7 Min Marketing With Pam Didner

Mary, a good friend of mine, sent me an email and asked me if we can chat. Things have not been going well for her lately, and she wanted to talk about it… I said: sure, of course. If friends need time to vent or talk, I make sure that I am there for them. That’s what friends are for. She told me that she recently broke up with her boyfriend of 3 years. She was very much vested in the relationship. I asked her what was the reason for the break-up. She said that she is approaching 30. Eventually, she wants to settle down and have kids, but the ex-boyfriend is not ready to make that commitment. She didn’t feel that their goals are aligned at this time. Therefore, she called it quits. Obviously, that took an emotional toll on her. Thinking about putting herself out there again stressed her out. She decided to take a break from dating. I agree that’s the right thing to do for the time being. Obviously, when it rains, it pours. If it’s not just the personal issue, she has to deal with it, as it turns out the work

Many of you know that my book, Effective Sales Enablement, was launched at the end of October. I’ve received positive and negative comments by those who’ve read the book. Thank you so much! I’d like to take an opportunity to address some of the comments that were raised by you who read the book. There were three comments I’d like to address: Your book talks about many topics. There doesn’t seem to be a focus.   I was looking for how-two templates, but I didn’t see many. There are many ideas, and it’s overwhelming. Your book talks about many topics, and there doesn’t seem to be a focus Ok, a good point. I know that I touch on many topics in the book. Sales enablement is still evolving, and marketing can support sales in many different ways depending on your jobs and responsibilities. Because marketing is dynamics and situational, I want to make sure that I cover many marketing related topics so no matter what job functions you do, you’ll find something useful. If you perceive that as lack of focus, my most s

I just finished reading Talk Triggers by Jay Baer and Daniel Lemin. The book offers a complete guide to creating customers through word of mouth. It totally exceeds my expectations. Jay and Daniel provide what they call the 4,5 and 6 systems. They talk about the 4 requirements for a talk trigger which gets your customers to spread the word for you. Then they identify 5 types of talk triggers that you may be able to use for your marketing outreach, and they end the book with 6 steps that you can take to implement a complete word-of-mouth strategy. A solid framework for a book! According to them, repeatable, differentiated and relevant word-of-mouth is not a gimmick, but a business decision. Jay and Daniel used the DoubleTree Hotel as an example. Presenting guests with chocolate chip cookies when they check in at DoubleTree hotels is unique and repeatable customer experience and relevant to their brand. The simple and delicious chocolate chip cookies give their guests an opportunity to talk about the treat and

Andi who attended my Global Content Marketing Workshop at Content Marketing World sent me this question: Pam, I am sitting here going through my notes from CMW highlighting what I need to take action on when I get back to the office and I have highlighted so much from your presentation! I do have one question - do you have a recommendation on how to transition from a traditional marketing program to a content program without it being jarring for the audience? Ok, first of all, Andi, this is a, what I call, a holy-grail question. If I completely crack the nut, I’d say that I am the chosen one who knows the untouchable secret. Here are my two suggestions on how you can approach this. One is to tackle it from the marketing end, the other approach is work from the sales side. So hear me out. Tackle from marketing: First step, you need to do your homework. Understand how the existing marketing programs work and perform. What traditional marketing programs or campaign have the company tried? How did they do? Is th

Ann Handley, the author of the popular Book “Everybody Writes”, shared her journey of creating content in her own backyard, also known as her website, during the Content Marketing World conference. Here is the background of her keynote: She wrote 2 books and is prolific in providing content in popular publishing sites from Inc to Forbes, but her website is like a content ghost town, so one of her followers said to her “what gives?!” She took on the challenge, started creating content and doing email marketing to engage with her followers. Email marketing, Ann?  Welcome to the dark side. She talked about her journey and learning about getting subscribers. One of her key learnings is to write for the audience of “ONE.” She used Warren Buffet as an example. Warren’s Annual Letter to Investors is widely read by millions of people. He shared that he writes that letter with his sister, Doris, in mind. He said that Doris is very smart and a voracious reader, but she doesn’t understand finance jargons and the complex

Joann asked me for some quick and easy sales enablement tricks that marketers can implement right away. Well, this is such a basic question, but there is no quick answer. It really depends… It depends on your marketing jobs and your interactions with the sales team. Your roles and responsibilities will guide how you support your sales team. The best way to start is to have a clear understanding of how you support your sales team and find ways to optimize the process or your support efforts. If you are an event manager, you probably coordinate with your sales team on how to divide and conquer on the show floor. You know salespeople’s challenges are to gather as many leads as possible. To better support them, it’s your job to come up with creative ideas to draw the crowd to your booth. What can you do to drive more foot traffic to the booth? So understand how you support your sales team and find ways to do it better. Another way to better support sales is to understand their challenges. Obviously, we can’t do t

With my 2nd book launched, many people ask me why I wrote a Sales Enablement book instead of another content marketing book. Well, there are professional and personal reasons: One the professional front: Sales and marketing tend to be treated as separate functions with limited integration, especially in enterprises. With the rise of digital, many marketing elements can be used for sales conversions and engagements. Here are two great examples: Email marketing: Email marketing used to be one of the key channels for marketing campaigns. Email marketing campaigns coupled with relevant content are now used by sales to run mini and personalized outreach to facilitate the sales process or act as a talk trigger. Social media marketing: Another example is the usage of social media I shared in my book. A sales team of a whiskey company was working hard to gain shelf space in liquor stores and supermarkets in a specific city. In order to get more shelf space with these stores, the sales team proposed that the company w

I did a session on “How to Build a Global Content Marketing Team” at Content Marketing World two years ago. Karen attended that session. Subsequently, she and I had a conversation on how she should structure her team. She has a small team which supports several geographies. And she didn’t have approved headcounts to support the different local teams on the ground. She asked me what to do. I told her that her team members need to have two roles. For example, a writer’s job is to write content, but that person should also be responsible for several countries or one geography region. So, all her writers are assigned specific regions or countries, in addition to their regular jobs. These writers are also the local teams’ main point of contact for content-related requests or questions. So far, the dual roles have worked well in the past 2 years. However, she has noticed that each writer has different strengths. For example, one writer is very good at blog writing, the other one is super-efficient on webpage and pr

An HR manager asked me, “Pam, do you think sales-enablement training and development belong in HR?” Well, we all know that training has been one of the core competencies provided by HR, in addition to talent recruiting, performance reviews, and pay structure. Here is the reality, with the rise of technology, training is no longer confined to classroom settings or online courses. It can be micro-training through mobile apps with snackable doses of information pushed out daily to users. It can be virtual and interactive hands-on training through augmented reality or even just on-point educational videos on YouTube or topical-driven podcasts that you can listen anywhere. Frankly, anyone in the company who has budget can develop some sort of training materials for their teams. Content-creation tools are readily available for everyone to use. There are also different content-syndication platforms that enable you to easily share your training materials on any platforms. You can use Loom to record your training, the

In my last episode, I talked about a class I took on how to take better photos using my iPhone. I found a class through the Today at Apple website. By going through that site and checking the various classes thatApple offers, I have to say that Apple does a great job on content marketing and sales enablement. In a way, their content is an extension of sales enablement. They use content to educate new users on how to use their products better. They use content to show existing users new tricks. All the classes are product-centric. They are on-point and focus on getting users ramp up as quickly as possible. Their class content, in a way, focuses on conversion from top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. To me, classes they provide are the essence of content marketing: offer relevant and educational content to acquire new customers and retain existing ones.  With millions of users, people come to the site naturally to find products, ask questions, and make purchases. Apple doesn’t need to use paid and spo

Like everyone else, I take a lot of photos using my iPhone. I notice that younger generations take better photos than I do. I wanted to learn some new tricks to take better photos using my phone. I knew that Apple stores offered video-creation classes, so I wondered if they offered classes on taking better photos. So I went to Apple.com and started a quick chat with one of the employees. It turned out that I just needed to Google “Apple Today” to find out what classes are offered at Apple Stores. Typing “Apple Today” took me to the “Today at Apple” website. Then, I entered country and city to find the nearest Apple Stores. Viola! I could browse the classes that were being offered that day and for the upcoming week at the Apple Stores near me.  Pretty cool! Then, I clicked on photo and video category. There are tons of classes such as How to Shoot Photos with iPhone, How to Edit Photos on iPhone, Photo Walks: Portraits and People, Crafting Your Shot Co-created with Chase Jarvis. I signed up for Crafting Your S

Hard as it is to believe, even though I’ve only been working for myself for 4 years, I’ve just relaunched my website for the fourth time. That’s pretty much one relaunch per year. I am not talking about changing copy here and there. I am talking about a complete re-design of the website… Here is the story of working on my website, full of drama and nightmares, and my takeaway. I launched my first website in 2012. It was pretty much a blog and creative outlet. I was publishing my reflections and observations about life in general. It was not a business website and no clear value proposition about who I am and what I do. Then, I completely redid my website in 2014 when I publish my first book, Global Content Marketing As 2015 rolled around, I decided that I should sharpen the focus of my web presence to match my book, so I created globalcontent.marketing as the main site and migrated all my content to that site and kept the pamdidner.com site static. Frankly, I don’t think that was a right move. Hindsight is 20

Some listeners know that my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement, will be available in October. While working with the publisher on editing the manuscript back in May, I also started thinking about how I need to revise my value proposition. The value proposition in this case is ‘How do I differentiate myself from other marketing consultants?’ Until now, I’ve focused on content marketing, or my value proposition or uniqueness being that I know how to help enterprises (not SMB) set up a process to scale content across regions. Not many people can do that, so that is unique to me. Now, with Sales Enablement coming into play, what is my new value proposition? How do I redefine what I can offer to combine my knowledge of global content marketing and sales enablement? I started by identifying several unique strengths or experiences that only I can offer. 20+ years of corporate experience in various positions, from finance to accounting, from operations to product development, from marketing to sales enablement. I

My son, Joey, was a high school leadership camp counselor this summer. He managed about 30 high schoolers during the two 10-day over-night camp sessions, so it was about 15 kids per session. He came home when these two sessions were over. I picked him up from the airport. He looked physically and mentally exhausted but in good spirits. So, on the way home, he was talking to me about the camp. I asked him what is the biggest takeaway from being a counselor? I sound like a podcast interviewer. He described his take away in two words: parenting and depression. Depression? Was he depressed? No. He explained it to me. He said that he learned a lot about parenting. Well, he was a quasi-parent for these high schoolers for 20 some days. Since this was a leadership conference, they did personality, or team building exercises to help them discover who they are and what their strengths/weaknesses are.  Through these exercises, kids need to start look inward and confront some of the emotional issues that they possess but

This week, one listener, Jim, asked me about branding. “Companies with very strong brands want to maintain their brands across markets. How do you keep the core essence of your brand but also adapt it for new markets?” There’re several ways to scale the core essence of your brand across regions.  I want to address that in 4 different elements: Logo, Design, Tone-and-Manner, Corporate Culture in 7 short minutes. Logo: Many people associate the essence of branding with logo usage. This is indeed only one part of the story. At the minimal level, keep the logo the same across the region—unless your logo can be perceived as offensive in some cultures. The most famous example is Starbucks’ mermaid logo. In the western countries, we look at the mermaid (or some may call it, siren), and don’t think much of it. In the Middle East, a female appears on the logo full frontal, and nudity is not allowed. The logo in Saudi Arabia shows the crown of the siren on the sea, but you can’t see the mermaid. The key point is that t

Many businesses use Google Analytics (GA) to measure website traffic, paid search performance, organic search optimization, and even track sales and conversions. So, how much do you know about Google’s Analytics? Well, I am the first to confess: I didn’t know much about GA. My GA knowledge was limited to the measurement of website traffic such as page views, bounce rates, top 10 most viewed content, numbers of visitors from different countries and content views by devices. That was about it. But I know that Google Analytics can do so much more. When I was in a corporate role, I had a team who would prepare the analytic reports and recommendations. I would review them, mostly, just to approve their recommendations on what was needed to be optimized as next steps. I didn’t have to get my hands dirty. Mostly, I couldn’t judge if the recommendations were good or bad, because I didn’t do a deep dive into data to understand how the analysis was done. I took the team’s recommendations at face value. I ran into a sim

Frequent listeners know that I practice yoga on a regular basis. The truth is that I go to 2 different yoga studios in Portland.  I do Hot Yoga in one studio and learn new and different yoga postures in another studio. Attending classes in two studios, I get opportunities to see how different yoga instructors conduct their classes. For Hot Yoga, we do the same 26 postures every class. It can get boring sometimes, same old postures over and over again, but that’s when the personality of a teacher comes into play. One particular instructor, Sasha, is unique. She ran away from home when she was young, then, lived a pretty messed up life until she found Yoga. You can tell that she doesn’t follow rules. She would play music during classes, add a couple of postures here and there, and ask us to breathe in certain ways between postures. Then, she would add random observations or reflections as they occur to her. Like the other day, when we were doing twisting postures, she said that she was on the toilet yesterday a

Recently, I attended MozCon, a search conference, hosted by Moz.  Moz provides search marketing tools that makes SEO, inbound marketing, link building and content marketing easy. This company is pretty well-known in the search community. One of the speakers was Amy Hebdon, who specializes in paid search at Paid Search Magic.  So, what do you think when the term, paid search, comes to your mind? When I think of paid search, I think of the following: Optimizing a long list of keywords and phrases that I need to bid on or purchase Numbers of impressions I need to accomplish Lowering CPCs (cost per clicks) Trying to rank number 1 on Google What I liked about Amy’s presentation is that she was looking at paid search in a very holistic way. She talked about the purpose of paid search. It’s not about ranking number 1 or hitting a goal of inbound traffic or impressions. At the end of the day, paid search is about putting your best offer in front of your target customers when they’re most ready to take action. So, t

I was requested by a client to create an eBook for account-based marketing. The client asked if I could add some real-world account-based marketing examples as part of the eBook, so I went hunting. Well, not so much of hunting as Googling.  I came across this blog post by Influitive.  Influitive offers an advocacy management platform. The blog title is “The Results of 3 B2B Account-Based Marketing Campaigns: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”  Truman Tang, the author of the blog, talked about 3 ABM campaigns Influitive ran.  I don’t usually summarize a blog post, but I thought their 3 examples are worth sharing. First of all, what is account-based marketing, anyway? Well, in a nutshell, it’s marketing working together with sales to create customized outreach for target accounts. It’s planned and intentional effort. In a way, it’s a marketing version of sales enablement if you think about it. So, here are 3 examples Influitive did: Influitive discovered that many of their target accounts were not aware of revie

Frequent listeners know that I just finished my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement. This book was written from a marketers’ perspective on what we, marketers, can do to enable sales. I believe that marketing elements, f used right, can support sales and show impact directly. I am always looking for examples on how marketing better support sales. Here is a great example from James Rogers, Digital Marketing Manager for PowerBlanket.  I met James at MozCon, a search marketing conference in Seattle. PowerBlanket is a small manufacturing company that builds industrial heating blankets, wraps, and custom heating solutions for dozens of industries with hundreds of applications.  Powerblanket is a 55-person company based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Its marketing department is a 2- person team with a few contracted content creators. Obviously, they don’t have a big marketing budget. If they spend $$ on something, the results and ROI must follow. I have supported manufacturing companies before. I totally get it.   I as