The Humanized Marketing Podcast: Recent Episodes
pranav kale
This podcast talks about Marketing which is story based, empathy-driven and based on the abundance mindset.
Is your business shrinking?
When a business is shrinking or stagnant, marketers worry. And their worry pushes them into a frenzy, where they start solving different types of problems.
‘Oh, we have a lead generation problem’
‘Oh, we have a conversation rate optimization problem’
‘Oh, it's because we are not stuffing our blogs with SEO’.
Most of the time, these are the wrong problems. The actual problem is - ‘Your business has become a commodity.
In this episode, we talk about how we can convert a commodity business into a brand.
What if we had a system that could help us in creating content that is relevant to our brand and our mission?
The Solar System Content Model helps Creators and Small Business owners come up with content ideas and outlines for their Podcasts, Blogs and Videos. In this episode, we look at the nuts and bolts of this model.
Mike's coffee business was failing. He had tried multiple things to make it work, but all his tactics had failed.
Just when he was about to give up, Mike realized something. He was making the same mistake that most of us do. He was thinking too big!
Mike showed empathy toward a small audience, and today his brand (Death Wish Coffee) has become one of the most prominent coffee brands in the world.
Listen to this episode to hear the complete story.
In this series of 5 episodes, I am helping Kunaal Naik, build a brand story for his business.
Kunaal is a big deal in the world of Data Science. After having taught thousands of students, he is now looking to build a business of his own. Kunaal's intention is to build deep relationships with his 1000 true fans. And for that, he needs a story.
If you are looking for a step-by-step process to build your brand story (or a strategic narrative), I would strongly recommend listening to this one.
In this episode we cover -
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Why Kunaal wants to build a story in the first place
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Understanding the buyer persona
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Processing the insights about your audience using the "Job to be done" framework.
Enjoy.
A great brand story pulls the right people
Instead of pushing our marketing message down their throat, we can pull the right audience towards us. A great story cuts through the noise and gets the attention of the audience. It inspires them. It moves them from inertia. And pulling eventually leads to more profits and better impact.
There is a simple framework that we can use to create this story - The Old Game/New Game framework.
In this episode, I take you through the step-by-step process of creating a brand narrative by using this framework.
Your existing customers are a gold mine. They have a lot of wisdom to share with you... wisdom that will completely transform the way you do Marketing.
Asking the right questions to our customers gives us an insight into -
- Why did the customer purchase your product?
- What was the exact pain that they felt because of which they decided to buy your product?
- What were the exact objections that they had before buying?
- What is the problem your product solves?
- Which features are loved by customers?
And so on.
But despite this, we often ignore the customers that we have. Instead of asking them questions, we move on to acquiring new customers.
In this episode, I talk about the questions that you can ask your customers to get valuable insights from them.
Every brand that aspires to build its 1000 true fans, needs a story. A story that pulls the right audience towards the brand.
Building a brand story isn't always easy. And so here are 3 themes that you can use to create your brand story.
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Good vs. Evil
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Counter-intuitive thinking
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Expert view
While Creators and Small businesses want to build an audience, most of them use a traditional vertical funnel to get the job done.
But if you study successful Creators like James Clear, Louis Grenier, Jonathan Stark, and many more... you would realize that their thought process of building an audience is entirely different. They don't depend on the vertical funnel.
Instead, they use a horizontal funnel. And this is what we discuss in this podcast episode.
Great storytellers collect ideas for stories. These are the ideas that they can use later in their stories.
Now, this goes against the traditional image of a prolific storyteller who can pull stories out of thin air. But it’s the truth. Like a chef who keeps his ingredients ready, storytellers keep their ideas ready.
In this episode, we discuss 3 ways in which you can collect ideas for building kickass stories.
In this episode, I talk about a simple storytelling framework that you can use to build your Brand Story as well as other stories that are needed in your content. By taking examples like Harry Potter and Finding Nemo, we explore the nuances of this framework and then also discuss a few other brands who are using this framework for storytelling.
Here's what we cover -
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The simple 3-step framework for storytelling
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How movies use this framework
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Examples of brands that have been successfully using this framework
How should online Creators measure the performance of their Content?
Should they be concerned about the number of Tik-Tok followers?
Should they be looking at their Google Analytics every day?
Should they be creating more Instagram reels?
To find the answer I decided to reach out to a few Creators that I admire.
Here are the 2 questions that I asked -
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How do you measure the impact of your content?
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What kind of numbers do you pay attention to?
And here are the Creators I reached out to -
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Philip Morgan
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Rochelle Moulton
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Jonathan Stark
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Louis Grenier
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Margo Aaron
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Jay Acunzo
Their answers were insightful. And this is what I talk about in the podcast.
Recently, I came across an incredibly powerful Twitter thread by Nathan Barry, the CEO of ConvertKit. In this thread, Nathan talks about how he was able to scale from 0 to USD 22 million in ARR. Here's the link to the thread.
In this particular episode, I talk about the 3 lessons that I personally took from this thread.
What are the skills that you need to build as a Creator?
What are the crafts that you should focus on?
In this episode, I talk about the 3 essential skills that a Creator needs to build.
Can we talk about mass marketing, please?
The kind of marketing, where we target almost everyone and end up diluting our story?
Most businesses that I have known, have wanted to focus on a mass market. These businesses have felt the need to target a very broad audience, with the hope of selling more of their products.
But once in a while, there are businesses that decide to focus on the ‘tiny’. These businesses showed courage and battled the self-doubts that usually come up, as a consequence of facing on the tiny.
In this podcast episode, I talk about 5 such brave businesses.
Here are the links that are mentioned in the episode -
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Tiny Little Businesses
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ConvertKit
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Upekkha
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GrowthX
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Pixel Lighthouse
What type of content should you put at the Top of The Funnel?
Should you just chop your big piece of content into smaller pieces and distribute the content?
Or is there something else that you should consider?
According to Shyam, there is.
In this episode, Shyam and I discuss the concept of “Sequence of Beliefs”. Understanding this sequence of beliefs helps you strategize your content much better. Listen now and let me know :)
Talking points -
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What is a sequence of beliefs?
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How does a sequence of beliefs apply to social media content?
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The sequence of beliefs that Shyam uses for his brand
Why won't your clients give you testimonials?
What holds them back?
And even when they do, they send testimonials that are as boring and ineffective.
In this episode, I talk about how you can create a testimonial that is awesome and totally convinces your prospects to buy.
Here’s what I cover in the episode -
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How to ask for a testimonial from the client, so that he doesn't refuse
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A testimonial shouldn’t be ready-made. It should be constructed
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The right questions to ask while constructing the testimonial.
Do you first develop your offer?
Or do you first develop your audience?
Of course, the answer isn’t simple. And has a lot many nuances to consider.
In this episode, Shyam and I explore the pros and cons of both these strategies. Here are a few talking points -
- What is the difference between audience building vs. offer creation approach?
- The benefits and drawbacks of both the approaches
- How people buying from you can start trusting you
- When to consider the offer path and when to consider the audience building path
Creators and small businesses want to build an audience. But how many people do we actually need? Should we aim to get a million followers on Instagram?
Or should we listen to legends like Kevin Kelly and Seth Godin, and just focus on building 1000 true fans? In this episode, Shyam and I talk about the drawbacks of chasing a big market and the advantages of obsessing over 1000 true fans.
Talking points -
- The problem with mass marketing and interrupting people
- How mass marketing needs big budgets
- You don't need to be a mass-market brand. You can continue being a brand for just 1000 people.
- How do you define 1000 true fans?
- The financial viability of 1000 true fans
Who are you writing for? Who is your real audience?
I recently participated in the Copy Workshop by Margo Aaron and I had an aha moment. I realized how my inner demons are holding me back from unleashing my best writing work.
In this episode, Shyam and I discuss how to think about your audience and push everyone else out of your mind, when you are writing copy.
Talking points -
- How our conditioning affects our writing
- How we write to impress our colleagues, instead of customers
- How wanting to write for our heroes is a bad idea
- A tactic to ensure that we write only for our audience and nobody else
In this episode, Shyam and I discuss the Pros and Cons of having a practice of writing and publishing daily
Talking points -
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The role of writing in building an audience
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The difference between writing daily and publishing daily.
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How writing and publishing on Linkedin got me a couple of clients
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How writing every day changes you as a person
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The disadvantages of publishing daily
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The mindset of a daily publisher
All the parts in your Marketing are inter-connected. It’s a complex system.
Some Marketers foolishly focus on a single part and optimize it. They don’t consider the repercussions of this optimization on the whole system.
Example -
“Oh, the business is low. Let’s see what the problem is. Oh, the Conversion Rate of the Landing Page needs to increase. Currently, it’s at 1.32%. Let’s aim at 2.5%. Because when that happens, the business will improve.”
And then they put all their efforts into improving this conversion rate. They use the best practices in CRO. The Call To Action button is made bigger. The user is given all the information in the first fold.
And sure enough, the number of leads increase. But the quality decreases. And hence, the profit is reduced further.
This is an example of Linear Thinking.
But perhaps, the landing page is not at fault. Perhaps, you need to zoom out further, and you need to step back and look at your business as a whole. This type of zoomed-out thinking is known as ‘Systems Thinking’... and sadly, most of us don’t indulge in it.
In this episode, Shyam and I talk about the difference between these 2 types of thinking.
A lot of content on the internet is just noise. And it fails to build an audience.
Why does this content fail?
Well, mainly because most Content Creators struggle to build an audience.
They struggle because they use Shallow Content Strategies.
What is a Shallow Content Strategy?
If you are using social media platforms like Tik-Tok, Clubhouse, Instagram, etc. to build an audience, then you are going to struggle. This Content does not bring about a transformation in your audience.
The alternative is Deep Content.
Successful Creators like Tim Ferriss, James Clear, Shane Parish, Louis Grenier, and many more, have built an audience by using Deep Content Strategy.
In this episode, I and Shyam explore the topic of Shallow Content vs. Deep Content.
Without stories, you cant build an audience.
If you are a Creator or a Marketer of any sort, then telling impactful stories is a skill that you just can't ignore anymore. Without this skill, it's difficult to stand out from all the noise out there.
This is precisely why I recorded this episode with Shyam.
In this episode, we discuss the 5 habits of an Effective Storyteller.
The question is - How do we build an audience?
An audience that trusts you, likes you, and respects us. They would cross the street for you.
It’s easy - Run Facebook ads, get them onto a landing page, get their email ids, send them emails, and boom… you have now started building an audience.
Except, that this approach doesn’t work anymore.
All the successful Creators have a completely different approach to audience building. They use, what I call, the Horizontal Funnel. It’s generous, it’s long-time… but more importantly, it’s not selfish.
In this episode, Shyam and I decode how successful Creators think about audience building and how we can learn from them.
In this episode we broadly cover -
- Why the traditional vertical funnel is broken
- How using a horizontal funnel is the need of the hour
This is the recording of a live session that I had conducted.
Many of us want to publish impactful content daily. But, there is this one tiny little problem. Fear.
This is exactly what we address in this live training episode, along with the other strategies and tactics that Creators can use, to publish impactful content.
A few things that were covered in this episode -
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How publishing content gives us clarity of thoughts
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How publishing helps us build an audience
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How we can learn to structure non-coherent thoughts
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How publishing every day makes our writing better
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How publishing makes you see the world differently and makes you smarter.
And so much more.
In this episode, I and my friend Shyam (The Founder of Lazyfitness.in), go deep into the topic of the Tripwire Funnel.
if you are a Creator who is selling an Online course (or if you plan to launch one in the future), then this episode is a must-listen.
Here are a few pointers that we discuss in the episode -
- What exactly are tripwire offers? How do they work?
- Why are tripwire funnels so popular?
- The advantages and disadvantages of tripwire funnels.
- Should you be using Tripwire funnels?
- What is the alternative?
I have been away from Podcasting for a while now. But that’s about to change.
The Humanized Marketing Podcast was so far, let’s say… ummm… not so streamlined. It was just me narrating my learnings, my experiences, with the hope of adding value to the listeners.
And then I stopped publishing. I am not quite sure why, but I did.
But now seems like a good time to revive the whole Humanized Marketing Podcast Experience.
Going ahead the podcast makes a simple promise - Humanized Marketing Podcast is for Creators who want to build deep, meaningful relationships with their 1000 true fans.
In this episode, I am joined by my friend Shyam. Shyam is a weight loss coach and the Founder of Lazyfitness.in
He helps busy people like corporate professionals and entrepreneurs lose weight without stupid hassles or restrictions.
In this podcast, Shyam and I discuss who this Podcast is for and how will it help the listeners.
When you ask a Marketer, the true purpose of email marketing, you would get a few answers like these...
- Email marketing is for increasing your conversions
- Email marketing is for nurturing leads
- Email marketing is for reducing churn and so on.
Fair answers, really. Nothing wrong here.
But when you ask the experts, you get some interesting answers.
Is email marketing merely transactional? Or is there some kind of a spiritual side to it too?
In this episode, I talk about a cross-sell email campaign that I did for one of my clients, and the result I got for the same.
In part 1, we discussed the flaws of the brand story framework that Donald Miller uses. Here, we talk about how to complete the framework.
Most of the Happy Diwali emails do not get a response from the reader.
Why is that?
How can we change that?
How can we create high-engagement emails?
Let's find out.
Social media marketers, email marketers, copywriters, content marketers - all have a problem.
It's challenging to consistently create new stories that will appeal to the reader.
In this episode, we talk about one way to tackle this issue...
Donald Miller helps brands build a compelling story.
Through his writing, workshops, and Consulting, he has helped numerous brands clarify their message and create a story.
In his book, ‘Building a Story Brand’, Donald Miller lays down a 7-step framework that brands can use to tell stories. Here’s what the framework looks like -
- A Character/Hero - (The client)
- Has a Problem - (The struggle)
- And meets a Guide - (The brand)
- Who gives them a Plan
- And calls them to Action
- That helps them avoid Failure
- And ends in Success
But there are some flaws in this framework, which need to addressed...
Imagine this beautiful scenario - A subscriber is intently staring at his inbox, eagerly waiting for your email.
Yeah, now stop imagining that. Because that doesn’t happen too often. :(
But, even though we know the rarity of this phenomenon, when we send emails, subconsciously we assume that the reader really, really cares about what we have to say.
The honest truth is that the reader doesn’t care about you. The reader cares about himself.
And the reader especially doesn’t care about your product features and the updates to these features.
How do we deal with this? How do we send impactful emails?
There’s a whole lotta science in the subject line that I used in this email.
Stick around, I will explain what I just did there.
People like information.
That’s what evolutionary science says.
“Hey, I know a secret. But I won’t tell you.”
Yeah, this creates curiosity, tension, and at times obsession.
And that’s the reason why so many shows on Netflix withhold information at the end of every episode. There is always a cliffhanger. Because people cant live with the secret.
But it doesn’t end here. There is something deeper than this...
The other day, I received an email from a brand that was quite selfish and annoying.
I think our email marketing would get a lot better if we asked one simple question before writing that email.
The other day, Pooja, my wife, was almost convinced, that I had lost my mind.
It so happened, that I was reading out a piece of content that I was going to publish online.
What was I up to exactly?
Most brands out there, use copy that is robotic, corporate, and almost makes the reader puke. And so here is a tip that I learned from Nick Usborne through this copywriting course - Conversational Copywriting.
When J.K. Rowling puts out a book, it is well received by her raving fans, regardless of the title of the book. However, a brand that is new and looking to build trust, is much less likely to earn trust with a vague message.
You get to choose how specific you want to be.
But you can’t afford to be too vague.
I have a love-hate relationship with hacks. I feel a squirming inside my stomach when I hear words like ‘quick hack’, ‘growth marketing’, ‘tips and tricks’ and so on. The BS detector in me just won’t shut up...
However, I try to be aware of my biases.
I don’t think tips and tricks are inherently bad. I don’t that tactical advice is always useless. There is always a time and a place for those.
If I have severe pain in my arm, I do need tactical advice from my doctor.
Yep, you got it right.
Today’s email is about tactical advice about improving your email writing.
In this episode, I talk about how experts can learn about Persuasion from Cialdini and apply it to their Email Marketing.
A lot of experts produce a substantial amount of content. However, many of us still struggle to get more subscribers in our email list. In this episode, I talk about how experts can build their top of the funnel, to get relevant people into their email list.
In this episode, I talk about how every word that we use communicates something to the audience. I also talk about coming up with a word-cloud for your brand - basically freezing on a few set of words that you will use time and again in your communication, so that your brand sticks.
In this episode, I talk about how all the elements of your brand Online and Offline are telling different stories. They are making a promise. The question then is, is the promise in-line with what you want to convey? Is it in line with what your brand stands for?
In this episode, I have taken 6 random business ideas and attempted to create word of mouth strategies for them.
In this episode, I talk about whether word of mouth really matters, and if it does, how can businesses enable their audience to talk about themselves...
In this episode, I talk about how a few Marketers do not depend on their headlines, but rather depend on the trust that they have with their audience.
It's case study time.
This time it's about employer branding.
I worked with this offshore product development company a while back and helped them with their Employer branding story and content marketing. This case study is all about that experience.
So far you have seen me ranting on my podcast.
And it’s been fun.
The ranting will continue.
But, once in a while, I will take a break. ;)
And have a conversation with a change-maker… a Creator… someone who is doing work that will help humanize marketing.
Natalia Alvarez is one such kind soul.
Natalia and I have been friends for a few years. Both of us connected when we were a part of eth Godin’s Marketing Seminar.
Natalia believes that stories can change the world.
She helps business owners communicate their authentic stories to the world. She is a firm believer that stories move people to action. Without a story, you are just another brand that people are going to ignore.
In this conversation, we talk about these things -
- Why does a business need a story?
- How does a story affect the business?
- Does the founder decide the story, or does the audience decide the story?
- Why is ‘vulnerability’ an important element of stories?
- Natalia’s 3 layered framework of storytelling - Purpose, Narrative, and Stories
- How do we measure if the story is working or not?
In the third part of the series - “How to write impactful emails”, we will be talking about the storytelling framework.
I have learned this framework from one of my favorite Marketers - Bernadette Jiwa.
Most of the emails are noisy, cluttered, and overwhelm the reader.
Your emails don't have to be that way.
In this episode, we talk about the process of writing clean emails that make an impact.
In this episode, we talk about the most foundational element of executing world-class email campaigns.
This is the 4th episode of the series - "How can Creators get started with Email Marketing?"
In this episode, we get very tactical, and talk about the different elements involved in email marketing such as - Lead magnets, welcome sequence, monthly newsletter, and so on. We touch upon the functions of all these elements and then dive into the frequency.
Email marketers are worried about their email open rates and their click rates. In order to improve these metrics, far too often they focus on petty tactics like optimizing the subject line.
People don't ignore emails because the subject line is not fancy. They ignore the emails because they are not simply not valuable enough for them. Rather than focussing on other things, if we focus on knowing our audience, our campaigns will work much more effectively.
What does an ideal email list look like?
Does the number matter? Does it have to be huge? What kind of open rates would you expect?
Or perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way?
In this episode I talk about the purpose of having an email list and characteristics of an ideal email list.
While Email marketing is probably the best tool for Creators, when it comes to actually execute it, Email marketing can get overwhelming.
In this episode, I talk about how a Creator can get started with Email Marketing. This is is going to be a 4 episode series, this being the first one.
The world is divided into 2 groups. One group fiercely justifies and even advocated the use of exit intent pop-ups. The other group says that they are annoying. What is the real deal? Should you be using exit intent pop-ups for your brand?
Even though I started my career started as a Social Media Marketer, at a later stage, I decided to go deeper in Email Marketing.
Email Marketing fascinates me. And it should fascinate you.
Find out why smart marketers prefer Email Marketing over Social Media Marketing.
There is a disease in the Email Marketing world. Most of the emails that we get from most of the organizations fail to move us. They don’t touch us. They do not change us. They are not remarkable.
In this episode, we discuss if it is okay to have opinions in your emails. Do opinions kill your emails, or do they make them awesome?
There has been an ongoing debate, since the beginning of time. The debate is about the usage of HTML emails vs. plain text emails. Which types of emails give better results?
The answer is not black and white. There are a few nuances that need to be considered.
For the longest time, I used to think that 'writing' is the only skill that makes or breaks your email.
But not anymore.
These are tricky times indeed. For a Marketer, this uncertain situation can bring guilt and anxiety. You might question what your audience wants to hear from you. In fact, you are not even sure if they want to hear from you. I address these points in this episode.
At times, it may happen that the organization does not have enough in-house expertise to create content. How to deal with this situation?
In the last episode, we spoke about how “Interviewing experts” is one of the most effective strategies for creating valuable content. In this episode, let me take you through a case study, where I implemented this strategy for one of my clients.
At times, Marketers and Entrepreneurs come across a situation, where the in-house team is just not equipped to produce content. This is a problem. In this podcast episode, I talk about how using the Crowdsourced Content Model can help organizations solve this problem.
We discuss how 'Interviewing experts' is an awesome way of executing this Crowdsourced Content approach.
In this episode, I discuss a case study.
I had created a lead magnet for a client, which created a bunch of engaged subscribers. The open rates of that email campaign were really high!
In this episode, I talk about how conversations can enable deep relationships with people that you seek to serve.
I also get tactical here. I talk about how to implement this strategy on Twitter. It includes steps like finding the right people and engaging with them with thoughtful tweets.
In this episode, I talk about how retaining customers is better than acquiring new customers, and then we go into the ways in which a customer can be retained, and upselling opportunities can be availed!
Brands and Marketers need to be brave enough to break the script and create memorable moments for their customers. We discuss this in detail in this episode.
For the new reader, here is just a 2 line summary of what I am trying to do -
I have taken on an impossible project. I want to build a subscriber list of 100 people and have an email open rate of more than 90%.
The landing page is ready at this link - (http://bit.ly/2MMULCS)
The struggle with Traffic
As you must have observed, I have built a Multi-page pre-sell site. In other words, there is no single page with opt-in form. Instead, there are multiple pages and the opt-in form is on the last page.
I have struggled to get subscribers.
But that is not the root of the problem.
The real problem is that I have struggled to get this in front of the right people.
These are the traffic strategies that I have used so far -
- Linkedin posts
- Quora and Reddit ( I have done limited work here)
- Posting in a few groups.
- Approached a couple of guest blog opportunities.
As you can see, these activities are really scattered. I haven’t gone too deep into any of these tactics.
Also, while I was doing all of this, I realized that I was being a shady marketer. I was subtly promoting my lead magnet on all these channels. The smaller pieces of content that I have been creating, are pointing out to only one lead magnet.
I realized that instead of providing value to the users, my focus has been purely on promoting this lead magnet… by hook or by crook.
Slowly my Marketing has moved from being ‘valuable’ to ‘being spammy’.
Okay, so how do I get out of this?
I want to create different lead magnets/content pieces and different angles to my story.
I want to create content that supports each other.
Rather than putting out one content piece… I want to put out, multiple pieces of content, that start helping each other. I want to build an eco-system of content that supports one another.
As Ryan Holiday says, “The best way to sell your first book is to write a second book.”
What more can I create? I do not know yet. Let’s see…
The point though is this - Do not depend on a single piece of content. You need quantity to evaluate what is working.
For the new reader, here is just a 2 line summary of what I am trying to do -
I have taken on an impossible project. I want to build a subscriber list of 100 people and have an email open rate of more than 90%.
The landing page is ready at this link.
Now here is the challenge -
So far, I have stuck with this one lead magnet and focussed all my attention on getting in front of the ‘right people’ and then getting them subscribed to lead magnet.
I have had very low success on that front.
Now whenever a Marketer ships something in the world, and if his target market does not respond well, he needs to figure out why it didn’t work. Now, this is challenging of course.
The struggle for every Marketer is to discern the difference between 2 things -
- Did it not work because the content was not good enough?
- Did it not work because I did not get in front of enough people?
I was faced with the same struggle.
Now considering that I have got only 87 unique people who have visited, out of which 15 have actually become my subscribers, I would say that that is a brilliant ratio, considering that my landing page is 4 pages long.
For now, I will stick with the content of this landing page and make an assertion that this content is perfect.
So is this delusion? I do not know. Time will tell.
And so now, I have to focus on getting ahead in front of more people.
And while I still have to try a few different things like my personal Linkedin profile, guest blogging, Quora and Reddit, etc., I asked myself the question -
“What is something fundamental that I am missing here?”
All these promotion platforms seem fine, but what is the key strategy that will probably make all of this easier?
I had a moment of epiphany.
I will talk more about my revelation in the next article.
The world of a Marketer is a mess.
The days are busy, with ad-hoc tasks, last moment briefs, and just too many activities.
I have been there and done that.
Not anymore.
It might seem that being busy is getting you somewhere… but being busy and getting the real work done, are 2 different things altogether.
And I have struggled with this myself, and here I am sharing what has worked for me.
Here are the points that I talk about in the podcast -
- Deciding on clear KRAs and KPIs
- How to create boundaries
- Structuring your day - What kind of work should you do in the morning?
- When to sit alone and when to sit with a team
- Having a post-lunch unwinding routine
- When to stop your work
Enjoy!
The progress has been slow. I can barely give only 4 hours to this project.
The struggle has been to get traffic onto the MPPS. I considered paid advertisements as well. But for targeting reasons, I decided to not go ahead with them. I decided to focus on organic traffic strategies, instead.
So this week and the next week, I will talk about my organic efforts to get traffic.
I want to specifically talk about the forums like Quora and Reddit. Both of these platforms are forum-like platforms or in other words question-answer platforms.
I have to confess that I have not used Reddit a lot, but I do have used Quora quite extensively.
These are great platforms to get your word out and attract the right people. People are asking you a specific question and you get the opportunity to provide value. Through this value, your reputation starts growing. You can also start getting more profile visits, more link visits, etc.
A word of caution though. People out here are extremely smart. They can see through bullshit. So do not try to manipulate people into clicking. Many marketers are actually self-promoting under the disguise of helping. So don’t do that.
Instead, play the long game. Help them. Provide value.
Towards the end of this episode, I also share my own success story of using Quora. The results I got were phenomenal.
So here is my suggestion - If you are someone who feels comfortable adding value to people using forums, this is a good way to go about it.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Marketers work with great clients
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode, I talk about 2 things-
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How I decided to be more specific about the audience that I am targeting.
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The struggle with the traffic strategies and my plan to overcome those.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Marketers work with great clients
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode, I talk about the progress that I have made so far in this project.
This episode covers topics like measurement of the landing page traffic, promotional strategies for this lead magnet, and the performance of the emails so far.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Marketers work with great clients
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode of Email Storytelling, I talk about my approach of having multiple pages to capture leads, the content of those pages, and also the analytics.
It is crucial to measure the behaviour of the traffic that visits these landing pages. If my story is not resonating with the target market, the drop-offs and the bounce rates will be high. Using the data, I can find out the weak elements in my story and work on making them better.
I am going to use Google Analytics and Mixpanel to measure the traffic on the page.
As far as the content and the story is concerned, check the links below to see what I have written -
Page 1: https://pranavkale.com/the-most-lucrative-strategy-for-marketers-to-attract-great-clients/
Page 2: https://pranavkale.com/the-most-lucrative-strategy-for-marketers-to-attract-great-clients-2/
Page 3: https://pranavkale.com/the-most-lucrative-strategy-for-marketers-to-attract-great-clients-3/
Page 4: https://pranavkale.com/the-most-lucrative-strategy-for-marketers-to-attract-great-clients-4/
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Marketers work with great clients
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
Quite often Marketers (and Marketing freelancers) complain that their ideas are not being accepted by the upper Management, bosses, clients, etc. It is quite frustrating when that happens.
Getting angry at your client doesn't help. Instead, we need to understand their worldview.
In this episode, we talk about the strategies to use, to sell your Marketing ideas to the clients.
I am changing the course of this project.
Earlier, I was doing it for Online Course Creators.
But, I just wasn't feelingthe topic.
And so, I decided to change my audience, to people who would actually benefit from this course.
In this episode, I talk about why I changed my audience, and why it is okay to pivot and change your strategy. :)
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Online Course Creators with Marketing. Through this project, anyone who is creating an Online course would be able to Market their course in a Strategical way, and thus leading to better results.
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode of Email StoryTelling, I talk about how Marketers can become selfish and try to trap people in their funnel, by using lead magnets. Lead Magnet is an opportunity for your audience to keep in touch with you. There is no need for you to trick them and force them.
Instead, provide value first. And then politely ask if they want to keep in touch.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Online Course Creators with Marketing. Through this project, anyone who is creating an Online course would be able to Market their course in a Strategical way, and thus leading to better results.
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode, we talk about landing pages. I talk about the issues with selfishly collecting leads and suggest a better approach of adding value to the visitor before you seek permission to talk to them.
We talk about -
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The hook, which is your big idea to get people hooked onto your page.
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The role of Authority in your landing page
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Deductive reasoning - To install beliefs in your target market.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Online Course Creators with Marketing. Through this project, anyone who is creating an Online course would be able to Market their course in a Strategical way, and thus leading to better results.
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
In this episode, I talk about the dangers of having a bias, starting with the solution instead of a problem and understanding your audience.
The failure of the email campaign is not when we don't get email subscribers. In fact, it is quite easy to get email subscribers. What is difficult is have a relationship with them. That is the real failure of an email campaign. This is what we want to avoid.
In order to start the relationship on the right note, we need to start our email campaign by understanding our audience.
In this episode, I have spoken about the methods that I have used to understand my audience.
Hope this helps.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Online Course Creators with Marketing. Through this project, anyone who is creating an Online course would be able to Market their course in a Strategical way, and thus leading to better results.
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
I have undertaken a new project. I am calling it Email storytelling.
The idea is simple-
I am executing a project, which is intended to help Online Course Creators with Marketing. Through this project, anyone who is creating an Online course would be able to Market their course in a Strategical way, and thus leading to better results.
The project will be executed through Email Marketing... and more importantly, storytelling will be a key element in the whole process.
I plan to document the whole journey, and share with everyone my success and my failure.
This podcast episode is all about that.
Many people launch their online courses, but only a few of them succeed. What are the questions that we can ask, to validate our idea before a course is created?
A lot of times, Marketers are treated as technicians by their clients and bosses. But we are better than that. We don't do tasks. We solve problems.
All we want to do is talk, talk and talk.
It's time that Marketers stop living outside their own head and talk to the target market instead.
Specialize, they say.
The path towards specialization is hard, though. These 2 questions, I hope, will help Marketers find their niche...
Most of the Marketers are desperate when it comes to Email Marketing campaigns. They put systems in place with an intention of getting all the people to sign up for the lead magnet!
Nothing wrong with this approach.
But...the results of these email campaigns usually suck.
Can there be a better way?
For this podcast episode, I decided to take a very different approach.
I put out a Linkedin post and offered a free strategy session to whoever wished to jam with me. Ankit Bourai responded and in this podcast we will help Wondact with their Marketing strategy.
It seems as if there are 2 groups of Marketers. One of them are extremely focussed on their personal metrics... and the others who are extremely focussed on caring about their target market.
Which strategy is better and in what situations?
In this episode, I talk about why Content Marketing is not a great idea to get initial clients. What could be the alternative?
You need to go beyond a commodity and build a story! Like Simon Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."
Today, I made an attempt to create a brand story for one of India's favorite specialty coffee brands - Third Wave Coffee Roasters.
Recently, I completed publishing 100 articles on my blog. When I told everyone about this milestone, people congratulated me. They also told me how they want to write consistently but have failed to do so.
"I am not a good writer."
"I don't have time."
"My English isn't good."
These are a few things that I hear. Let's destroy these arguments once and for all.
If you are looking to become a writer who writes consistently, this will help.
A few years back, my client told me that he wanted to start a blog. When I asked him the reason he gave me a few interesting answers.
In this episode, we dig into the right and the wrong reasons to start a blog.
SEO is often perceived as an act of defeating the competition. This cut-throat mindset demands that the Marketers try to beat their competition. But can there be another way?
Can we embrace the abundance mindset instead?
Can we be nice to our competitors and still make the impact that we want to make?
There is a boat and there is a shore.
The boat takes us to the shore. Period.
Digital marketers tend to get too attached to the boat and they forget about the shore. In this episode, we talk about differentiating between the two. We discuss about how we need to stop calling ourselves "Digital Marketers" and gradually move towards the inner circles of Marketing.
Link to the circles of Marketing
Link to Seth's blog post: https://seths.blog/2012/07/the-circles-of-marketing/
Intro music credits: Dan O songs. Link: https://danosongs.com/?fbclid=IwAR3pv3XN1ljmHpAkmcqCg5b_oqsxcYonKEdh2W5Bx4yjagg4G_YCxDiVmzQ