Marketing Meetup Podcast

How to Build a Marketing Strategy that Means More Direction, Less Wasted Spend, and Extra Productivity

A great strategy underpins everything we should be doing as marketers. But, ‘strategy’ is something everyone speaks about, but few tell you how to actually build. In this session we will:

- Define what a great strategy looks like

- Show you how to build one

- And teach you how to implement it in the real world

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Take the time to check out our partners, all of whom we work with because we think they're useful companies for lovely marketers.

Impression - Impression are digital growth specialists, defining and delivering integrated digital strategies that transform market players into market leaders.

Braze - a leading comprehensive customer engagement platform that powers interactions between consumers and the brands they love.

Cambridge Marketing College - The best place to get your marketing qualifications and apprenticeships.

Redgate Software - Now hiring marketers!

Storyblok - the only CMS you’ll ever need. The headless content management system that empowers 100,000+ developers and content teams to create better content experiences across any digital channel.

Klaviyo - Create automated, hyper-targeted messages at scale — for faster, more efficient growth.

Exclaimer - the power to create, control, and deploy company email signatures and fire up a new marketing channel with world-leading email signature management.

For the final webinar of season 10, we were joined by the ever-lovely TMM community member, Katie Martin.

Fun fact #1 about Katie - her great, great, great grandfather invented the Terry’s Chocolate Orange!

Fun fact #2 - Katie has spent the last 12 years working at innocent - which means she really knows her onions (and bananas) when it comes to marketing, change and growth.

Which is exactly what this session was all about. Over the course of an hour, Katie covered:

🍌 the ingredients needed for embracing change

❓ the importance of curiosity

🌳 why cultivating a growth mindset matters

Katie’s answers to the community questions were just as thoughtful as her presentation, so do give the full thing a watch below, or read on for the key takeaways.

James is the former brand director for Vinted, over their huge period of growth. He also held prominent marketing roles at Google, Uber, and Innocent.

He is an adventurer who clocked 41,000 km over 38 countries on his bike, hiked across Argentina and Norway, kayaked the width and climbed the height of the UK non-stop - for which he was awarded as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

He regularly gets described using words like 'The most informative, thought-provoking and entertaining speaker we've ever had'.

Oh and he’s a really nice chap too.

In this episode, James not only touches on some marketing fundamentals but helps us all realise how we can be better people when turning up to do our jobs.

I think you're going to love this episode!

Marketing Careers: What you need to know about getting to CMO - Jon Evans, The Uncensored CMO

Sophie and Olivia have built amazing communities within the marketing industry. In this Q&A session, we find out how they've done it, why they've done it and some of the reasons they've been so successful.

So if you're keen to build your own engaged community online, this is a 'must-listen' episode

“Confidence doesn’t come before doing the scary thing. It comes from doing the scary thing.”
That’s Nausheen I. Chen’s philosophy on public speaking. In fact, that’s Nausheen’s philosophy on speaking, full stop. Whether you’re giving a presentation at work, talking on a zoom call, or you’ve been asked to contribute in a meeting, speaking up and out can be terrifying.
In last week’s webinar, speaking coach, multiple Ted X presenter, and all-round legend, Nausheen, shared her advice on how to speak on camera with more confidence.

She covered:

🛣️ her journey to becoming an executive speaking coach
🔈 why it’s important to project confidence 

⭕ how to build positive feedback loops into your speaking opportunities

Conscious creativity: Creativity without costing the earth - Jax Davey and Seb Royce, Neuvo

If Aliens landed on planet earth and walked into a marketing conference, they would be forgiven for thinking that the only companies who engaged in marketing activity was Apple, Patagonia, Nike, and the overlord of our profession was Ryan Reynolds.

Now - I’m not saying the world wouldn’t be a better place with Ryan Reynolds in charge - he is a handsome and talented man. And undeniably these companies smash it in their own ways. But it’s a misnomer to believe that we should all be following their example.

Imagine two friends, Mary and Timmy, standing next to each other by the waterside. 

As the sun sets, Timmy starts throwing pebbles into the lake - seeing the ripples spread slowly and calmly across the surface of the water. 

Mary isn’t like that though - Mary summons her inner hulk and grabs a boulder, catapulting it into the water nearby. The ensuing waves engulf Timmy’s efforts making him sad inside.

Paul Dyson’s now famous study into the factors that impact ad effectiveness place ‘brand size’ squarely at the top (i.e. if you’re famous - you’re going to land with more impact). According to YouGov 99% of the UK’s businesses are SMEs. While imprecise as a measure, broadly this speaks to the idea that most of us are playing with pebbles - not boulders. Put another way - being a world famous movie actor is not hugely replicable.

Acacdotally this rings true: most marketers I chat to at The Marketing Meetup are sat alone, or in a small team on an industrial estate outside Newmarket (other market towns are available) with single glazing and a boss who sees marketing as either the selling department or crayon department. A far stride from the steel and glass of the Nike’s of the world.

So - what is at our disposal? 

Well for the most part while the temptation is to want to chat about sophisticated mass marketing and the long and the short of it, just getting the fundamentals of marketing right puts us at an advantage over most of our competitors in an industry where most of us (including me at the beginning of my career) spent time pinging between tactics. 

In essence, what most marketers lack is a proper strategy. But for those with minimal resources - how do we create something that allows us to create a realistic strategy that is actionable and likely to be actually used and not sit in a document? Well, hopefully, this helps…

Thomas Peham is the VP of marketing at Storyblok - a rapidly growing CMS who is on a fascinating marketing journey.

Recently I was approached by a micro business about how they could market themselves.
 
They had little budget to pay for professionals - and it quickly became apparent they were in danger of pinging from one tactic to another.
 
I see the same thing play out in marketing teams across the land - particularly for those in small or solo marketing teams (I was in that camp for a long time!)
 
So while I wanted to bang on about 'salience', 'the long and the short of it' and much more - that wasn't their requirement.
 
So it got me thinking about the minimum marketing strategy I think people create to give purpose and consistency to their work.
 
And on Friday at 09.30, I'll share how to build it. We'll be ignoring a lot of nuances, but a little strategy is better than no strategy at all. 

Marketing is inherently neither good nor bad, but as the general public often remind us, we should always question its purpose and how we use it.

Today's TMM webinar doesn't start from a place of 'look at AI'.
It starts from a place of 'this stuff is big and interesting, now - how can we as marketing humans actually use it to improve our lives?', exploring:
🚀 The basics of AI and how it can benefit your marketing efforts
🚀 Real-world examples of AI in action in marketing
🚀 Practical tips for implementing AI in your marketing strategy
🚀 Future trends and opportunities in AI for marketing

Stop guessing what content and sales messages you think will work to convert customers into sales and instead discover the never-before-discussed-secret to KNOWING exactly what will work to convert customers with laser like precision, so that you can build funnels, content and automations to drive more sales than you could ever imagine.

Andrew and Pete have been dubbed, 'The best content marketing speakers on the planet' and ensure a fast pace engaging talk to change your thinking around marketing and sales forever.

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Take the time to check out our partners, all of whom we work with because we think they're useful companies for lovely marketers.

Impression - Impression are digital growth specialists, defining and delivering integrated digital strategies that transform market players into market leaders.

Cambridge Marketing College - The best place to get your marketing qualifications and apprenticeships.

Brand Recruitment - An amazing marketing recruitment company based in Cambridge, UK and wonderful supporters of the meetup.

Redgate Software - Now hiring marketers!

Storyblok - the only CMS you'll ever need. The headless content management system that empowers 100,000+ developers and content teams to create better content experiences across any digital channel.

The man who built a $22 million business, sold it, then gave the money to a foundation: Reflections of a remarkable human - Derek Sivers

How to market like Innocent Drinks - Kirsty Hunter, CMO

The things I wish I had known when I was 25 - Jon Evans, System1 and The Uncensored CMO Podcast

Kirstie has lived in the social media, agency leader and e-com space for most of her career. She has a great understanding of how to build a marketing strategy that allows you to grow audiences and connections that ultimately turn into paying customers.

With all this experience, we set Kirstie a big challenge, asking her to answer the million-dollar question – “how do you sell on social media?”

That’s a big question. And really one without nuance, there is B2B, B2C, DTC after all… And yet – the amazing Kirstie shared some wonderful strategic points, and then provided some tactical tips, too.

In this webinar Kirstie shares some of the secrets of effective selling on social media.

How to build your profile on Linkedin: Company and Personal Profiles - Lea Turner and Michelle Raymond

Thomas Barta, Founder of The Marketing Leadership Masterclass

How to resonate more deeply with your audience with Jay Acunzo

This is a guest episode of Humans Come First, the podcast dedicated to putting humans back into the conversation on marketing. 

In this episode, Rich Wood and Joe Glover discuss their attitudes to thought leadership, Linkedin, and their approach to producing content for these platforms.

Confidence: Picking yourself up and going again - Kirsty Hulse, Roar! Training

Join renowned marketing expert Professor Mark Ritson in this engaging online talk as he shares his insights on marketing for small businesses. Learn how to effectively reach your target audience, allocate your budget, and stand out in a crowded marketplace.   

This is a must-watch for small business owners and marketing professionals looking to boost their marketing efforts. Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain valuable insights from one of the industry's leading voices.

• 00.11 – My company has a website built using Bootstrap framework and we’re finding SEO quite challenging. I am doing the more common work of on-page keyword optimisation etc but am struggling getting too far – any tips? Are there any best practices specifically that I should look at?
• 00.58 – What’s the ONE we thing we should: Do more of. Change. Stop. in an effective 2023 SEO strategy
• 01.48 – What are the first 3 Triage points of SEO, if you had to say start here then do this and this, what would they be?/What are the most important factors to consider when setting up a new website to give you the building blocks to work from?
• 02.19 – If you’re a small business, is there any point at all in using the most popular key words/phrases on your site, as competition from bigger businesses means the likelihood of appearing on the first page is slim. Is it better to solely focus on long-tail key words/phrases?
• 03.23 – The ‘right’ mixture between long- and short-tail keyword targeting, considering budget and resources as well as timeline.
• 04.04 – How can you regularly measure SEO and keep a track of it all? And what data is useful to track for a SaaS business?
• 05.05 – If you are considering a rebrand, but also considering bringing an SEO agency on board to help with lead gen – what should come first? Is there a way to still bring authority to the current website, and ensure that if a rebrand and new website happens, that all the hard work from SEO activities isn’t lost?
• 06.30 – Why should I pay for SEO when I can just pay for Google PPC?
• 07.28 – When is it time to decide to retire old or unsuccessful content?
• 08.24 – What type of content works best for SEO? – short form, long form, blog content, data-led content, video, photo galleries etc
• 09.03 – What is the best way to describe the importance of SEO in a marketing strategy to peeps who don’t understand the mechanics of it.
• 09.46 – What specific data analytics should we be challenging our SEO marketing agencies on for maximum impact 😉
• 11.05 – In modern search, is buying authoritative, high organic traffic websites and redirecting them and keyword mapping them (professionally) still an effective strategy to deliver results. Let’s say I have website A, it’s high traffic and good position in SERPs, but I come across website B, which is similar, should I buy website B and amalgamate them by redirecting website B to website A
• 12.49 – My question is what’s going on here? A search for my client’s URL is returning a title, meta description and site links to another clinic’s site. The title and URL still point to arg.co.nz, but the other site links go to another site altogether.
• 14.12 – Of course an AI question… What are your top tips for embracing AI tools such as ChatGPT to aid the process of creating authentic & well optimised content?
• 15.38 – Scenario: You create a well optimised piece of content that features prominently within the site architecture. Would your recommended next step to improve the ranking still be to build some trusted backlinks to the article or something else? If backlinks, do you have any recommendations?
• 16.18 – First, in managing my own website, if a blog story starts to fall in the rankings on a given keyword, what can we do to disrupt that story to get it going back up? Or should we just give up on that post, and create a new story?
• 17.05 – Second, all my efforts are on earned search. But if I use PAID (which I never do) to get in those top slots, does that help me in the earned, or do I go back to where I was on earned when I stop paying?
• 18.05 – Organic traffic’s declining. Where to start?

How to control your imposter syndrome - Alice ter Haar

Sometimes the things that don't 'make sense' are the things that also send your company into the stratosphere.In this talk, Rory addresses the tyranny of logic and why sometimes, we just need to be a bit more magical.

[REPLAY] How to smash Linkedin with Lea Turner and Pragya Mishra

Whether it’s a presentation, a speech or a pitch: there are common threads that can be learned to become a better presenter. Join us to find out what they are 🙂

[REPLAY] How to find the right message - Diane Wiredu

Sahana gives a big middle finger to the advice "Fake it until you make it".

[REPLAY] How to stand out on social media in 'boring' industries - Richard Cook, Monzo

Gymshark: What you’re missing if creativity isn’t part of your business – Jo Bird, Gymshark

Does being a trained marketer make you a better marketer? Mark Ritson certainly thinks so. That’s why he founded the Mini MBA, possibly the most pervasive marketing qualification in the UK today.

I (Joe) recently completed the Mini MBA and had a great experience. In this session, we ask the good Professor Ritson ten questions that the Mini MBA raised.

Storytelling is one of the best ways for marketers to get their message across and Jeremy Waite has told stories on stages across the world. He’s helped some of the world’s leading figures tell their own.

In this session, we'll learn:

🖼 Art - The secret of emotional communications
⚗️ Science - The chemistry & physics behind all great stories
🎭 Drama - Turning presentations into performances

The five essential elements of a great email marketing strategy - Clara Toombs

CV Tips for Marketers - Dominic Phipps, Brand Recruitment

How KFC turned their brand image around - Jack Hinchliffe, CMO of KFC, UK and IRE

How to get the rest of your team involved in social media content - Nana Crawford

Lessons learned from building a popular email newsletter - Joe Glover

How to have more energy: Simon Alexander Ong, Author of Energize

Ross Simmonds provides a framework for SEO and Content Success.