We’ll be back in September to share more of what’s on our mind!

Have a great summer!

If you’d like to go through the exercise yourself, here’s the post from Emily Kramer’s newsletter outlining the various types of marketers’ roles and their functions.

If you’re looking for full-time work, or clients this could be a helpful exercise in sharing your expertise. For a bonus impact, add results, stats, and numbers to each area.

Find Kamil here.

Find 42 Agency here.

Adrienne shares her experience hiring VAs from both individuals and an agency.

Know the variety of playbooks available, but always do what’s best for you and your own business.

Decide what to hire and how to lead:

1. What do you enjoy?

   Even if some say it’s a waste of time for a founder to perform some tasks, if it’s something you enjoy, why would you hire that out? Josh used the example of how he still mows his own lawn, despite most of his neighbors hiring a landscape service.

2. What do you dread?

Know what you hate to do and be comfortable hiring that out.

3. Learn how people want to work, hear feedback, and praise.

Kamil Rextin from 42 Agency joins Adrienne and Josh on Marketing Retro to dig into a recent tweet about Kamil’s hypothesis that there’s a connection between interest rates being zero and the booming creator market.

We defined creators as individual people monetizing from audiences and promoting via social platforms.

From Kamil's perspective, it used to be okay to take risks without having tons of data or worrying about conversions because interest rates were low. However, things have changed now that interest rates are higher. It's not as easy to get money as it was before. This could have an impact on the creator economy, especially for those who rely on B2B sponsorships and deals with brands.

There’s a huge disconnect between people selling to other people, and creators relying on B2B companies.

Some key takeaways:

• B2B companies need to understand their attribution metrics.

• Creators should create multiple streams of revenue.

• A new content creator may find it challenging to gain the same momentum as someone who started two or three years ago, possibly due to the current state of things.

Look at the most important pieces of marketing first: buyer’s journey, homepage analytics, and low-hanging fruit.

1. Know how you compare to industry standards.

2. What are the cap rates for each area of your focus? What is the opportunity cost to increase certain benchmarks?

   1. Find industry benchmarks from industry reports, Databox benchmark reports

   2. How to identify if you’re reaching a point of diminishing returns? Look at data holistically, what low-hanging fruit is available, and where are there leaks in your funnel that can be tightened and refined.

3. Buyer’s journey: How to identify opportunities in your buyer’s journey?

   What does the model of attribution look like?

4. Look at one thing at a time, before changing all things. Keep a record of changes that have been made, when you made them, and what were the results of the test.

5. Align all copy campaign material with your positioning and messaging.

6. Tie your KPIs to larger organizational goals. This helps each team member understand exactly how their job and responsibilities help the overall org meet its goals.

7. Slow down to get back to speed.

We talk a bit about “ChatGPT” and how a marketer can use it to create efficient processes.

1. Do you really know your buyer’s journey? There’s a clear need to understand the steps your buyers go through when buying your product, but often marketers aren’t looking closely at the data.

Understand your numbers clearly. Look into your CRMs, go back to your customer, and nuanced understanding of your customer’s behavior.

How We’ve Used ChatGPT for Efficiency

1. To help find holes in your content, or create an outline.

2. Treat it as a partner in your process, not a replacement.

3. Dynamic ad keyword research

4. Messaging Mapping

5. Job description from video transcript

6. Ask ChatGPT for feedback on a piece

7. Expert participated and contributed AI articles

8. New hire knowledge hub

9. Creative ad brainstorming

The most important job of the one-person marketer is to share your particular marketing expertise with your boss. And be able to teach them how your expertise ties to revenue.

How to level up as a one-person marketing team:

1. Utilize consultants

2. Build a team of freelancers

3. Set expectations in output and cadence of content and marketing initiatives

Three buckets of people you want to interview to understand JTBD:

1. New Customers

2. Long Term Customers

3. Loss deals

Josh is curious about interviewing his customers, customers. This might be challenging, but Josh would want to know how they were referred to a new product.

Josh and Adrienne Brainstorm about interviewing as lead gen:

• Choose 25 favorite clients

• Interview their customers

• Show the interview to the company and let them know about the buying triggers found.

• Use social listening to find customers to interview

It often comes down to conversations with the marketer to understand their skillset and where your need overlap.

For an early stage startup it can often be disappointing to hire a marketer with a specific skillset, when you aren’t sure are on what kind of skillset you need. Early stage startups, might want to consider a full-stack marketer.

A good way to find marketers it so listen to them on podcasts, and hear what they think about complex marketing problems and interested issues they’ve overcome.

Or opt for a short-term project where you can see the marketers skill set, and understand their strengths and work ethic.

Most startups will need a fCMO to be a person who can devise a strategy while also executing their ideas.

What are some things a qualified fCMO must have:

1. Can navigate multiple marketing channels.

2. Understands analytics and can tie marketing channels to revenue.

3. Knows how to internally sell initiatives.

4. Can implement new campaigns and monitor success.

As a caveat, Josh and Adrienne are not market experts and are not giving any advice. We’re two people being impacted and want to share our perspectives.

Some thoughts on how to operate in weird times:

1. Rent space where you can.

   As a business owner operating at odd times, hire long-term contractors before hiring full-time in-house.

2. Don’t keep up with the Jones’

3. Follow your own customers and their demands.

Key Takeaway:

Get your house in order. Know your metrics, numbers, and customers.

p.s. We recorded this episode last week, before the SVB collapse. That would have changed a lot of what we said, but we wanted to share the episode and our thoughts on this current market because the final takeaway is still important.

Josh and Adrienne talk about value exchanges in marketing and how to really make it worth it, no matter the price.

Places where a commitment is required

Examples

1. Demo request

2. Gated content

3. Purchase

Motivation- the audience may want what you have, but they aren’t sure if it’ll be worth the price they pay

1. What's on the other side of the offer?

   It’s not the gate that people hate, it’s the crappy content on the other side. If the marketer provides something amazing, then an email address feels like a no-brainer.

Friction

1. Examples

2. Email address

3. Other fields

4. Trade-off

5. Lose volume some people

6. Qualifier for right people

Examples We’ve Seen Work

Gated Content

1. Downloadable content

2. Quiz

3. Email Drip courses

Consultants ( Fixed Cost Analysis - Low Commit) Example

1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/heyrobk/

2. https://hdwy.notion.site/hdwy/Get-feedback-on-your-homepage-from-Product-Marketing-experts-ba81f2d246ca4b2aa43d07ef9c40e01f

3. https://twitter.com/jdnoc

4. Grow your business with SEO - Rank To Sell

What is a framework?

A system that clarifies thinking and provides parameters for thinking.

Some Favorite Frameworks:

• Hubspot’s Flywheel

• Jobs-to-be-done

• Skyscraper Technique

Some downfalls of frameworks:

• the context to be the right fit for the framework.

• Be ok to bend the rules of the framework.

• Sometimes the outputs aren’t determined

• When it’s heavily restrictive, you may have a template, not a framework

Identify the problem, then chose a framework to help you achieve your outcomes.

Ways 42/Agency Created a Thought-Leadership Piece:

1. Approached the interview as a conversation and somewhat open-ended.

2. Listen to the conversation and let it direct the narrative of the content rather than looking for points to back up an already-established narrative.

3. The in-depth nuanced style content takes longer, but will be much more valued in the world of AI written content.

4. Can a brand have the long term viewpoint on content creation?

5. Find some great journalists to help with content.

Great examples of companies creating content in a different way:

1. Sparktoro

2. Databox

The Two Ways People View Social Media

1. Want to create community and see social media as a conversation.

2. See social media as a billboard that doesn’t require interaction and engagement.

What works to build your social following:

1. Have a good hook

2. Create quality

3. Share on the right platforms

At the end of the day, we acknowledge that creating content is hard. And it’s always best to use that content in as many ways as you possible can.

The first thing to consider is, “do I need this person to do things exactly the way I do them?” Or “Do I need this person to execute exactly the way I do, and replace me when needed?”

• When hiring someone new understand how they work best.

• Set clear expectations on how you work best.

• What’s your best method for communication?

• What’s your M.O.?

• Is there such thing as a culture fit.

• Customer experience is one of the great differentiators for brands.

• Influencers can create trust for brands if the brand hasn’t built trust on its own.

• You likely have more assets within your organization than you’re aware of.

• Aligning marketing assets with current needs and resonance within the organization

• Share assets across the organization

Categories of Assets Josh mentions

Talent / People Skills

1. Founders / Team members

2. Examples .. Tactical skills

3. Thought Leadership Content Marketing

4. SEO

5. Copywriting for Landing Pages

6. Technical writing

7. Demand Generation

8. B2B Social Media

9. Product Design UI/UX

10. Product Management

11. Customer Advocacy

12. Customer Systems + Integration Workflows (CRMs, CMS, Zapier)

13. Email Newsletter/Publication Communication Writing to Customers & Prospects

14. Customer Interviews

15. Product Launches

16. Video Content Creation

17. People Management

18. Project Management

19. Partnership Management

20. Creating frameworks for explaining concepts

Distribution - Access to people

1. Email lists

2. Customers

3. Newsletter subscribers

4. Communities?

5. SEO Traffic

6. Social Media Following

7. Networks (people)

8. Partnerships/Friends....

9. Side of a truck

10. Side of building

Content

1. Quizzes

2. PDFs

3. Calculators

4. "Universities / learning centers"

5. Hubspot Academy

Access to Insights

1. Sales team (recordings) a la gong?

2. CRM data

3. Product usage data

4. Aggregate customer data

What does underutilized real estate mean? It’s when marketing is found in unexpected but intentional places.

Obvious Marketing Places:

• Home Page

• Landing Pages

• Social Media

• Newsletter

Underutilized Marketing Places:

• Customer Onboarding

• Email footers

• After form pages- demo request, white paper, lead magnet, etc

• “powered by” brand

• Zoom links and backgrounds

• Social Media bios