 I'm so honored to be here and anytime I give a talk I like to open up with really what the intention is and so for me today, the intention is to get all of you really comfortable with marketing and to have you walk away feeling like you could really be in control of your own marketing. So I want to give you a little background about how I started. I started my company, Buzz Marketing Group, when I was 16 and it's been 22 years now. And I never thought I'd be a marketer. I really wanted to be a fashion editor and at 16, 15 rather, I took a job with a newspaper writing product reviews, it was called the New Girl Times and every time I would send a company a review they would say, if I send you more product will you tell me what you think? And so I thought I had landed the dream job of just testing products and telling companies what I thought about them. And that continued for a couple years until a client and I use air quotes because they were just people who sent me product told me that the research I had done with my friends was better than something she'd paid $25,000 for and that I had a business and it was in market research and I should figure it out and happened to be a freshman in college and went to the head of the business department and we talked, I took an independent study and really started to build out the company. And then in 2000 Cosmo Girl wrote about what we were doing. It was literally two sentences in a magazine that got 15,000 applications from people all over the world who wanted to be buzz spotters and that's what we call our trend spotters. Fast forward to today we have 40,000 people in our research network and we've served over 165 companies and that's just a few of our clients and so I'm very fortunate to go into organizations and normally work with C-suite executives and really talk to them about the major problem that they're having and I like to say a lot of my work is the problem that keeps the CEO or CMO up at night. It's the one they whisper about and the one they say we've got to figure out a solution to this or I don't know what's going to happen with the company or we need to make a pivot and you know I think we're in a really interesting time right now where we're watching really big companies grapple with really big problems and we're seeing a lot of new emerging smaller companies that you know are digitally native or direct to consumer who are opening up really big marketing opportunities and so it's a really interesting time to be a marketer for sure. Okay, this one didn't translate so on this slide I also want to talk about it another part of our business so we coin a lot of trends and a lot of different words and so I just want to give you an example of a few of the trends we've coined over the years and so I think the one that put me on the map years ago was this idea called warholism and so about 10 years ago we identified that you know the famous Andy Warhol quote he says you know in the future everyone will have their 15 minutes of fame and so as a marketer that really took on a different meaning right I grew up in the 90s where the only way a real person could ever be on TV was to be one of seven strangers picked to live in the house on MTV's The Real World right that was the only way you would ever be famous. Fast forward to the time we start talking about warholism Fisher Price released a toy it was a karaoke machine that you hooked up to your TV and instantly a two-year-old watch themselves on TV and I started to think about that what is the impact for marketing when it what used to be a one-way conversation of I tell you this you go do this behavior you buy this thing to make you feel this way has totally changed you know and we started to really realize that the relationship between a customer and the company making the product for them was really fundamentally changing another trend we coined years ago was an idea called mass exclusivity and it was the idea that we all could own the same product that needed to be customized to us and so the iPod was one of the first products we saw that was a mass exclusive product we all could own it and all have an individual experience again really really tough if you're a big marketer right we saw Nike really found a way to do it with Nike ID you can customize your Nike sneakers American Eagle or Levi's you can go into the store customize how you want your jeans ripped but the idea that customers were having a bigger voice with something that was really emerging and one final trend I really loved coining was this idea we called cake baking and it came about from a little no movie called Mr. and Mrs. Smith right and what we all learned on that movie was that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt fell in love right and it was everywhere and what was interesting is not a lot of people went to see the movie you know and so it again fundamentally changed marketing because what do we do we talk a lot about a product and then we want you to go by the product what happens when the talk about the product becomes more fascinating than the product itself you know it's so marketing fundamentally has really really changed a lot over the last 10 to 15 years so the classical marketer there are four things that you need to know about marketing first I'll back up and say when we talk about marketing marketing is really everything that happens between you making your product and someone buying it all of those activities in between really fall under marketing and then when we talk about marketing as a practice there are really four areas we talk about so product place promotion and price and so with product there are some products where the actual creation of the product is in fact the marketing so whether you see someone on Shark Tank and they make a magical sponge that does all of this the actual product is what's talked about it's how the brand is marketed it's built around this product the concept of place when I started in marketing place was Macy's Bloomingdale's Marshall Fields and now place has really evolved to be your website right that's the first place people tend to experience a brand and then for many of these big retailers especially those in consumer driven businesses it's still the number one place people are making purchases you know they may put a lot of money and resources behind the bricks and mortar locations but quietly they'll tell you the number one place we're driving revenue is online when we talk about promotion there's seven or several different areas so promotion we look at paid unpaid or earned as we call it and owned and so again your website is your own channel your social feeds when we talk about earned it's really PR right free media what people say about your brand what people in social media are saying about it and then paid which is advertising a totally different part of the strategy and then we know that price can be a really big part of marketing right so think about some of the direct to consumer brands the biggest differentiator they talk about is by coming to us directly we can charge you a lot less money right price is really important or now it's even got its own category what's called pricing transparency right we're gonna be very transparent about what this actually costs so in all these classical areas for us product place promotion price they've all dramatically shifted and the very definition of what those things mean has really changed and that's actually really great news for small business owners you know of all the companies I get to work with I am most passionate and most excited to work with small business owners I think that you know I remember when my team when we first discovered WordPress and one of the things I thought for my smaller clients was now we've democratized the market right we make it easier for people to find their customer and to talk to them and to have a product that's competitive and to have a web presence that speaks just like any other store and so while it's created a lot of opportunity for small businesses it's actually being very disruptive for big businesses and so you know it's a really interesting place right now and so what I want to talk about is just from all the companies I've worked with ten things I've learned about marketing and they're the ten things that I think if you walk away with anything a few of them I hope you think about as you start to create your own marketing so the first thing I've learned is that all consumers are not created equal I am definitely a person who is known I think my title magazine gave me as the millennial whisperer I grew up with Millennials I started studying them before they were Millennials I was literally in the right time at the right place and had tons of them that I was you know talking to and the one thing I could admit I don't know if many of my colleagues will admit this is that there was kind of this like millennial mania that we created right it's like if you don't know them your business will die right so we kind of like scared everyone so much that when they actually needed to pay attention to them they were burnt out they were like I just don't even care anymore right it was like Millennials will do this they'll kill your business they're so big there's you have to do all these things and the reality is now when the average Millennials but 33 34 you know married two kids looking at buying property now is a time where many businesses actually need to look at them but historically we get very excited about new and emerging demographics we scare people and then we don't properly shift business in the way it needs to move forward and so this is just an example of the way the really I look think about really big businesses look today and so one of the biggest challenges businesses have right now is that for the first time in history there are five generations of people who are working together in organizations it's another reason why I think it's a great opportunity and a great time for small businesses you know if you are a Comcast or think of any large Fortune 500 company you're dealing with the changes in consumer behavior the changes in media options how many different ways there are for people to find out about your product and within your own company the people that need to come together to make decisions are dealing with all of this stuff right we have if you think about Gen X right I love Gen Xers I and any big company I've ever been in Gen X is really those are the people who keep everything together right they're managing up they're managing down they're just cool they're keeping it together like I just need this to get done you know you have boomers who are renewed with energy people in their 50s are to me the most interesting people to talk about right now you know that if you think about the advances in health care they they are younger than ever they're more vibrant than ever they actually do have some money you know and you know they're now trying to figure out the next stage of their life there's a crisis within my friends of their parents not wanting to be grandparents because they're living their best lives right now right so they have abandoned the idea of being grandparents you know my mom just turned 68 and she's always like looking at a career change I'm like mom you're 60 and people are like hiring you for these just like yeah I think I'm gonna diversify I'm like you know so there's a lot going on with boomers there's Gen X saying I wish you would just retire all of you because I need to move up right so you've got people stuck in their jobs right then you've got like people like get out they have Gen Z it's like I'm so excited to be here it's my first job this is so awesome a computer you know and you have millennials it's like everything needs to change everything is wrong when am I getting promoted what's next for me and this is going on internally and we're not even dealing with the idea that we need to sell people stuff right so this is just what really makes me laugh these days I'm like this is what's happening these are a big and so when you look at the Warby Parkers of the world you know it's like this is what we believe this is our ethos if you've ever been to Warby Parker they all dress the same they all talk the same everybody's on the same page right there's just a feeling of like we're doing something really important and we're stylish and everybody's on and you have these big companies it's like our board of directors won't retire and all the scandal are in the biggest companies ever right like I was reading a headline yesterday about the Oscars and it's a really funny headline about Kevin Hart and it was just like he totally screwed up he wouldn't apply I was like can we back up for one second who hired him did no one use a piece of technology to go through every single thing he's publicly set for his entire career to say could anything be offensive you know it's like I actually don't fault him for not pouch who hired you you know who actually made that decision and one of my friends were texting she said oh it's probably just some you know older person that's like he gets the kids excited let's hire him you know and and we'll get into the art and science part of marketing but that's what's happening it's you know there's so much information available that we're watching a lot of really big missteps you know we're watching a Pepsi commercial that's supposed to be about social activism and the way you fix everything is Kendall Jenner just hands you a Pepsi right it's like how does that happen it happens because like all of this is going on so you know I think when we think about consumers when you think about your customer you know we'll talk a bit about not believing the hype but really drill down to like what are the numbers saying what is the data show and how do I actually reach the people I'm trying to reach and not pay attention to the noise a big part of my job is really filtering all day what's real what's noise you know what makes sense the second point is you know trends are cyclical you know I'm right now we at my company study for four tribes we call them tribes of trendsetters preppies techies alternatives and independence and about goodness 15 years ago I introduced this concept I was doing some work for Verizon and they said we're gonna launch a prepaid phone and we're gonna target a really cool person I said a cool person is not buying a prepaid phone that's like not happening I said actually they were like well but we need them to launch it I said well you know there's this new tribe emerging and they're techies and they're like but nobody their nerds nobody talks to them I'm like no actually the world is changing and these people I predict are going to be the coolest people ever and they thought it was crazy and then like a year ago after that Richard Branson launches like virgins prepaid phone it was a matrix phone it was massively successful and it actually did pay attention to that trend and so you know I always love to study this tribe we call independence because they're very counterculture and whatever they're doing literally in a few years will be the trend you know so there are people now who show up at retail stores to trade clothes right it's like they there's there's no currency that exchanges they're just doing clothing swaps you know there there are people who are like very dedicated to writing and handwriting letters now right so while we're all kind of like oh people aren't gonna write again there are people who are doing that and you know like all trends things come in and out of style you know one of the biggest trends is TV you know in my industry people always talk about things are dead right it's like oh print is dead I'm like no bad print isn't it should be right problem with print is that people don't see themselves as friends a print were dead chip and Joanna Gaines couldn't launch a magazine to millions of people why do we love them because like we see their kids and I went to Waco Texas to go see what this was all about right and waited in line to buy a cupcake you know my whole way my friends like why are we going to wake up it's like no we just have to be in this vibe right and they have like 500 people who are working for them so clearly prints not dead bad print is dead people who don't actually understand that brands are alive and vibrant that's what's dying years ago we were all told TV was dead right now you're looking at who's nominated for Golden Globes and it reads a haul like literally it's like Hollywood's A list is nominated in TV roles right and competing and fighting for TV TV's never been more interesting and more exciting and you know one of things we'll talk about in a bit is that you know media just evolves right now we're in the content business if only blockbuster had realized it was in the content business right you know the fact that blockbuster didn't become Netflix is a huge misstep you know that they didn't understand we just wanted to take content differently you know so people who are you know when we see it every day they're hanging on a bricks and mortar right like no we just have to know like sometimes just got to let it go and say what's the next iteration of how we can make this better so marketing is equal parts arts inside I think this is the part of marketing that marketers struggle with the most that's why you'll find creative agencies in market research shops I happen to sit absolutely in the center of both I actually write a best-selling children's fiction series called Mackenzie blue and I would often say in that process I was literally doing this to myself well creatively I want to do this as a business person this makes sense when we created her as a character I literally went to moms and went to girls and said okay what can we do to get girls interested in science what can we do about mean girl culture and what came out of it was equal parts art and science and a lot of times we as marketers make mistakes it's because we've gone too far in one direction and not informed by the other and it is one of the only disciplines where you really do have to pay attention to art and science at the same time I think direct to consumer brands do a really good job of this but I also think that they're in a really troubled position right now because they happen to build their companies at a time where Facebook on you know ad revenue or Facebook ad machine was really also on an upswing right so now when we're having a bit of a correction everyone's freaking out I'm saying no you guys just have to go back to understanding the fundamentals of the art and the science right channels sometimes perform crazy good and you can't predict that that's going to happen but stills marketers we have to understand our product our place our promotion our price always you know and if at any point our algorithm is off it's really because either we're not being creative enough or we don't deeply understand the consumer enough that's what happened to a lot of companies who went millennial crazy they just didn't pay attention to the fact that this group of 50 somethings was doing something really interesting right that their life was fundamentally changing in a way where they did have money and it's always I love talking to boomers like no one talks to me I have tons of money to spend no one cares to talk to me you know because we got so hyped up but if we actually looked at numbers we can see that trends were evolving I often talk about this a lot when I talk about the election you know the numbers were always there it's just we didn't want to think about it you know five years ago MTV did a really interesting study from their public affairs department and talked about Millennials as a generation says 80 million people felt that the government their government was something that they actually had to overcome that they had to create solutions so whether you think about Uber or Airbnb it's like well we're going to create the companies that actually handle the problems that we think are really big problems and so you know thinking about an anti you know establishment mindset going into elections that exists and so you know a lot of times we do in fact ignore data because it doesn't support what we want to think and and we do that as marketers to marketers are people and we don't always look at data and say this is the very best decision we should make don't believe the hype again there's a lot of hype and and as marketers it's you know and I'm sure you all hear it all it's like SEO SEM it's dead it's not working it's like well you know things evolve of course it's working are you actually putting the right things into it right are you testing the right creative are you connecting with the audience in the right way these are all tools they're all tools that need to be properly utilized same with the website you know the difference between a really good site that connects to a really bad site you know yesterday I had a really interesting experience I was on Instagram and I got this I like add from this like I think it's called like women executives and heels I was like that's a really interesting name so I click on it it's like we have this journal and I'm like this is very pretty okay I'm gonna buy this I can easily buy it with PayPal then I get an email and it's like welcome to the community this is all the things we do this is our manifesto and then I see like this really beautiful card it's like if you buy 10 of them you get 45% off I've never seen this person before in my life and spent like a hundred bucks with them in less than an hour and told my friends like why didn't we create these cards these cards are very cool you know it was just that this person somehow figured out that I was the target and that I was likely to buy from her and then I went to see well she must be some very famous person she had like 2,000 followers on Instagram you know it's like she just really seemed to get to the point of like I'm gonna ignore all this hype and just go through the funnel of saying this is how I get to my target customer okay so this is my favorite tip I did the majority of my research in airports there are lots of people they're all very different sometimes they're in like real hysteria right there's a way that airports can get to your emotions that other experiences cannot and I also get to see a lot of people in different generations together you know airports you know an airport was where I realized getting on a plane that Uggs were really happening right and I look at things as a bell curve right are we inching up the curve are we on the curve or is it like heading down you know it's the first place where I saw that Tom's were like really a thing right everybody has Tom's on okay this is a thing you know my latest airport trend I'm a big fan of away luggage I'm seeing more and more away rollerbacks right and so I'm always looking to see like what are people just doing when they're not trying to because none of us are really like trying at the airport right like trying to be cool we're not showing up our best we're just like I got to get from here to here you know where they eating what are they looking at what are they talking about what are the pain points you know one of the biggest things as marketers that we should be trying to solve for is someone's pain point you know what's the actual problem that needs a solution think about the founding story of Warby Park it's I left my $700 glasses and a plane and I didn't think I should pay $700 to have to replace them and so you know airports if you ever have a moment when my students come to me with with the companies are gonna create in our program I always say go find a place to sit and just watch people you know it's fascinating to watch people not constantly be in your mind thinking I should do this I should do that just sit down have coffee and see what people do you know when they're just in there are their suitcases not working are things not seeming to flow like what's what's the actual problem I'm sure if you take a minute to write you'll find many problems that people need to fix consumers don't always know what they want I here's one thing I'm sure of consumers always know how they want to feel right we all deeply know how we want to feel everything we put on we do it because it makes us feel a certain way can make us feel smart can make us feel taken care of can make us feel comfortable can make us feel cool but there is definitely a feeling assigned to it we don't always know the product that fits that and to me one of the best examples of it has always been an iPad nobody knew they wanted an iPad until they had an iPad right now it's like I can't I don't know what life would be like without my iPad but until someone actually got up and said I'm gonna create this device for you no one knew that they want it but all the feelings a feeling inspired and connected and entertained I knew I wanted those feelings right I just didn't know it had to be in that device and sometimes as creators especially as business owners you're gonna have to take a leap and say I think people are gonna want this product but always base it on because they want to feel a certain way right and really focus and hone in on the feelings media channels don't die they evolve one of the things I've said many times already that I hate to hear is this is dead that is dead this is over this is done you know one of the greatest examples for me so we think about podcasts now right but podcasts are so revolutionary right or is it just like 60 years ago when people would or maybe longer sit in their living rooms and turn on the radio and listen to the program of the evening right isn't new you know we think about soap opera soap opera is literally the invention of Proctor and Gamble who created you know basically these long programs that were sponsored by soap you know if you look at the end of soap operas today they're still produced by P&G studios you know so things just evolve we just do different things and so it's always about the way that you connect to consumers I look at all these tools and channels to just really connect and at the end of the day you know marketing is about a connection it's about a feeling that makes you feel something you want to feel and then predicts a behavior that you're going to do innovator your you'll be replaced we have a lot of brands right now that are in a place of really desperately needing to innovate and I think one of the toughest things sometimes I like in it to steering the Titanic right is that you see the writing on the wall for some of these businesses right but it's so big and it takes so long for the crash to finally happen and then there are people who really become first of all what I said earlier all of these people who have all of these complex problems and working together and then have to figure out what happens with the business and what you start to find is maybe they buy up smaller companies to bring the innovation right you see Walmart did that with jet.com right it's like come in and help innovate but a lot of times you know companies don't quite know what to do and then one of the biggest issues if you're a marketer today is you know I remember in the 90s when gap would put their fall campaign on TV and everybody would run to gap and we buy all the clothes right then you fast forward 10 years gap changes the logo people are like that is ugly and they change it back that would never happen before right marketing used to be like a megaphone we tell you to go do this and now consumers have a really big voice and what happens there they're telling us 24 7 what they like or don't like and I would say when I was a teenager if I wanted to know of Jane cosmetics tested on animals what I would call an 800 number and and ask them you know my youngest brother can go online Google the information if he doesn't like what he reads he can start a petition on change.org you can go on all of his channels recruit his friends make a video and start a movement right so the amount of control and power consumers have is just unbelievably change the way businesses have to deal with them and so you know this idea of innovation and how quickly it needs to happen is definitely one of the biggest challenges today. So another thing about great marketing it always involves surprise and delight you know those are two most important words for marketers surprise delight you know there are other words to that talk about you know ways we get people's attention shock and all is another one I'm sure we're all familiar with a very brilliant marketer who does a great job of shocking us every day and it doesn't always have to be great right it still elicits an emotion and people align with that emotion right and and whether we realize it or not it's like I wish I could say what I thought every day right how many of us deeply feel like we don't get to tell people how we feel every day right so sometimes the feeling of watching someone just say I think you're stupid you're like can't believe I line with like that feeling right I don't know where that's coming from that I wish I could tell somebody that too it could be my boss could be whoever I wish I could just say you're really lazy you know but with great marketing you know that's why people love Apple there's just something surprising and exciting you know we say to my team they know there's something for me that's just so deeply exciting when I see a new piece of creative or a new website or something that feels like magic right it's a bit of what you do and many of you do as developers I think it's just pure magic when it's like there's an idea in my head that now's on the screen and people can connect in a different way and great marketers know there always has to be a surprise and delight and some unexpected element that feels a bit magical and finally you must always have intrinsic and extrinsic value I think one of the greatest examples of this is Weight Watchers you know just getting the app it's like I did something for myself whether you track your points or not it's just this internal feeling that says I feel good because I made this decision to buy this product people do it every day with the decisions you know and great marketers understand that both have to be there there are things we buy whether it's pine salt whatever it's like I'm buying it but then like Meyer comes along right or method and it makes you feel good about the environment buying cleaning products right and so there are people who get fundamentally that that having both of these elements is really important and so you think about your marketing we think about what you offer really think about is there intrinsic and extrinsic value you know there's something people will feel internally and is there an external exchange that people will also enjoy and that's it all right folks we definitely have some time for questions so that the live stream folks can hear what you're saying please use one of the two microphones in the aisles or raise your hand and I can bring the mic to you if you'd like me to just a quick reminder that comments are great for Twitter not so much for right now we're looking for questions thanks hi my name is Jason I run operations for a web agency in in San Antonio I had a battle in my household growing up I was an Apple guy my dad's worked for Dell for 20 years I come home with an iPod and he's tell me you know Dell has that too and I always had some unspoken reason that I would always go for one brand over another and then I just discovered Simon Sinek and he talks about the why and I felt like that was the unspoken value where's the why come into to your advice for a company how does that I mean we can talk about price and product and location and all that but but how do you insert the why at where in the process does that come so I think that is a founding part of what you do right is that I think it's like the young in philosophy where you figure out there are 12 different personality types in our agency we took on the personality of being the sage right so first is it goes back to the feeling how do you want your clients to feel there's some people that want their clients to feel taken care of there's some people who want their clients to feel like they've come to the sage for advice to solve it there's some people who want their clients to feel inspired I would take a moment to really say like what's the intention what's the intended outcome you know and for us it's always the feeling of when our clients to feel like they are bringing their toughest problem to a place that will absolutely solve it and do it in a way that's confidential and that really just produces what they're looking for and so I think a lot of times when there are those issues it's we're unsure of what the ethos is and I think the problem with agencies and you know we're an agency is sometimes you take the work that's coming and you allow so many outside influences to actually tell you who you are right so at a time where I would say I love looking at emerging demographics we got shoved in the millennial space you know while we do do influencer we're not an influencer agency we happen to create an influencer you know huge project for Oprah Winfrey network and then we really became the influencer people where it's like really we're this type of agency and so I think agencies often have the issue of your clients dictating who you become rather than very clearly upfront saying this is who we are and this is the type of business we want to attract thank you I'm Phil I run I am news watch dot com a publication for online marketers you're telling them new trends and things going on in the technical realm and regulatory realm as well as marketing realm I'm interested in your perspective on what online marketers will be facing in the future that I need to reflect in my publication oh it's my favorite thing to talk about right now here's that the biggest issue well I would say challenge in the future is the number of niche channels that marketers have to pay attention to for so long we've been able to just put something on TV right just run a commercial on the Super Bowl just do this one big thing that has a huge impact and I think in the future we won't have that you know we're gonna have hundreds of places that we need to be you know and I often use the example that before a teenager gets to school they've seen 350 brand messages why would we ever want to do one thing right and so I think that the specificity and the number of people it will take for big companies to reach the 60 70 million 80 million people they used to do with one big thing can't happen anymore and so I think they have to fundamentally shift how they're marketing and the other thing I would say is it used to be that celebrities were really big influencers right and so now there's a trend we're calling nano influencers it was micro influencers and you know I started my career with the belief that you know and it's a statistic that 81% of us make purchasing decisions based on what our friends say you know the idea of who a friend is has just changed and so again when you look at the power in the place of influence it really democratizes it and so I think the challenge moving forward is actually for the bigger companies because now they are forced to play in the same space is smaller more startup companies which I don't think we've seen before thank you a lot of us build websites for clients they have a value somebody's payments but how do we get to that next step where they are they're extrinsic feeling about your website how do you differentiate that because a lot of us have the same product but what makes that special is it building community around you had a website built by us or is it what is that how do you do that for something that's a commodity essentially so the most I always tell my team we can always make more money we can never make more time right and so your biggest currency is the time it takes right and how quickly can a client get from concept to execution you know what's your process like what makes you different than working with someone else and do clients want to work collaboratively or do they want you to just do it that really has to be defined up front and that's what starts to differentiate it's really for how many thousands of agencies exist right and it comes down to how do you communicate to your client with the value is you know it's not as simple as we make a website like you said many people do that it's the process what's your process like we at buzz have a process we call connect brand impact understand and as an agency we always start with research and we end with research that's our point of differentiation so I often say to clients if you are looking for the most creative shop in town we are not it that is not our strength our strength is in understanding up front who the target customer is how we need to really brand this how we need to impact them and then how we need to understand the whole process so we can do it again and so you have to really develop that elevator pitch you know that few sentences that says this is who we're about and the client needs to get it but there are a lot of it is just a workflow and communication too and how you work with your clients and I find you know all of our business really comes from other clients referring us you know and so it's really again sitting and saying what's our process and being really clear on your own website but this is how we work and then we we have something called the buzz report that comes out once a month it's our trend newsletter we've always put it out for free and once a month we're just in front of you know thousands of companies to say here's something we're giving you for free and it keeps this top of mind so you should think about you know what's your version of that that that's just advice that you give that helps to educate people. Thank you. Hi Tina I'm with an e-commerce store in the building materials industry and we have a fairly complicated product we're a youthful brand can you think of any examples in the history of your business where you found a complex product that presented really well. A complex, yes we have several complex problems here's our products rather here's what I always try to say to my clients though can you say it in five words or less even if it's really complicated how do you drill it down to those five words sometimes it's an exercise for the internal team to get on the same page because even very complex things in my mind can be drilled down to five words you know and then because what you're the problem you then have if you can't do that is you both must educate the market on who you are and what you do is you're playing the role of educator and you're now playing the role of salesman and you really just you know I always say you want to be a new lane in the highway you never want to have to build the highway that is the hardest job to do because how many times now do we do people say we're the uber of this we're the air you know we're the warby of this right because someone's already kind of blaze the trail and so it is much easier to do the sales part when you don't have to do the educating part too great thank you hi yes I think I've got kind of a basic question but you mentioned earned media versus paid or you know all of those things I do all the marketing for a small women run business and as a small business I totally see all the channels that I could be working and so that's what I've been doing nonstop for two years last year we had earned media with Fox business and this year our big thing was we bought an ad in the Magnolia Journal and the two behaved so differently and so differently that I've been a little perplexed and a little discouraged and so I wonder just like to a small business what are the where the best channels that you encourage small businesses to really put all of their effort and what are some ways that are like some tips for that you can get earned more earned media which might be a really like that Magnolia didn't perform the way you thought it was going to yeah yeah I would I would anticipate that so I think it's really important so are you a direct-to-consumer are you selling to consumers yes okay e-commerce so if you're a calm business the most important thing is to look at customer segmentation it's a big part of what we do right so are we talking to healthy moms are we talking to athletic dads you know I once had a client that told me they were gonna make men trust a thing it was like Pinterest for men and I was like that's never gonna be a thing you should never do that like that the behavior is not even there do not waste your effort right and there are times where we see we get really excited about a channel like Magnolia right Magnolia is a great place for them to market their own stuff right and it's a Martha Stewart model right it's like I sell all of these products and I'm gonna tell you and who are the people that buy ads people who are selling all of those products right so what you really wanted was to be in Joanna's things right her top ten things of the month and it's just that and that's leads to the surprise and delight for their customers so to have think about the businesses that you're competing against in that space wouldn't have made sense versus being on TV or a place where people hear your brand you know they see you they can immediately connect with you so you have to think about number one just three different types of customers you're serving and then I would name them right so with many of my customers were like she's Molly Molly is 41 she's you know we had a client who was spending tons of money on radio and wanted to get out of radio and we realized like your customer is actually a soccer mom who spends 4.5 hours a day in her car so the best place for you to be advertising is actually on radio so you have to get a little kind of drill down on the activity of the person and then let that inform the channels don't think just because the channel is awesome it's gonna be awesome for you you know and then once you realize you know what channels work you'll be able to double down on that a bit more awesome thank you welcome first thank you Tina one of the things and I guess as a professional web developer and as a digital brand strategist I'm running into the clients who they know what they're they know what their demographics they know who their audience is and they kind of know what they want to brand it but then we'll kind of do some research and say maybe you should kind of cater toward this way and they're like and I still want to do it this way so how do you kind of deal with those do you decide okay client wins they're paying me I'm gonna just do it their way or do you find the middle road or do you just say I'm not doing it period I don't care what you say I try to find the middle ground and always say we're gonna do 50% of what you've done before and we're gonna experiment with 50% because the problem is you know if you like work with any big company you're looking at last year's budget right this is what happened last year we only think we're gonna have this kind of variance and so people have gotten very comfortable with what they know what we know as practitioners is that every single day something is changing the business you were in a year ago is not the business you're in now but what happens at these companies right we'll go back to that initial funnel all of this internal drama is going on right and it's like we just got to stick to what we know and so then when you as the agency don't perform it's like well it's your fault you didn't know when clearly the research maybe that this plan is built on is a year old at this point once it's gone through all the meetings and all the approvals of all the people that say yes to this plan and so I think you'll find that that's gonna shift and I say it's it's gonna shift because it has to when it becomes a revenue problem right when when the ability to not be quicker or be at the speed of the market changes the business that's when the business will fundamentally make a change and so I would challenge you to say okay can we do it 50% your way 50% ours not can we do it 75% your way 25% ours and let's see who performs better and then we'll iterate from there thank you this will be our last question so my name's Jonathan I have an agency just down the road here in the Nashville area that employs one person and that's me and I imagine there's a lot of people in the room that are that way so you get given some awesome tips about how we can create better messages that's good for me because I'm my own marketing team but one question I have is more along the lines of the best way to get the message out there because I can't afford a Super Bowl commercial I can't even really afford a radio spot so I've done a lot of Facebook ads I'm looking into doing more with Google ads and stuff like that but I'm curious if you have any other ideas for an affordable means of marketing I get pretty much all my clients through referrals and I'm looking to try to grow beyond that because referrals are awesome but I want to do more than just the network of the people I've worked with so what tips would you have in that area sure so when I started out I did a lot of writing I actually have a degree in journalism not in marketing and so I wrote quite a bit lots of opinions and for very random places like retail merchandiser magazine and so I would say to all of you and that space first about like thought leadership is really important and that means you have to take a moment to actually say what do I believe what do I fundamentally believe is true about the work I'm doing the industry I'm in and how do you become that person so it means being on LinkedIn and and be consistent if you can't write something once a week don't be sporadic and like for a while write once a week and then you don't shut for months right if all you can commit to is once a month you're gonna have a really great piece of content do that once a month I have a really good piece of content know exactly who your audience is and so make sure you're curating those spaces you know it can be on LinkedIn where you know I friends were massive LinkedIn influencers I have a friend who does a show from his iPhone for a minute it's like one minute with him talking about a marketing thing and so I figure out what the thing is that you're known for if you don't know I would go back to your last five clients and say why did you hire me what was it that differentiated me and then take that and try to make it a platform and then engage on the medium that makes the most sense for you so if you are an Instagram if you are not good with Instagram if you don't take great compelling photos don't go on Instagram I just don't do that doesn't help you and then your clients are gonna be like I don't want that you know most of all I have clients that come to me that say I want my newsletter to look like your newsletter you know I want you to give me something that looks at that so I would think about what are you best at do that if you have a great voice be on podcasts you know create a podcast and don't try to do too many things I would master one thing let that start to create a return for you and then move on to the next thing give her one more round of applause folks