← Social Media Marketing Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript101 lines
- [00:01]
A
Are you feeling overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the AI changes? Trust me, I know how it feels. The marketers who are truly thriving today with AI have discovered something really important. They're not doing it alone. At the AI Business Society, we've created a community where smart, curious marketers like you share discoveries, troubleshoot their challenges, and celebrate breakthroughs together. Listen to what Marissa Shadwick had to say. Quote, I found my people. I love chatting about our experiences with AI and supporting each other on our journey towards the future. Unquote. Stop navigating the AI revolution by yourself. Join our community of innovators and let's grow together. Visit socialmediaexaminer.com AI to learn more before we get on to today's show, here is something that might surprise you. Every marketer using AI is at one of four distinct readiness levels. Here's what's scary. Most marketers, they have no idea which level they're actually at. While you're wondering what AI skill to tackle next, your competition is already a couple steps ahead of you. Because they have a clear roadmap, they know exactly what to focus on because they understand their AI readiness level. The difference they took our free AI readiness assessment. It doesn't just tell you where you stand. It gives you a personalized 30 day plan designed specifically for your level. Stop guessing. Start progressing. Find your AI readiness level in just a few minutes by visiting social media examiner.com aiassessment again social mediaexaminer.com pause this podcast take the assessment right now. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Do you work for a business where you kind of feel as if for whatever reason, your messaging is not connecting with your customers? Maybe it's outdated. Maybe your customers have changed. You could have a positioning opportunity and today what we're going to be exploring on today's podcast is how to go about confirming whether or not your positioning and your hypotheses or presuppositions about how you message and how you do what you do, whether it's working or not. And we're going to explore this very deeply and I think you're going to find a lot of value in it. And we're going to be joined by Jackie Hermes. By the way, if you're new to this show, be sure to follow us on whatever app you're listening to so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's transition over to today's interview with Jackie Hermes, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Jackie Hermiss. If you don't know who Jackie is, she is the founder of Excelity, a marketing agency that helps B2B growth businesses rapidly scale their leads and sales. She's also the host of the Art of Entrepreneurship podcast and and her course is marketing for cash strapped startups. Jackie, welcome to the show. How you doing?
- [03:42]
B
Thank you. I'm wonderful. How are you?
- [03:45]
A
I'm super excited. Awesome to have you here. And today we're going to explore positioning strategy and how to really dial in your content and messaging for more leads and sales. But before we get there, I want to hear a little bit of your story. How'd you get into B2B marketing? How'd you get into positioning? Feel free to start wherever you want to start.
- [04:03]
B
Yeah, I'm one of those rare people that went to college for marketing and actually is in marketing. I feel like that actually, actually never happens. But I started my career at GE Healthcare and did some interning there, moved into marketing and then I went and worked at a private equity owned software company. So we grew from gosh, we had like 150 employees when I started, we had 400 when I left. So I can't even remember what that is, revenue size. But when you're private equity owned, right, you're making tons of acquisitions. We are incorporating all of the new companies in. So you can imagine the messaging, positioning exercises, all the integration that went on there. So that was kind of how I started. And then I was meeting people around Milwaukee that own smaller companies and they had no marketing and they were like trying to work with agencies locally and it just didn't make sense for them. One of them actually hired a local agency and they needed work like what we're going to talk about. And the agency delivered a jingle and no, no lie, I was like, that doesn't make sense. It's just not what a company of your stage and size needs. You need the basics. You need to know how to reach your audience. So I started doing some consulting on the side and the company was actually very progressive at the time that they allowed you to have a side hustle because I think at that time a lot of companies thought that was a big no no. So I actually was able to work four 10 hour days and take Fridays off and work on doing some consulting. Then I ended up leaving and starting Acceleraty. And that's the very short version of the story.
- [05:47]
A
So what year did you go off on your own, talk to us about that and then bring us up to the present and tell us kind of what you're doing now?
- [05:53]
B
Yeah, it was 12 years ago. So 2013 math. Wow.
- [05:58]
A
You did a great job on the fly math.
- [06:00]
B
You'd think it was like early in the morning. It's not. Wow. Got it. Nailed it. Yeah. So 2013 I went off on my own and started consulting. I didn't really have a vision of starting an agency at that time. I really liked the flexibility of consulting and kind of doing it on my own. And I quickly realized that the companies that I was working with, they needed the strategy but they didn't have any way to execute any of the things that I was telling them to do. So then suddenly I'm giving them strategy and I'm doing the writing and I'm learning how develop websites and WordPress and I'm doing design, which I'm no good at. Like I had no business doing any of that. So then I'm suddenly bringing in freelancers, which that can be great and it can be not as great. You have to really find solid resources. Then I hired my first full time employee, which I had no business hiring an employee at that time. I did one interview and I was like, you seem great. And she was a great person and it just, it wasn't the role I needed. It just was not what I need at that time. So there was definitely some learning. But my third employee, Jenny, she is now my business partner. So she came in and really helped set the foundations, the processes in the business. She has had like six or seven different roles throughout the time that she's been at the company and really just helped set the foundation for success. When you look at like the EOS model, I'm much more the visionary. She is the person that's the integrator. She's the integrator. She's holding us together, she's making everything happen. So we have grown from there. We were up to 25, six employees pre Covid and right after Covid and then you know how that went. And now, now we are back in growth mode right now. So again, a very abridged version of the story.
- [07:56]
A
Yeah. So what are you doing today? For your customers.
- [07:58]
B
We're working with B2B software and service companies and we have started expanding outside of that as well. So we have a nonprofit and education and we've started doing a little some more purpose driven work, which has been really exciting for my team as well. And we really work with companies that have a small and strapped marketing team, which I guess who doesn't at this point that need everything from the foundations to their strategy to the execution. So a lot of times we're going in and we're examining their website to start. Because if you don't have that web presence, well, set up to accept people, you know, for them to come and navigate the site and then eventually convert and then set up their social, their content programs, all of that kind of stuff.
- [08:44]
A
Love it. Okay, so we're here today to talk about really positioning and there's a lot of businesses that are listening, a lot of marketers, entrepreneurs, and why is positioning of their message in their content so important? Said another way, when this is done well, if they pay really close attention to what we're going to talk about today, what's the upside?
- [09:05]
B
When we're talking about the positioning of a company, it's not the features of what you do of your product or your service, it's a lot higher level than that. And it's really the foundation of effective sales and marketing. If you don't know who you're talking to and how you're different and a lot about your competitors, you're really just adding to the noise. And there's so much noise right now, it's getting worse and worse. Really. Right. Like everyone has a social presence. Your inbox is flooded with emails. And I think that a lot of companies, companies don't get this. They just start going out there talking about themselves and who they are and they don't start with their why and understanding their audience and what their audience really cares about and then educating their audience and helping their audience care about them as a company before actually asking them for anything and giving to their audience, which a lot of companies just want to take. Right. And ask for that demo or that consultation or that sale, which is natural, of course, you want results, but you can't get them before you do the other work up front.
- [10:19]
A
So when they do it well, what happens?
- [10:20]
B
Yeah, I mean, you set the foundation for trust, right? So when you do it well, you are educating your audience, you are growing a following, you're increasing your web traffic and people are trusting you. For example, like I run my personal brand on LinkedIn, which I know is something that we've talked about previously, and I run that alongside my company brand. And we're not out there talking about us and just promoting our message and what we do. We're talking a lot more about education and our why and talking to people about the secrets of what they should be doing. I mean, a lot of what we're going to talk about today, right? And giving away all of those things and educating people in order to help people trust us and allow them to understand that we know what we're doing. And that's what every company needs to do. And in order to do that, you have to understand your positioning.
- [11:18]
A
Okay, so where do we start, you know, when it comes to our positioning? Because let's just assume a lot of us don't have this figured out correctly. You know, we probably have some sort of idea, but maybe we haven't given it as much intentional focus as what we're about to do today. So where do we begin?
- [11:35]
B
One, I feel like maybe where we start is proving value, because most companies don't want to do this. And we talked about this already a little bit, but there are lots and lots of misconceptions. And when we start working with a new company, sometimes maybe 50% of the time, they get it right. And they say, I understand that we need to start with figuring out who our brand is, our messaging, our positioning, and then we need to start with creating awareness. The other half of the time, they say, we can do some of that stuff, but can we generate some leads at the same time? Or they say, we need leads right now. How can we start doing that? And in those cases, it's an opportunity to educate them. And I think that it can be a red flag when you are working with a company or you have a C suite that is only looking for results, or they say, what's the ROI of marketing? And that's the only thing that they're looking at, right? Because then they may or may not even be open to that exercise of positioning and creating awareness. Because when you don't have awareness, you can't get the results. I was thinking about this this morning before we talked, and I feel like every company says that they want to be the Apple, right? They want to be the Uber, they want to be the Airbnb, like all of the unicorns of their industries. And then I was thinking about how I found out about these companies, and you didn't find out about them because you were like, I want an iPhone. And you went and bought it Airbnb. I remember I found out about them from their Belong Anywhere campaign. And that was. And I looked it up this morning. It was in 2015. And they had this campaign that was all about how you can be at home anywhere, and you can belong anywhere. And it was getting people bought in on this idea that you can be at home in other people's homes, because it's more about who you were with than being physically in your home. Right. And so they had to get people aware of the company and bought in on the idea of purchasing from this company before you ever actually pull the trigger and take the action of purchasing from a company. And so that was their positioning. Right. And they had to go through maybe an exercise similar to what we're talking about today to get to something like Belong Anywhere. And they ran that for a really long time. And that was one of their first big campaigns or their first big pieces of positioning that helped people understand, like, why the heck would I stay in someone else's house? Cause it was such a weird concept at the time. Do you remember that campaign?
- [14:28]
A
I don't really remember it, but I don't doubt that it existed. It feels like forever ago.
- [14:33]
B
Yeah. Oh, no. I loved it. I remember thinking, like, interesting. That is such a weird idea to stay in someone else's house. And now I have booked 50 plus times through Airbnb.
- [14:43]
A
I love this. So where do we begin? I know when we were prepping, you said there's some information that we need to gather in order to kind of figure this out. Let's talk a little bit about that first.
- [14:52]
B
What we do is create a hypothesis. And the hypothesis would be what you think that your market believes about a category, the category that you're in about you as a company, about your competitors. Right. So if we're thinking about, like, that Airbnb example, it might be that they're creating a hypothesis that people feel at home when they're with the people that they love.
- [15:21]
A
Okay.
- [15:21]
B
And that can be anywhere. And they're looking to prove or disprove that hypothesis. And usually we go into research and we have a bunch of hypotheses. And you find these hypotheses by talking to the company that we're working with, because from being in business, they have a bunch of hypotheses. We just went through an exercise with a client, and they had a hypothesis that part of their offering was seen as old school by the market. They thought it was really valuable, but the market they thought didn't get it. And saw it as old school, we were able to actually disprove that. And so now we get to go and market about why it's important and kind of reposition it. So we go in with maybe two or three hypotheses, and then you get to develop more as you do research as well.
- [16:10]
A
So let's just hypothetical here. Then let's say that someone who's listening right now has a hypothesis. Like, for example, we can just take my company. I have a hypothesis that marketers desire to come together to learn new strategies and also adopt AI so that they can become more valued by their employer. And therefore they should come to my conference. Social Media Marketing World. So is that an example of a hypothesis or is that more than a hypothesis? And what kind of information do I gather to prove or disprove?
- [16:43]
B
You know, that that hypothesis, that is a good hypothesis. And I might even split that up into two. Right. So it might be a hypothesis around a marketer's desire to learn AI, and it might be a hypothesis around their desire to be together.
- [16:58]
A
Okay, I like that. Okay. Okay, got it. So you got two hypotheses, and then what do you do with that? Because you mentioned, like, you ask questions to try to get more data to support that hypothesis. So what kind of questions are we asking ourselves or our customers?
- [17:11]
B
So we have a process that was developed internally by our brand strategist, Stephanie Rowland. I want to give her a shout out because she's amazing. We look for three kinds of research. So we are doing research online, and that's not just research with, like, Forbes and any articles that you can find that is looking in Reddit threads, that's looking in Quora. Like, where are people having the real conversations that aren't coming up in your Google alerts? Right. And where you are usually doing research, then we are doing interviews with our client that is that we're doing this work with. And those are usually structured group conversations where we might be talking about, you know, like, developing their Personas and their buyer's journey and stuff like that. And we kind of have developed these workshops that we're working with them just to understand what they know about the process or what they think they know. Right. Because they have their perception. And then we're going out and doing stakeholder interviews as well. And the more you can do, the better, because those stakeholder interviews really can help prove or disprove all of the assumptions that are being made by a company. It's actually really crazy how many assumptions are made by a company. That are sometimes not true because you have a company that sometimes, sometimes was founded by someone that worked in an industry five, six, seven, ten years ago. They saw a need, and they're really deep in building the company. And in the meantime, the industry has changed, and they don't really have that same perception that, you know, the company believes they did. So when we're doing interviews, we're doing interviews with current customers, lost opportunities, customers that bought from a competitor. Those are great. We do cold outreach. Those are really hard to get people to agree to, and they're super, super valuable. So if I were you trying to evaluate my hypotheses, I would be going on LinkedIn and I'd be reaching out to people. I'd be offering them like a gift card or something in order to get on the phone with me, and I'd be asking them about, you know, their desire to learn about AI. What tools are they using, how much are they using them? Do they feel like they're behind on AI? How are they going to be using it in the. They looking at things like conferences, stuff like that.
- [19:42]
A
Oh, I love it. Let me just unpack a couple of these things.
- [19:44]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:45]
A
First of all, does the hypothesis come before we do this research or after we do this research? I think this is important distinction.
- [19:51]
B
We will create a few before and then often, sometimes we disprove them or we prove them early and we can create new ones. Or sometimes new ones will pop up while we're doing interviews and we're like, that's interesting. We need another hypothesis. So it's kind of a flexible process.
- [20:13]
A
Cool. And we're going to get more into this. So when we are gathering information, what I heard is, first of all, there's public forums out there, like Reddit, Quora, probably Facebook groups, these kinds of places where you can go and you can find presumably the target audience. We presuppose, because we're talking to marketers and we're marketers, we know who that target audience is. What are you looking for when you're out there looking inside of these public forums? Just tell people, understand what to look for. Are they actually posting things or are they more looking for things while they're out there?
- [20:45]
B
You can post, but you can't be promotional. Right. So if you're going to Reddit and you're posting a question, you're doing it simply to get answers to your. And when you're doing things like doing research or outreach for cold interviews too, you have to tell people, not a sales conversation. This is purely outreach because people are a little iffy about that.
- [21:08]
A
Well, it's research. You just tell them you're getting research. Right?
- [21:10]
B
Yeah, Right. And when you're a marketer, they're like, ooh, I'm not gonna be sold to. Right. Because I think people are a little scarred from those years where if they downloaded an ebook, they would be called 40 times. Right.
- [21:23]
A
So what are we looking for when we're inside these forums and stuff?
- [21:26]
B
Yeah, so we're looking for, I mean, any conversations that apply to our research. Reddit is a really, really good place to. For example, we were recently doing research like this for a client that sells to insurance brokers who knew that there was an insurance broker community on Reddit that had 26,000 brokers in it.
- [21:47]
A
Oh, okay.
- [21:48]
B
I know. They didn't know that. We didn't know that until we found it. And it was a gold mine for people talking about the quoting process and things that were broken with it. And so pulling snippets from that, snippets from the interviews, you know, you can kind of start to form this story and positioning.
- [22:08]
A
So are we looking for kind of certain words and phrases or pain points? Like, just give people some guidance on what is the goal that they're seeking?
- [22:16]
B
Yeah, it's more an information gathering exercise. So, yes, you are looking for words and phrases that relate to your hypothesis. And it's honestly a. A little bit wider than that where we're going and just reading threads that look interesting and that are related to the work that we're doing because you can't really find the new hypotheses. And sometimes it becomes really interesting when you're not exactly researching just the keywords. I'm not sure exactly how many hours our team spends doing the research specifically online, but I know it's a good amount of time and you have to scale it up and down based on the amount of time that you have. Have 10 hours to do it. Then you're probably researching specific keywords. And you can use AI too, right? Like you can be asking ChatGPT to look for different things for you and also always ask if it's true.
- [23:13]
A
Yeah, you know, I love that.
- [23:14]
B
You gotta fact check it.
- [23:17]
A
Well, if you haven't been tracking, there have been some major AI updates over the last month, and the changes just keep coming. I know this feels overwhelming, but what if I told you you can actually thrive in this rapidly evolving AI frontier? The marketers succeeding aren't the ones with the most AI tools. They're the Ones with the right guidance. That's exactly what you'll find inside the AI Business Society. Our team cuts through all the noise so you can focus on what actually moves the needle in your marketing. As member Shannon Caldwell told us, quote, these trainings are filling the gap between knowing what AI can do and knowing how to do it. Are you ready to thrive with AI? Join me inside the AI Business Society by visiting socialmediaexaminer.com AI okay, so we've got this public research we're doing, then we've got these interviews with the team. Are we typically interviewing marketing and salespeople to start with? When you talk about these team interviews and if so, what kind of questions, generally speaking, will we be asking?
- [24:21]
B
Depending on the workshop, it will be a different set of questions and we've developed lots of different question guides. So if we're talking about things like we're doing a discovery about the industry and category and competitors, right? So we're asking questions around industry perception and what they think competitors think about them and what they've heard during the sales process from prospects about competitors about them. When we're doing, doing things like talking about the company personality or we're working toward some of the deliverables that we're going to talk about, sometimes the questions get a little more, I don't know, wacky I guess, where we're just asking more open ended questions. Actually one new one that I just did, a podcast interview, I was speaking to two women that run Good Quest, they call it the Anti Research research company. And they basically come up with these really interesting questions to get interesting ANSW answers out of people. And one of the questions that they ask is write a eulogy for your company. And so like how would you feel if it went away to get some of that emotion out of it? Because it is really hard in, in these interviews, especially in front of a group, to get down to like how do we feel about the company? And like the why behind the why behind the why. Why are we really doing this beyond like we're all trying to make money, but there's more to it than that, right?
- [25:55]
A
Yeah. And I also, as you were saying that I was thinking about like an Internet movie database, you know, like best known for, you know, how you have actors and you look them up when you're watching a movie or whatever and it'll come up in Google search and we'll say they're best known for these roles in these movies or whatever. I can imagine you could do something like that. Like if Your company was an actor, what would it be best known for? You know, something along those lines. So fascinating. Okay, then the stakeholders typically. Are we talking about the C suite? Are we talking about, like, the chief marketing officer or the CEO of the business? And what are we asking them? That's different than what we're asking in a team interview.
- [26:27]
B
Yeah, so it's dependent upon what kind of research we're doing. So we just did a project like this for one of our clients that has an underwriting product. So in that situation, we are looking at senior underwriters, CIOs, innovation officers. Right. So it should be tailored based on the kind of work that you're doing and what we're asking. Often we're trying to get to know them and understand their daily challenges they are doing at work every day and trying to understand a little bit more about how our product could help them. Where the product is falling down, where competitors are falling down, where the category is over, promising different things like that. It's interesting to set up the interview, though, and just get to know them a little bit more. I think a lot of companies, when they look at the interview guides, they kind of think that's a waste of time. But you have to loosen up and, like, get conversational with people before they're going to start giving you real information. Because most people show up to these interviews and they're like, stoic.
- [27:31]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [27:31]
B
They're really stiff. They're really stiff and you have to get friendly with them in order to have a good conversation.
- [27:38]
A
So I'm assuming we are asking for permission to record these things so we can get them transcribed and ultimately mine all this information. So talk to me a little bit about, like, let's say we've collected a lot of information. We've got some interesting things that we've learned from these public sites like Quora and Reddit. We've got some. Some maybe transcript from some group interviews, and then we've also got some transcripts with the stakeholder. What do we now do with all this information? How does that relate back to the hypothesis?
- [28:05]
B
AI can help with this a lot. So we'll stack all of the transcripts up in a document and put it in ChatGPT and ask it to pull out themes in relation to each of the hypotheses.
- [28:18]
A
How would you do that? Like, would you say, look for common themes or something like that? Or what are you asking, for example, Exactly.
- [28:23]
B
Often we're doing things like saying, here is one hypothesis and here are all of the Interviews pull out, you know, commonalities or what's related to this hypothesis. Then you do the next one. Here's a hypothesis, pull out what's related to this hypothesis. And then I think you have to prompt it in multiple different ways. And I wouldn't be feeding it things like Google Docs. ChatGPT really struggles with Google Docs and we put all of the interviews in one document to make it easier to read. And you can say things like pull out themes. But it might be pull out themes related to this or pull out themes related to this. You know, like guided a little bit more.
- [29:06]
A
I like that. And our audience knows. I've got another show called AI Explored. And one thing you could do is you could say you are a research analyst who specializes in proving or disproving hypotheses on positioning and marketplace research. I'm making it up on the fly, right? Take a look at the attached data with a skeptical eye and I will provide a hypothesis and I want you to tell me if you can prove or disprove it and why. I would imagine something along those lines would give you kind of a starting point. Is that kind of how you do it?
- [29:37]
B
Yes. And by this point I would have a folder set up for the client where it has lots of background information for the client already. So doing that, where it has any kind of, you know, research or anything that we've already done any previous work for the client, where you set up rules for how it could respond, words to avoid all of that kind of stuff, as much work as you can previously, and then prompting it in that kind of way can really help you get the information that you're looking for. Because sometimes these research documents are 40 pages long and then the transcripts are. If we do an hour long interview, you can imagine how long it would take to go through all of that manually.
- [30:19]
A
Let's say that we find some stuff, you always will find some stuff where the hypothesis seems to be off a little bit. Right. Give people guidance on what to do with the analysis that's coming out of these systems. Because it's one thing to do research, it's another thing to interpret the results of the research and know what in the heck you should do with that. So let's talk a little bit about like any guidance you have for people on kind of biases or false positives. I don't know, I'm just using phrases that I'm familiar with that might be little gotchas that you gotta watch out for.
- [30:51]
B
I think it's Tempting to say, okay, we interviewed 15, 20 people, and a couple people made a really strong case against this. So it's disproved. And that's not always right. This actually just happened where we had a couple of people that were disproving a hypothesis. And then we went and looked at, okay, what is the size company that they're at? What are their roles specifically, what is their background and what is the rest of the interview look like? And kind of trying to frame up why might they have answered this way? And does it make them more of an outlier?
- [31:29]
A
Oh, they might not have been in the target audience at what you're saying. You were talking to a customer potentially, Is that what you're saying? Or a prospect?
- [31:34]
B
Yeah, we were talking to someone that was in our decision maker category. And one of the guys, we were really at the end of our research, and so we were in the proving hypotheses at the end of our research. We have our hypotheses pretty nailed down, and we're even giving them some of our positioning and saying, okay, you know, how do you react to this? Would this resonate with you? And he really didn't like something that we said. And we went and looked at his background, and it was really interesting because he was not only an underwriter, but he was also in marketing. And those are very different roles. Right. And he was at a much smaller company than most of the other that we interviewed. And so we were thinking through, okay, might we need to change the positioning for this different tier of company? Could he not like this because he came from more of a marketing background than this technical background and he's wearing these multiple hats. Did he answer this question differently because of this? Right. So you have to really look at the context to understand does it really prove or disprove? And yes, sometimes your hypothesis is disproven and then you have to pivot and sometimes it gives you a new hypothesis. Right.
- [32:50]
A
Give an example of how a hypothesis would be proved versus disproved. Maybe you could continue with this example you're sharing. Just so people understand, because not everybody is like, scientific. Right. And when we say hypothesis, some people are like scrolling back to their high school science labs or whatever. Right. So, you know, like, let's talk a little bit about, like, what are we actually looking for here tonight? Know that we're onto something or we're off.
- [33:10]
B
Yeah. In this specific example, we have a client that really is a very technical sale, and they want to continue being very technical pretty upfront in the sale because they believe that their audience is so technical they want to have that conversation up front. Our hypothesis is that it needs to be a more value based sale because they are selling to the C suite and it needs to get more technical later on on. And so of all of these interviews, pretty much everyone agreed, except for that one person. And because he was at a smaller company and because he was occupying two C level roles.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah, he was wearing multiple hats. Right, okay, right.
- [33:54]
B
And running an underwriting department and a marketing department, then we were looking at, okay, if he's the one person that he wants this technical information up front and he was very clear that he wants to guide that conversation and he wants, wants to ask those questions. So we concluded that we still believe it should be a value based sale and the sales team needs to be cross trained and ready to answer the technical questions should they come up. So basically it was like a proven hypothesis and here's more information and once you have this information, you still have to go and do work with it.
- [34:33]
A
Yeah, I love this. So let's come up with another example maybe from another client that's not so technical. But what I love, while you're thinking about the other client, what I love about what you shared is that a lot of, especially software companies that are selling to any kind of technical audience might just presume that they have to be super technical in the way they present it. And the lesson here is that, hey, actually the value was not intuitive and therefore some clients there was missed opportunity. Here is really what you hypothesized. Like actually if we focus less on the how and more on the why in this particular case, we are going to get a larger swatch of the marketplace. I can totally intuitively understand that and I can even understand why that would be an obvious place to start with a hypothesis test. Can you give another example of something maybe a little different that you've done for another client just so people can wrap their brain around this, even if it's for your own business?
- [35:27]
B
Yeah, well, we also just finished a strategy for a client that has scheduling software. So much less technical and they sell into long term care facilities and so it essentially helps them with scheduling nursing staff in long term care facilities. And so we were looking to understand exactly what the value was and how they talk about something like this and whether or not they actually need a software like this. And so our hypotheses were, you know, around is what you're doing currently, does it make sense and is it working for you? Because what they actually do now is they have all of their staff in WhatsApp group groups and they just send out a message and then everyone responds.
- [36:15]
A
You're talking about the nurses are doing.
- [36:16]
B
This or you're talking about the nursing manager.
- [36:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [36:19]
B
Right. And so we, we created hypotheses around that and asked questions around whether the software would be valuable or whether what they were doing was working and then work to understand. Right. And I can't remember what the specific hypothesis was, but yeah, I mean, you can create a hypothesis around.
- [36:37]
A
I like this. So, so in this example, the ideal target customer was using a group app like WhatsApp. I know, like so many different people that have a bunch of employees use these kind of little group apps to just say, hey, I can't. I think about my daughter who works at this place and like she gets notification. Hey, I can't make it. Can somebody switch with me? You know what I mean? It's the same concept, right? They're just using this group broadcast kind of thing. What you were trying to prove out for this client is whether or not using a piece of software that made it effortless and just kind of handled all the back end, whether that would be valuable to this particular client. Client. So you had to go in with the hypothesis that people would rather use an app that made it simple than just be pinged every time there was a scheduling change. Right. And presumably you proved that hypothesis true. Does that sound about right?
- [37:25]
B
Yeah.
- [37:25]
A
Okay.
- [37:25]
B
And they were already using this app in healthcare environments, in hospitals, but they were looking to enter long term care. And so that's an important piece of context. There you go.
- [37:37]
A
Got it. Oh, so there were. Oh, that's important, important. So they had a product that already was working in one niche, one industry, and they wanted to move into another industry and they wanted to make sure before they moved that this was. There was a market ready for something like this. Fascinating. Okay, so once you walk out of this, you know, you and your team are looking at this data, you know, and you seem to feel like you've got a hypothesis to prove. Obviously you've got to now go back and present this. So give people tips on like how to actually do this, especially if it's not going to be received the way everybody hopes it's going to be received. Because that happens a lot, doesn't it?
- [38:15]
B
So much. And you know what, we used to struggle more with this too. And not just with these presentations, with marketing strategies, with any presentation, because people don't like surprises in general. I think some people I guess might like surprises, but when it comes to.
- [38:33]
A
Your good surprises, not bad surprises. Surprises.
- [38:35]
B
Right. But when it comes to your business and you've hired a consultant, you kind of wanna know what to expect. You wanna feel like you're in the know. And I think that this is actually where most like agencies, consultants, even internal marketers fall down. Because it's a process to get buy in. And most people are just like, yes, we did the work, we're excited, we're gonna go present it. And then it's like crickets. Unless you have a room of people that are really excited and they're really involved in the presentation. It feels so bad to get in there and have everyone just looking at you.
- [39:13]
A
Right.
- [39:14]
B
Any questions? And they're like, nope.
- [39:15]
A
Yeah, so what tips do you have?
- [39:17]
B
One is, during the process, whenever we are having conversations with people and we do a lot of our work in Zoom, when my team is working with people, I blow everyone's faces up huge on Zoom. And I watch their reactions extremely closely because I want to see exactly how everyone is reacting to different things that we're saying, the paths that we're going down. And when I see someone like, hm, like they don't agree, we have that conversation right there. Because I want people to be bought in during the entire process. And I want to understand who are the people that are really excited about this, who's feeling neutral and who are the people that are maybe the detractors in the process weren't really excited, maybe didn't want to do this in the first place, that we're going to have to work a little bit harder to get bought in. Next is making sure that you're doing dry runs with the right people. So do you have someone that's like your champion, that's going to shepherd this through the organization? So back to that client, that underwriting client. They have someone that is a very trusted resource in their, in their company. And we do drive runs for everything that we have been presenting to them with him. We get all of his feedback on how they're going to react, what they're going to think. We take all of his feedback. So then by the time that we present, he has already seen it, we've taken his feedback, then he goes back into their internal conversations and he says, I like this, this is why. And we've already taken some of his ideas.
- [40:50]
A
I love that. That's so smart.
- [40:52]
B
Yeah, it makes a big difference. Another thing is structuring your presentation in a way that you know that they're going to be able to digest. So that same client, they really value the feedback from the certain people that we interviewed more than other roles that we interviewed. So, like when you have slides with quotes on them, we put those quotes first.
- [41:14]
A
So when you say quotes, do you mean like you've got an internal influencer, for lack of better words, who, who has the ear of someone important inside the company? You might take an important quote that came out of that interview you did with them and put that into the slide to prove your hypothesis. Is that what you, you mean?
- [41:28]
B
Yeah. It'll be like the stakeholder interviews that we're doing if we did cold interviews. And the CEO of the company who maybe is a little skeptical of the process and what they're doing right now is really his baby. And we know that he really wanted to hear about how the stakeholder interviews of other CEOs went. We're putting what we heard from other CEOs directly into the slide deck because we want to get his buy in.
- [41:52]
A
Ah, okay.
- [41:54]
B
And then this one is like age old advice, helping people feel like the ideas are theirs. So always bringing it back to, hey, Josh, in this meeting we heard you say this. This relates back to that. It's more of a process than I think people think.
- [42:10]
A
Yeah. And then talk to me a little bit about storytelling and all that fun stuff and how that plays into this because it sounds like there's a role here, right?
- [42:16]
B
Yeah, absolutely. You have to paint a picture and tell a story that is emotional and kind of pulls them in. So back to that same client. We heard in a lot of those interviews that the people we were interviewing feel like they're not responders, but they're second responders. Because when you encounter a disaster, the first people you call are the police or the fire people or whoever, and the second people that you call are insurance people. And those people actually have like a really kind of altruistic reason for doing their work. And it's something that we're not touching on. And we have to bring them into the minds of those people and help them understand why we should be talking to them about that stuff. And if you can tell those stories and get people really bought in upfront want, then they're going to be much more willing to hear what you have to say about why we should be changing.
- [43:10]
A
Love this. So let's say we get buy in. What do we do now? Because obviously, I mean, I know we're, we're nearing the end of our discussion today, but there's some work that needs to be done once you get the buy in. So just give us a little bit on what would be the logical next thing. Once you get the buy in on something that would likely need to change.
- [43:27]
B
Buy in is not like a one time thing. It's just like when you get hired as an agency, you have to keep selling yourself over and over and over. And even as an employee you have to keep selling yourself in order to keep your job. So you keep testing, you go out and you get market validation. The sales team gets trained on this stuff and they get positive feedback and that goes into the organization. You start putting it onto the website and then you report back on how time on site changes, how much further people are scrolling on pages, how bounce rate decreases. You put it into your ads and you report back on improvement in ad performance. And, and if things do go the other way, then we have to make changes. Right. So it basically goes into your marketing and sales programs and you continue to validate over time.
- [44:17]
A
Jackie, we have barely scratched the surface of what's in that mind of yours and this incredible process that you've revealed to us. I know some people are going to want to connect with you. What's the preferred social platform and then if they want to, to explore possibly working with your business, where do you want to send them?
- [44:34]
B
Yeah, I am on LinkedIn all the time, so feel free to reach out to me there. Hit me in the dms. I will respond to you as soon as possible. And it's the Jackie Hermes. I don't know why it's that someone else had Jackie Hermes and it's H.
- [44:48]
A
E R M E S for the people that are listening. Yeah, looks like Hermes but it's Hermes.
- [44:52]
B
Yep.
- [44:53]
A
And then as far as the business, they want to check out your business.
- [44:55]
B
Yeah. Excelity Marketing.
- [44:57]
A
And why don't you spell Excelity? Because it's not intuitive for people.
- [45:00]
B
Like it's not something I didn't think about. A C C E L I t.
- [45:04]
A
Y excellitymarketing.com Jackie, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.
- [45:09]
B
Thank you. This was wonderful. I appreciate you having me.
- [45:11]
A
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@socialmediaexaminer.com 681 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, we would love it if you would give us a review. Review on whatever platform you're listening on and share this with your friends. You can tag me on Facebook, LinkedIn or X and do check out our other shows. The AI Explored Podcast hosted by yours truly and the Social Media Marketing Talk show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I am your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Just a quick reminder before you go. If you're ready to become indispensable in the age of AI, the AI Business Society is your solution. Join now and secure your discounted membership by visiting social mediaexaminer.com AI I can't wait to see you inside the AI Business Society.