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If you’re a baseball fan, you know that for the pitcher, pitching isn’t just about their arm speed. There are far more processes that must all come together to make a pitcher effective. And so the same can be said for sales and marketing. Most people aren't struggling with their sales departments. What’s happening is they’re spending too much money on sales and underinvesting in marketing, because they are having to rely on sales to do all of this work. Business owners need to know how to market better and what to expect, but also what to ask for from their own internal departments. In this episode, Sean Doyle of Fitz Martin, gives us a scientific approach to sales and marketing, and shows us a more effective way to close the deal.

Business relationships are obviously different than personal relationships, but both are very important. In life, we look to connect with people that share similar interests, live close to us, or have kids the same age as us. But how do we go about initiating relationships with businesses, and more importantly, what criteria do you use to go about this? Annalise Worn takes a creative approach to helping businesses with relationship building as part of their marketing plan. Learning how to foster customer loyalty and long-term engagement by providing information that is directly suited to your customer’s needs, will go a long way in helping you build trust and move the needle and drive sales.

There’s no better time to explore how your small business can use Instagram Reels as a part of your marketing strategy. Reels is the newest way for you to create entertaining 15-second multi-clip videos with lots of new and creative tools to help you drive traffic and sales. Take it from The Instagram Expert herself, Sue B. Zimmerman, if Instagram is where your followers and ideal customer avatar are hanging out, then Instagram Reels is a great opportunity to take advantage of adding music and other effects, while also allowing you to share educational, step-by-step and behind the scenes content. This mobile-only option is also a great way get out a quick video while on the go to let everyone know what your business or brand is up to.

Making connections is an important aspect for all businesses, and we often rely on face to face and in person opportunities to achieve this. But in a time like this with COVID-19, when social distancing has become the norm, how do businesses and brands go about making those meaningful and emotional connections that are so vital to building trust and often lead to sales? Kevin England, CEO of Vonazon marketing agency, reminds you to first get back to basics with the four main senses; touch, vision, hearing, speaking. You want to make sure that you’re always educating, regardless of where your potential client is in your funnel.

If you fancy yourself a bit of an expert in your field and are looking for yet another opportunity to get your name out there and build brand awareness, consider leveraging the power of sites such as HARO to exert your expertise and knowledge on a given topic. Greg Heilers, earned media guru and pitching machine from Jolly, reminds us that media pitching to sites such as HARO offers a multitude of benefits aside form just getting free publicity. Think about the benefits of finding potential collaborators, reaching your target market with you poised as an industry expert, being featured in high profile publications like The New York Times, as well as driving more traffic to your website.

Every business wants to rank high with Google, that’s a no brainer. But what are the top ranking factors that really matter, that will help to get you the top spots? Aside from the obvious things like links, mobile-friendliness and page speed, what are some other factors that rank most for SEO, and pass the ever-changing Google algorithm test? Darren Shaw, Whitespark founder and local search guru, advises you to start with claiming and optimizing your Google My Business profile. Invest your time here and worry less about citations. These days it’s more about conversion optimization than it is about ranking optimization. And never underestimate the power of reviews.

This week we've got a two-fer for you. I've got John Paglio from flyte talking about SCHEMA: what it is, why you need it, and how to implement it on your site.

We’ve all seen business ads pop up in our Facebook feed every day, and you’ve probably scrolled right past a majority of them. But what about leveraging YouTube to advertise your business, products and services? Aleric Heck of AdOutreach has done just that, helping innumerable business reach over 8 figures in sales using the YouTube ads platform.

This week's episode is about moving beyond the pivot. No doubt you pivoted when COVID first upended the world and your business, but did you stop there?   It's easy to fall back into a groove, but thinking things have "normalized" is the wrong approach. In this episode I share five things you can do to make sure you continue to evolve as your customers' needs do.

Do you ever wish you could get free business advice from someone in your industry, or who has been through what you’re going through now? The answer may be in joining or starting a mastermind. We'll delve into what a mastermind is, how to start one, and how to run one successfully.

Influencer marketing could arguably be traced all the way back to the 1800’s when the Conklin pen company wisely and creatively asked Mark Twain to say some nice things about their products. Influencer marketing has come a long way since then, especially if you’re a Kardashian. But just going for the big name is not necessarily the best strategy, says Agorapulse’s Mike Allton.

Successful SEO starts with keyword research. Moz’s Cyrus Shepard reminds us that you need to rank for what people are actually searching for, not what you think they’re searching for. That means truly understanding exactly what a keyword is, and prioritizing keywords by potential. Uncover more ideas by determining what keywords your competitors are ranking for.  Yes, you can actually do that.  Why recreate the wheel when they’ve already done some of the heavy lifting for you?

Like every industry, digital marketing also has their list of “best practices” that you’re told to follow. And while there is certainly some truth to that, Caitlin Halpert from 3Q Digital, can attest that with a little creative “pushing of the boundaries”, and letting the data from your creative testing do the talking, you just may find you’re driving more growth and efficiency through these new ideas.

So there's lots of different things to be looking at when you're doing email marketing, but I would definitely say those replies are the most important part. And when you see a lot of people replying, that's when you know you've definitely hit on something that's important. And that you've got to talk more about that

Why is B2B marketing important? Creating quality content allows you to establish your business’s brand and positional, as well as allows you to connect with your target audience and show your authority and credibility in your market.  But as B2B marketing expert James Soto will attest, the B2B buying cycle is much longer than it is for B2C, and customer expectation is different, so you need to make sure you’re adjusting for that throughout your process.

If you’re an ethical marketer, you know that buying an email list is considered “shady” and Email Service Providers such as MailChimp won’t allow you use use purchased lists on their platform. But Doug Morneau is here to explain that renting an email list is much different, and how it can help you reach more of your ideal, targeted customers. To break it down in its simplest form, email list rental – also known as “sponsored mail” – is really just another form of influencer marketing. It’s just one more way of allowing your brand/product/company to reach potential customers via their email inbox that fit a certain demographic that they’ve already shown interest in. You’re gaining a one-time right to contact them, but it’s the email list owner who conducts the actual mailing for you. 

In a nutshell, influencer marketing is really just a type of social media marketing that uses product mentions and endorsements from influencers – people who have already built up a loyal and dedicated following, and are perhaps seen as experts in their area or niche. So if the thought of riding the coat tails of a well-known or well-respected influencer while they talk up your products and services sounds like an easy win, influencer marketing expert Neal Schaffer is here to remind you that it’s not always that simple. You could do more harm than good to your business’s reputation is you aren’t careful and calculated when choosing which influencers to work with. Ideally you always want to work with someone who is also aligned with what your business and brand stands for.

The question some businesses are asking themselves these days, “To bot, or not to bot?” But the reality is, chatbots are a fantastic automated solution that allow businesses and organizations the power to handle not only more customers at once, but to also do it simultaneously. Talk about some bang for your buck!

It's crazy to think that we've done 350 episodes of the Agents of Change podcast. That's nearly 7 years of content for a weekly podcast.

In this episode I share how my thinking on “Black Lives Matter” vs. “All Lives Matter” has evolved. Not usually the material we cover on the Agents of Change podcast, but I’m realizing how this movement touches every aspect of our lives, regardless of our color. I don’t have any answers, as I’m just beginning the journey myself.