The Crux: Recent Episodes
Climb Marketing
Hosted by Climb Marketing, The Crux is a monthly discussion on digital marketing and advertising strategies, challenges, success stories, and trends. The show offers candid advice and actionable tactics to help marketing professionals and business owners confidently achieve their goals for online traffic, visibility, and leads.
In episode 23 of The Crux, Taylor and David discuss some of the major copywriting challenges for B2B websites, and offer tips for addressing your target audience's questions, problems, and pain points with website copy. The discussion also covers how to write website copy that appeases potential customers and search engines alike.
In episode 22 of The Crux, Emily McGuire, Founder and Chief Email Marketer of Flourish & Grit, joins the show to share B2B email marketing tips. The discussion covers effective content types for B2B email campaigns, how to approach email marketing for niche or highly technical industries, how to address long sales cycles with email, how to humanize email data, and tactics to avoid in B2B campaigns.
In this episode, David, Riley, and Jeremy discuss how to manage ad placements for the Google Display Network, and outline ways to ensure your advertisements won’t be displayed on web properties you wouldn’t want your company to be affiliated with.
In this episode of The Crux, David and Taylor discuss ways to future-proof your website and mitigate the risk of losing organic traffic and search engine visibility due to algorithm updates.
In episode 19 of The Crux, David and Robbie discuss the importance of personalizing digital marketing campaigns with Nate Langley, Chief Marketing Officer of Applied Fitness Solutions. Nate shares his experience with taking a human-first approach to marketing and tips on how to execute successful personalized campaigns.
In this episode of The Crux, David and Jeremy discuss fractional staffing for digital marketing specialist roles and the advantages and disadvantages of hiring fractional employees.
In episode 17 of The Crux, we host our first guest - Ross Johnson of 3.7 Designs. David and Ross discuss website design strategy and how to build websites that meet business objectives and marketing needs. The discussion also covers the research and discovery process for web design projects, the need to understand user personas and the customer journey, and the strategic components that make a new website launch a success.
If you’ve ever worked on a new website project, you’ve probably come across web development agencies that claim to have "SEO built in" to their websites or that they offer "SEO-friendly" websites. But what do these claims actually mean? In this episode of The Crux, David and Taylor share their experiences with “Built-In SEO” claims from web developers and give marketers some advice on vetting website proposals for SEO details.
In episode 15 of The Crux, Riley Duncan, Robbie Bolog, and David Oltean discuss the recently announced Google Ads update that is phasing out Broad Match Modifier (BMM) keywords and altering Phrase Match features. The conversation outlines the recent update's impact on search advertising and offers advice for Google Ads users to help prepare for the update.
In episode 14 of The Crux, David Oltean and Jeremy Lopatin discuss the mistakes and successes they've had over the first year of recording a podcast. The discussion outlines the importance of defining a purpose, target audience, and format for podcasts, and includes advice for new podcasters on set up, recording remotely, and mixing and mastering.
In episode 13 of The Crux, the Climb Marketing team reviews the major digital marketing shifts and news in 2020, and predicts upcoming trends and changes in 2021.
In episode 12 of The Crux, Climb Marketing's SEO team discusses Google's Core Web Vitals metrics, and offers tips for preparing websites for the Core Web Vitals rollout in May of 2021.
In this episode of The Crux, Jeremy Lopatin, Robbie Bolog, and David Oltean discuss how to determine and allocate your digital marketing budget for 2021 and some of the budgeting challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In episode 10 of The Crux, Riley Duncan, Robbie Bolog, and David Oltean discuss where to start with diagnosing a search advertising account, and some of the most common mistakes within Google Ads accounts.
In episode 9 of The Crux, David Oltean and Robbie Bolog discuss their favorite features within Google Analytics and the essential measurement and analytics skills all digital marketers should have.
In episode 8 of The Crux, David Oltean and Jeremy Lopatin discuss which digital marketing practices should be outsourced vs. kept in-house. Topics discussed include digital marketing strategy, content marketing, creative, social media, email marketing, web design, SEO, advertising, and analytics.
In episode 7 of The Crux, Taylor Caldron and David Oltean discuss their biggest SEO pet peeves, including website design shortcomings, shady sales practices, link-buying schemes, and annoying lingo.
In The Crux's 6th episode, Jeremy Lopatin and Robbie Bolog discuss the challenges for B2B digital marketers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including budget cuts, advertising messaging during a crisis, the shift away from in-person sales activities, and where to allocate spend and resources.
In episode 5 of The Crux, Taylor Caldron and David Oltean of Climb's SEO team discuss Google's recent search algorithm updates, changes to featured snippets and SEO trends to expect in 2020.
In the Crux's fourth episode, Robbie Bolog and Climb Marketing President Jeremy Lopatin discuss reasons to consider hiring a digital marketing agency and how to determine if a prospective agency is the right partner for your company.
In the Crux's third episode, Robbie Bolog and Riley Duncan of Climb Marketing's Digital Advertising team discuss their approach to structuring Paid Search accounts for streamlined management and positive results.
In The Crux's second episode, Taylor Caldron and David Oltean of Climb Marketing's SEO team discuss their initial approach and thought process when diagnosing the state of Search Engine Optimization on a website.
In the first episode of The Crux, David Oltean and Robbie Bolog of Climb Marketing introduce the podcast and discuss common issues with conversion rate optimization (CRO) for business-to-business websites.