7 Min Marketing With Pam Didner

My podcast editor, Jeff Julian, drove his RV all the way to Anaheim from Kansas City to attend Vidcon with his wife, Michelle, and kids, Brandon and Addison. Actually, this is a fun conference. The tagline for Vidcon is ‘For people who love and make online video’. Frankly, this conference is packed with tons of YouTube celebrities. It’s really a venue that allows young millennial and Generation Z fans to meet their YouTube stars. Such a cool idea to link fans and YouTube celebrities together, why didn’t I think of that? Anyway, as the whole family is already on the West Coast, they might as well drive all the way to Portland to see Pam, right? It’s only 980 some miles. And he did. It was wonderful to see Jeff, Michelle, and their kids. Since I did several podcasts about marketing takeaways from my visits to Lima, Macchu Picchu, Chatsworth Manor in England, Jeff was joking about me doing a podcast about his visit. Of course, I am going to do an episode to commemorate his visit. So, what is my marketing take aw

My friend, Mike, wants to launch a podcast. He was thinking of recording using his phone, then exporting the audio file and finally uploading it to Libsyn. As simple as 1, 2, 3. He asked me how much time I spent on my podcast and what is my process.  Well, no one has asked me that question before. For me to talk for a solid 7 minutes about a topic, I need a script. So, I start with a script. It usually takes me about 90 minutes to write a full 7 min script with a couple rounds of edits. Then, I take 30-40 minutes to record several takes, You know how it is; the first take never really works. Once that’s done, I export to my Mac and upload the audio file for my editor to access.  My editor, Jeff Julian, is a smart software developer who also knows marketing and technology. Whenever I have questions about marketing technology, I talk to him. Ok, I got sidetracked a little. Let’s get back to the podcast process. Now, Jeff has my audio file. First, he needs to extract the audio to a mono track since my recorder s

I was talking to Michelle, a marketer, about my new book, Effective Sales Enablement. I told her that I wrote this book from a marketer’s perspective and how marketers can better enable their sales team. She told me that her company doesn’t have a sales enablement team, but it does have a sales operations team. So, what is the difference between sales enablement and sales operations? If you think about it, Sales enablement, in essence, aids and supports Sales. So does Sales Operations. Sales-support structures come in various shapes and forms, depending on the size of a company, budget, resources, organizational structure, the maturity of the Sales organization, and even senior management’s preferences. Some organizations tuck Sales enablement into Sales operations. Others keep the groups separate. Some have no official Sales enablement group; the enablement work is done by product-marketing teams in business units. It doesn’t matter what the structure is and who does the jobs, someone is taking care of sales

I discussed repurposing, repackaging and reusing content at one of my workshops a couple of weeks ago. One attendee posed this question: “So, can I just take the same blog post we wrote and use it as a script for our podcast? Can I just consolidate 5 case studies into one big eBook?” Well, yes and no.  In general, the answer is NO. Let me talk about this a little more. The essence of repurposing, repackaging and reusing your content is to repurpose, repackage and reuse the core idea of your content, not to copy exactly from one format to another. Here is how I do it from my own experience: I recently did a keynote in Europe.  The title of the keynote was “Humans vs. Machines. Is Content Marketing Doomed?”  I created a 60 slide, image-rich presentation. It had a nice opening and closing with plenty of AI-based marketing examples in the middle. I started with “Good morning!  What comes to your mind when you think of Humans vs. Machines?” When I decided to convert my presentation to a blog post, my opening neede

I spent the past 10 days writing a complicated strategic brief on behalf of an agency to brief their creative team, copywriters and content creators. This agency is running a big campaign for a large technology company. I’ve briefed creative, media and social media teams, content marketing agencies and freelancers before. This is nothing new to me. But this time is different and it’s super-complicated.  There are 6 dimensions that I have to take into account as part of the brief: One very sophisticated and feature-rich technology product There are 4 major solution areas I can vouch for this product. Under the 4 major solution areas, there are 8 subcategories. We’ve identified 3 personas that we can target. In addition to personas, the campaigns need to cover 3 stages of the purchase cycle which are awareness, evaluation, and purchase. We are launching in 5 countries. It means multiple languages. The last element is that we do 3 separate campaigns as part of the brief. I just mentioned 6 individual elements,

I had coffee with a friend, Maria, last week. We haven’t seen each for almost 2 years. I was very excited to see her. After catching up with talk about our family and kids, she asked me: Pam, what have you been working on lately? Well, that’s a good question. What have I been working on?  How would you answer that question when someone asks you what have you been working on? The first thing popped into my mind is that I spend a lot of time doing e-mail, Powerpoint, writing, and texting. That just sounds awful as if I didn’t accomplish anything except doing administrative busy work. But, after thinking about it a little more, I realized all of these activities, somehow, tie to the key initiatives and business goals I set out to accomplish in the beginning of the year. I established a revenue target, set the target date to publish my 2nd book, and identified a marketing mix to continuously build my personal brand. So, what have been I been working on? I’ve been working on several client projects. Billable hours

Ok, I did several episodes about my trip to Lima. Now, let’s come back and focus on answering your questions. I did a webinar last week with Mintent, a Content Marketing Platform company. The topic of the webinar was ‘3 creative ways that marketers can enable sales across regions.’ At the end of the webinar, one attendee, Megan, asked a question: How do you draw the line between arming sales with marketing material and getting inundated with too many requests for tasks such as writing sales correspondence emails with prospects? I totally understand Megan’s concerns. That’s exactly what happens sometimes. Marketers do everything they can to support sales. Over time, without noticing, marketers become admins for the sales team. It’s called scope creep…  The best way to avoid that is to clearly communicate what you will do and won’t do.  This is called a Service Level Agreement (SLA).  When I was supporting sales teams, I was working with 50-60 field people and supporting several key accounts. I received a lot o

I was hoping to record this episode when I was in Machu Picchu. That would be a major milestone, right? I carried the recording equipment all the way up 9000 feet above the sea level. I was taken away by the ruins, the mountains, the history and just the overall experience. I decided to be present and enjoy it as much as I could.  And I did! I recorded this episode when I came back to the US. A quick update on getting to Machu Picchu. First, I had to travel to Lima, then took a plane from Lima to Cusco. From Cusco, our group took the bus to Ollantaytambo. From there, we took the train to a town at the bottom of Machu Picchu. Then, we had to take a park bus to the entrance. It’s a long way to get there. Machu Picchu is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so many rules are set up to proactively protect the site. The government limits the numbers of tourists that can access the site each day. To manage the visitor flow, we are put in groups of 15-20 with an assigned tour guide and a specific time-slot. When

I stayed in Lima for a couple of days before my trip to Machu Picchu and learned some interesting trivia about Lima and Peru that made me think about marketing…  I know… Just can’t get marketing out of my mind even when I am on vacation. Here are several things I’ve learned that reminded me of marketing:  Lima receives only 0.3 inch of rain per year.  Portland, Oregon, where I live, gets 44 inches of rain per year. People in Lima doesn’t know how to use an Umbrella. It’s the 2nd largest desert city after Cairo in Egypt. Ok, here is the interesting fact: Although it doesn’t rain, it often reaches close to 100% humidity. Because of high humidity, the weather is always cloudy and feels like it’s going to rain anytime, but it doesn’t. When I was there, it was overcast with the dark clouds hovering overhead, I thought it would rain anytime. No, it just stayed overcast the whole time, but the air felt damp. My jacket felt a bit wet while I was there… Since there is almost no rain all year round but many people and

I am recording this podcast from Lima, Peru. I am going to Machu Picchu in the Andes Mountain. I am so excited. I read about Incas’ people and culture when I was eight. I can’t believe that I am here. I will share my trip highlights and marketing takeaways from Machu Picchu in the upcoming episodes stay tuned. This week, I had an interview with Jim and Lee from Moravia. He read my book, Global Content Marketing, and finally reached out to discuss some questions he has from reading the book. I love readers and listeners reaching out and asking me questions. One of the questions was: “Pam, what is the difference between a marketing plan and a global marketing plan?” Well, the only thing different is the word “Global”. The way you define “Global” will have ramifications on how you write your marketing plan. First of all, let me define the purpose of a marketing plan. A marketing plan is a document that you use to let your management know what you will do for marketing outreach get budget you need rally and alig

While I was speaking at the Clever Content Conference in Copenhagen this April, my friend, Christian, proudly showed me his hometown Copenhagen. The city is not big and you can pretty much walk and bike everywhere. He and I walked around the town for 8 hours straight. I visited little mermaid, churches, the Royal garden and more. But I was mostly blown away by an area called Freetown Christiania. I was shocked that a place like this could exist in modern society. Christiania is a self-proclaimed autonomous anarchist district of about 850 to 1,000 residents, covering approx. 84 acres in Copenhagen. The people in Christiania have developed their own set of rules, independent of the Danish government. The rules forbid stealing, violence, guns etc. It started back in the 70’s with many hippies who cherished a progressive and liberal lifestyle. Of course, the idea was great and the utopia didn’t last. Crime organizations and gangsters quickly infiltrated the area.  In the middle of Christiania is Pusher Street whe

Ok, I reached a major milestone last week. While in London, I visited my publisher and finalized the manuscript of my 2nd book, Effective Sales Enablement. Now, the manuscript is officially moving to the production phase. I am not at the finish line yet, but I am very happy that the hardest part is DONE. People approach me all the time asking about how to write a book and get it published. I want to share my experience with you, in seven minutes.  BTW, my experience is more on writing a business book, not a fictional novel. So, what’s the difference? This is my opinion. I think it’s harder to sell a novel and it’s better to have an agent.  For business books, personally, I think you can represent yourself and pitch it to a publisher directly. Here is the process I used for publishing my 2 books: Start with a topic that you are either the expert at or very passionate about. Writing is a frustrating creative journey. Unless you love the topic, it’s hard to get through the whole writing and rewriting process. P

After speaking at the Cleve Content Conference in Copenhagen, I met up with a good friend, Diana, in Manchester, England. We were thinking about where we should spend our weekend. She suggested that we visit the Chatsworth.  I got excited right away. I recalled reading somewhere that Chatsworth was Mr. Darcy’s country estate, Pemberley in the movie version of Pride and Prejudice starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. In the movie, Mr. Darcy’s country estate seemed fantastic, so I had to check out. We got there around 10:00 am and the estate wasn’t open until 11:00 am. We strolled through the field around the estate. I was told that Chatsworth covers over 1000 acres and most of the field is open for public all year around. The current owner, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, still lives in this manor with his family. He is keen about open access and allows the community to use it for recreational purposes. We lucked out on the weather. Birds chirping, flowers blossoming, cloudless blue sky and lush green g

Recently, I did a keynote presentation about Humans vs. Machines.  Is Content Marketing doomed?  When I think about humans vs. machines, I think about the self-aware artificial intelligence like the Terminator’s Skynet, I am the Borg from the Star Trek or the agents in the movie, the Matrix. Of course, R2D2, C3PO from Star War or even Bender from Futurama also come to mind.  However, these are Hollywood versions of AI. In real life, we have seen a Robot called Asimo developed by Honda kick a soccer ball to President Obama.  We have seen sophisticated robots which can flip or walk on uneven and hilly terrane from Boston Dynamics. Not mentioning about automatic cars developed by Google and other tech and car companies. We are developing these AI-Based tools to make our lives easier and productive. However, in January 2015, more than 7000 people from tech, academia, and other fields signed a 4-page open letter based on the report with the title: “Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intellige

I was in Melbourne, Australia, speaking to Cisco’s Channel Partner Marketing Managers at Cisco Live. I love working with channel partners. They usually don’t have a big marketing budget and every dollar they spend has to count. After the keynote, I did 8 1:1 whiteboarding sessions with their channel partners. They asked me any questions and I answered on the spot, as simple as that. One of the questions: “Pam, I have 30,000 names in my database. How can I find warm leads?” I love that question. I offered three suggestions. Use e-mail and content marketing: For this case, don’t just send out e-mail for the sake of sending out e-mail. Since you want to find warm leads in your database, the title of the e-mail and the content you include in your e-mail campaign needs to be designed to find out which prospects are addressing targeted challenges that could benefit from your products or company offerings. The title also needs to show urgency, like now. So, your title should be something like “if you are looking fo

If you ask sales people “what they need from their marketing team?”, 10 out of 10 will say that they need more high-quality leads. But what is a high-quality lead? Or what is a marketing qualified lead (MQL)The definition varies from company to company and from industry to industry. I had a chance to talk to, William Wickey, Head of Content and Media Strategy at Lead Genius, who relayed how their marketing and sales teams agreed on the different stages of leads so that there is no debate on how to move leads further down the funnel. You can see the complete table on the transcript. I will talk about Pre-qualified leads, MQLs, Sales Accepted leads and prospects. Sales Accepted lead is very similar to Sales Qualified lead that we are all aware of. Lead Category Definition   Pre-Qualified Lead Inbound and outbound leads that fit the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) Pre-qualified + requests demo (He calls them “hand-raisers.”)   Sales Accepted Lead MQL criteria i

A friend asked me if I feel lonely working for myself. It’s funny that question has never popped into my mind in the past three and half years. Then, I decided to sit back and to give it some serious thought. Well, I do work from home, not in a co-working space or in a company environment. I have a remote team. We are close, but we don’t have face-to-face interactions. I am in front of my computer a lot, but I don’t do much video conferencing when I have meetings or talk to people online. When I travel to speak or visit clients, I travel by myself. I usually eat by myself. When I travel to a place I’ve never been before, I’d join a tour by myself. It does sound a bit lonely, doesn’t it? But there are differences between lonely, isolated and alone?  In my line of work, I need to constantly keep myself up-to-date and travel frequently for speaking engagements. Because of the amount of interaction with peers and attendees, I don’t feel isolated from the society. In fact, I feel information overload sometimes. So

I am a firm believer that the function of marketing is to grow business and support sales. Great story telling, wonderful commercials, and fantastic events all sound great, but they need to have calls-to-action that tie with sales directly or indirectly. Otherwise, they are just some marketing fluff. I met Jenny, CEO for 3 Busy Dogs, a company that makes beer for dogs. Yes, you hear me right.  Beer for dogs, but no-alcohol. The company is small, so she doesn’t have a big marketing budget. To create buzz, she relies heavily on user-generated content on social media and co-marketing. User-generated content such as pictures of owners and their dogs hiking, watching TV or simply just spending time together, drinking beers and living it up. You know, cute dog and cat pictures garner tons of likes and shares. Any free media impressions are good media impressions. Jenny also focuses on co-marketing. She doesn’t do co-marketing for the sake of doing co-marketing. Whatever co-marketing she does, it has to sell her pro

I was reading a great sales book by Erik Peterson, Three Value Conversations: how to create and elevate and capture customer value at every stage of the long lead sale. Ok, the subtitle is very long. Just remember the name of the book is Three Value Conversations. One thing that struck me is the idea of finding the unexpected needs of your customers. Erik noted that sales reps are trained and conditioned to be problem-solver for their customers. That's good, but he argues that sales are solving the problems that customers already know. Because it's addressing known problems, buyers control the conversations. In a way, sales reps are putting themselves in what he calls the "Commodity Box." Peterson suggested turning that conversation around. To do that, sales reps need to change their roles. It's not about solving a known problem, but rather the value-add comes from finding a problem not understood by the customer. So be a problem finder, not just a problem solver. Buyers don't know what they don't know. Here

Some listeners may know that I am writing my 2nd book. I have to say writing is hard. The hardest part is to structure 50,000 - 70,000 words in a logical manner so that you can share a unique point of view and flow in such a way that readers want to flip from page to page. Not only do you need to offer a compelling and unique point of view, but you also need to tell a great story. Writing my 2nd book is like raising a 2nd child. You learn what worked well the first time and what you need to do better the 2nd time around. There are three things I make an effort to do differently this time around: Incorporate others' point of view: when I wrote the first book, I mostly drew from my own experience. I talked about my experience first, then shared case studies at the end of the chapter as a separate call out. I used case studies to validate my point of view. This time around, I incorporated case studies throughout the chapter. I showcase other people's know-hows, then share my thoughts after. Topic-driven chapter