Episodios

  • Episode 977 – AI Machine Learning vs “I” Human Learning

    Episode 977 – AI Machine Learning vs “I” Human Learning
    Aug 1 2024
    AI is machine learning. It's great for repetitive tasks. It collects knowledge and synthesizes it into useful compilations. AI machine learning can be predictable. “I” learning is what we do when we interact with people. It's as unpredictable as an amateur golf swing. Interacting with humans requires empathy, psychology, self-awareness, and patience. It is time-consuming and can have different results on different days. Interacting with people is how we do business. People do business with people, and although AI can help, it cannot replace human-to-human interaction. In the world of generating leads, social networks, and business in the post-pandemic economy, it's not just connections that matter. It's who you are connecting with and who they have in their networks that matter. It's your job to stay connected and keep you, your business, and your content and concepts top of mind with them. Active connections create relationships, businesses, and referrals.
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    12 m
  • Episode 976 – Embrace the Individual and Embrace the Resistance – Encourage Small Wins!

    Episode 976 – Embrace the Individual and Embrace the Resistance – Encourage Small Wins!
    Jul 24 2024
    In business, we need to embrace systems to align people with processes. Companies spend time and money on systems to speed up or simplify processes. The one thing that stands in the way of business systems being effective is people. You are working with a group of people with different life experiences, goals, and beliefs. As much as we try, we can't dig deep into each individual and try to align them based on their unique perspective, so we try to find a middle ground with the expectation of varying degrees of adaptation. We then create documents and training to help the alignment process. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) help us to set expectations, give instructions, and align expectations. Then, just like a kindergarten recital, you have some who fidget, adlib, or move to the beat of their own drum. With marketing, we often utilize systems and SOPs to reach our current, past, and prospective customers. We would all love it if one system (law, scripture, or proclamation) reached all three audiences because it would simplify and reduce time and expense. Yet, when you define success as a sale, it's one person with a team of decision-makers that you ultimately must convince to buy from you rather than your competition.
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    12 m
  • Episode 975 – What To Do When What Was Working… STOPS WORKING!

    Episode 975 – What To Do When What Was Working… STOPS WORKING!
    Jul 18 2024
    Businesses, especially ones that have well-established systems and methodologies, tend to ebb and flow. It's pretty common for a business to slow in the dog days of summer and pick up in the fall, but I hear frustrations from some and jubilation from others. I was conversing with a client about how business has changed since COVID-19 (2021-2022). Before that time, you could meet people in person at networking events, conferences, and more. Marketing and connection emails were being sent and opened (albeit at a 20-30% open rate). Phone calls were being received and returned. In most ways, it was not easy, but it was feasible to create leads through standard means that have worked for years. More recently, ads and content have flooded Google and social media. That worked well for a while, but Google Search is being replaced with AI and greater ad competition (and cost). Organic marketing starts with gathering data about your current customer base and reaching them with thought leadership content that focuses on what is top of mind with them. Then, you can find out what topics or slants on solutions are available and focus on them briefly. I can guarantee you one thing: Doing more of the same or spending more money on the problem will probably not create a solution.
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    10 m
  • Episode 974 – When Less… is MORE!

    Episode 974 – When Less… is MORE!
    Jul 11 2024
    I had the opportunity to travel to the South Carolina Coast for my son's wedding. However, I dreaded the idea that renting a house or condo was the only way to stay on Edisto Island. I had visions of Florida or Myrtle Beach, where the coast has huge hotels and condos. When it comes to marketing a B2b business online, it's more like Edisto than Myrtle Beach. Edisto is trying to reach a niche audience that is harder to find and communicate with. Yet, it can only serve a limited number of customers. They would love more sales, but scaling takes time and resources. When it comes to using LinkedIn to grow sales, many thoughts, techniques, and tools are being pushed, sold, and pontificated on. The problem is that LinkedIn users are not on the platform to be sold. They are there to build networks, learn new things, and, frankly, find opportunities (like jobs).
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    11 m
  • Episode 973 – Best Of – Sales & Marketing… It’s a MATH Problem

    Episode 973 – Best Of – Sales & Marketing… It’s a MATH Problem
    Jul 1 2024
    When I was a kid, I did not have to walk to school uphill, both ways, in the snow! But it was before you could buy calculators and computers in the dollar store. I am trying to remember any algebra, trig, or calculus that I actually use today. Much of it was based on formulas and principles. I know it's used in science and computing, but I'm in sales, marketing, and advertising. Most of the math I do today is primarily in accounting and spreadsheets. There is a bit of geometry involved in creating art in Photoshop. Art and music use geometry, math, and formulas. Business is about math. Income minus expenses equals profits. Advertising is not any different. You want to spend as little as possible to increase sales to make more profit. Let's look at relationship marketing as MATH. Or better yet, and an acronym. MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help. To sum up, MATH is HARD. But if you want to add more customers and multiply your profits, you should subtract some old processes and then divide and conquer to help the right people at the right time. “If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.” – Francis Bacon .In this episode... We will discuss how MATH = Meet Audiences (with)Targeted Help and could help lead to future success.
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    10 m
  • Episode 972 – Out with the New and In with the Old – WHY Should You C.A.R.E.?

    Episode 972 – Out with the New and In with the Old – WHY Should You C.A.R.E.?
    Jun 26 2024
    Growing old means having another day to learn, live, love, and grow. If you choose to continue to learn every day, you acquire wisdom. That wisdom may or may not help you become more successful, but I find that to stay relevant in business, you have to continue to follow trends and learn from experts who may be both younger and older than you! When it comes to marketing, I think we need a team of specialists to help us deal with what ails our business pain. Often, what is diagnosed as a lack of traffic to a website is actually caused by a process associated with the end goal… producing more sales. One issue with healthcare is you see a bunch of doctors. They take notes and fill them into a database. Then, the other doctors can read the notes and do their best to interpret the meaning behind the entries. Rarely do they ever get on the phone or an online meeting to collaborate. Each acts like an informed silo. Marketing (like healthcare) may become disconnected and even redundant if you work with multiple individuals (or only one or two). Just as sales rely on good marketing, your website visitors rely on quality information that is easy to find and navigate. Finally, you want to capture as much data about who is visiting and where they are going as possible.
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    11 m
  • Episode 971 – The New Artificial Intelligence Internet Traffic Jam and WHY You Should Care?

    Episode 971 – The New Artificial Intelligence Internet Traffic Jam and WHY You Should Care?
    Jun 19 2024
    One big difference between Chicago and Raleigh is traffic. Chicago has basic north-south east-west routes and a lake that stops you from going east at one point. Raleigh has roads that can go east-west-north-south within a few miles, and you cannot live without a GPS. Also, Chicago has many 8-12 lane roads while Raleigh has 2-6 at most points. Yet, it takes almost twice the time to go the same distance in Chicago as it does here in Raleigh. I like to think of Chicago traffic as consumer traffic on the internet. It takes a fairly direct route from searching for a product or service to getting people to that exit ramp (right before the shopping cart). It's a 12-lane road that gives consumers fairly direct choices based on price or website authority (think Amazon). I like to think of Raleigh traffic as business-to-business traffic on the internet. There are fewer lanes and roads. It's more scenic because most B2b sales don't go directly from search to shopping cart. It's harder to get Google to serve up your content because chances are your company is smaller and has less authority than, say, a big Fortune 500 that offers what you do on a bigger scale to a larger audience. You have to find out where your prospects are and give them a free GPS to end up and interact with your website.
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    12 m
  • Episode 970 – Man vs Machine – A Brief History of Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence

    Episode 970 – Man vs Machine – A Brief History of Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence
    Jun 12 2024
    Back in 1997, Deep Blue (an IBM computer) defeated Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time, in a six-game match with a final score of 3.5-2.5 in favor of Deep Blue. Almost 20 years later, in 2016, Google's AlphaGo program achieved a similar victory by defeating Lee Sedol, one of the world's top professional Go players, in a five-game match with a final score of 4-1. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been around for decades, yet they were not accessible to you and me. Now that they are, they're predicted to change marketing (and life in general) forever. Experts, insiders, and reporters expect good and bad from AI. Some predict Skynet from the Terminator movies, while others expect it to cure cancer. Ockham's razor would predict that it's probably something in the middle. Companies and their leaders are telling us that they are working to make your experience better and part of the greater good of humanity. Search is supposed to provide the best answer to your search prompt, and social media is supposed to serve the content you want to see. In reality, it's more about profits than principles. Search is optimized to get you to click ads—that's how Google makes over 75% of its revenue. Facebook feeds your friendships and shows posts meant to stir the pot and keep you engaged. Facebook makes over 95% of its profits from ad sales. Ockham's razor would show us that trying to find and win customers through search and social media would benefit the platform more than you. It's like a casino with all that noise of winners on its machines, but the odds have been programmed to make the casino much more money than it's paying out! When it comes to marketing, we have been using AI since the beginnings of Google and Facebook. Both are run through algorithms.
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    12 m