy, social media & our new TV show - Matt Webster

James McKinven — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 23:27:00 +0000

In the second episode of the marketing mashup podcast we speak with Matt Webster who is the CEO & Chief Collaborator at MW-W. He's a Creative Sales and Marketing professional. Originally from Sheffield but now living in London and Rio De Janeiro. Matt helps companies and brands of all sizes tell their stories and achieve their long term missions via digital & social media marketing strategy, creative process and business development.

We cover a lot of ground in this conversation, going from talking about Matt’s start in sales in the Pharmaceutical industry, to running his own agency. We also create a new TV show, talk about the best sales techniques and also why we think that Facebook is dying.

#1 - The best marketing tools - Chris Smith

James McKinven — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 19:00:00 +0000

Episode 1 of the Marketing Mashup Podcast - Chris Smith.

Chris is a marketing professional who works for B2B marketing agency First Base. Chris loves being on the cutting edge of marketing, utilising the latest technology to bolster marketing efforts. He is also the founder of fitness brand ViviNation, who are using this technology to help build the brand.

Timestamps:
02:00 - Using Google Drive across the board for any agency

10:00 - Why Notion and Dropbox Paper are brilliant

12:00 - Moving into Martech, why Chris loves Drift

16:00 - Using Station as a browser replacement?

18:00 - Why we love and use HubSpot. Is it a cult?

22:00 - The wonder that is Grammarly

26:00 - Why I am a huge fan of video & tools you can use

30:00 - Wistia, Movavi, Lumen5

30:00 - Soapbox

41:00 - Are forms dead?

44:00 - Monzo & their marketing

48:00 - Wrap up