Unknown:
0:00
Blythe brumlevel, all right, 321,
Blythe Brumleve:
0:12
welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host, Blake brumleve, and in this episode, I want to talk about how I'm thinking about marketing in the freight industry for the second half of 2024 especially as we head into the holiday season, and also as we're starting to It sounds crazy, but to think about our budgets for 2025 maybe you are a sane person and haven't thought that far ahead, but as someone who has is a type A personality, I am thinking months in advance of the things I'm going to be working on, the content I'm going to be planning. And I want to give you guys, you know, a little bit of an insight into that thought process of what I'm thinking about why I'm thinking about it, and hopefully you can take away some tips for your own marketing plan, especially if you are a small or one person team. We have a pretty small operation over here. It used to just be me, but now we are fortunate enough to have podcast editor, video editor, and also a content operations, hire, and I don't know how to content operations position is probably the better way to put it. So it has helped me tremendously to be able to focus on the things that I'm good at. But I'm speaking about this from a lens of I still have to pop in, even though I have contractors that I work with regularly, developers that I work with regularly, graphic designers, all of that good stuff, I still firmly believe that it is vitally important that one person, small person teams, even founders, have just a General baseline knowledge of how personal branding should work, how you can capitalize on it. I'm going to get into a we just released a logistics marketing template, which I'll talk a little bit about later on in the show. But for the sake of this initial conversation, I want to talk about a few things that I am thinking about. And first, it's really around my content. So this podcast went fully independent in january 2023, so we're, we're coming up, you know, a year and a half of doing this, you know, full time podcasting. And I say full time kind of loosely because it is full time income, which I am absolutely, you know, gracious and grateful for. And it's hard to believe it's even true, because I just been working in content. I've been making content online in some way or another since 2007 since a blog spot was a thing, if you shout out to fellow older millennials who know what Blogspot is. But my internet marketing career really started there, transitioned into working at a three PL I was an executive assistant, but I think because I was the young person in the office, and I knew a little bit about social media and I had a blog, my boss said, hey, well, why don't you, why don't you take over all of our marketing so that's how I got started in the freight marketing landscape. It has been more than 10 years since that, God, yeah, 15 years at this point, but in and out of the the industry for oh, gosh, yeah, the last 15 years. We don't need to talk about that. What we need to talk about is what, who and what are making good waves in freight marketing nowadays, and we talk about this regularly on the freight Friends series. It's a monthly series that I record with freight waves Grace Sharkey, where we have a regular segment on the show now, where we talk about really good freight marketing. Go back and listen to some of those episodes. In case you want to see us talk a little bit more in depth about that, but I'm fascinated by this topic because, you know, for so long, we just saw the same stock photo images. We saw the same sort of messaging appearing on on social media, across different channels, you know, sort of the same kind of, like boring marketing, to the extent of, you know, US based companies hiring marketing agencies who, frankly, had no industry expertise. And they would come up with these different campaigns and these different initiatives, and they would be using, like the European trucks to market to US based truck drivers. And it was just, it's been a hot mess for a minute now. There are still a lot of companies that are following this. It's not even a trend, but following this mindset, I guess. And so I do want to give a shout out, and we have been giving regular shout outs to the companies that have been doing freight marketing, right? Because we are on, we are in the middle. Of, sort of, almost, I would say, a media revolution in logistics, where we have all different types of creators. We have more than 100 podcasters in logistics and supply chain now, which is crazy to think about. I used to be able to count all of the podcasts on one hand. Now it feels like everybody has a podcast, which I would argue that we need more of, frankly, because we're merely scratching the surface of the stories that can be told in this industry. I've said it once, and I'll say it again, and so as we sort of watch this evolution of creators coming into the mix with not just podcasters and YouTubers. But we also have the, you know, the meme accounts with please advise and freight caviar that have even freight caviar has evolved into a full fledged, like news operation now, but got started in the meme era, meme era of freight, I guess I could say, because there are, you know, a, definitely a, you know, more people making memes out there, but there's a newsletter, you know, I think of, you know, freight, covid, our newsletter, of course, think freight is another newsletter that comes to mind. Freightways, of course, has their own newsletters, digital dispatch. Everything is logistics. You know, we have our own newsletter that that goes out regularly. And so we are starting to see more and more of sort of the modern media landscape creep its way into the logistics industry. And then at the same time we've had, over the last sort of handful of years, we've had all of this new technology coming into the mix. And so you have this intersection of technology and media that is at a crossroads, not really a crossroads, but they are intersecting now with the greater logistics industry as a whole. So you're starting to see more media, of course, but also more personal branding. And where I find it particularly interesting is the leadership at a lot of different companies that are are taking the bull by the horns, frankly, and and doing their own sort of personal brand marketing, but it's tied to the company as well, and I think a good example of that. And if you're, if you're just listening, I'm sorry, I'm going to bring up, I'm going to try to do my best to explain this. But Carrie Jablonski, Jablonski, former guest of everything is logistics. She's been on the show before. She's fantastic, but she also has a really great social media presence. CEO of trucker tools, and she is regularly sharing valuable insight, like stuff that is obviously valuable and insightful about the company that she works at. But she's also sharing a lot of really just industry specific knowledge, like top commodities trade lanes, things like that. So if you're, if you're looking at the screen right now, I have a couple posts pulled up by Carrie, and it's really well done because she's got this graphic. So this first graphic that that I'm going to talk about is freight by state, and she's covering Georgia in this particular in this particular image. So you can kind of tell that, like this is, this is obviously a series that can go on for 50 plus times depending on, you know, what areas you count as a state, and which care which states you don't really count. What is it? The famous like Abe Simpson, from The Simpsons quote where he says, you know, I'll be dead in a grave until I count Missouri as a state. Yeah, very, very niche joke there, and I kind of bombed on it. I'm sorry, sorry for mentioning that and ruining the flow of the show, but Carrie does a fantastic job. So you can notice that this is a branded image. So it says trucker tools up at the top. It shows the state of Georgia, but then it also shows all of the key business hubs, intermodal terminals, major cargo airports, seaports, major highways and interstates, also like the commodities, major produce. It's really, really cool, the way that she does this and the way that her team, I'm assuming she has a graphic designer that that is helping her create these images, set their trucker tools, branded. And then in the post itself, she goes through the overview of all of the major cities, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah, the major industries being manufacturing, agriculture, logistics and transportation, freight, infrastructure. She goes over the highways, the cargo airports, the seaports. She also lists, you know, some fun facts and inbound and outbound freight. The fun fact I will read off for you. It says this is the world's busiest and most efficient airport, handling 650,000 metric tons of cargo annually. So fun little freight. Fact there for you. Top commodities, mixed freight, motorized vehicles, machinery, electronics and consumer goods. Produces, peanuts, peaches, pecans, blueberries, eggs, poultry, beef, cotton, hay. That the heaviest peak season for Georgia is May through August. She also lists you know. Challenges of the Georgia this freight by state for the state of Georgia, the challenges including accommodating and freezing trade freight traffic as the state population grows, congestion and delays at the Port of Savannah, coordinating between different transportation modes, truck, rail and ship all requires efficient logistics management. Current notable projects and initiatives, including the Savannah Harbor expansion project, new air cargo facilities at Hartsfield, Jackson, Atlanta International Airport. But yeah, all of that is fantastic information. And this is what every company in logistics could be doing, is going deep on this kind of information, and this is the CEO, probably working closely with, I would assume a marketing team, maybe a smaller marketing team. I should actually ask her what the what the marketing structure of her team looks like, and maybe a little bit of the behind the scenes of how she comes up with this kind of content. If she I'm assuming that she has people helping her with this, because it is very extensive. The graphics look fantastic. The text is even better than the graphic, which is really important on LinkedIn. And I just think that this kind of I would, I put it in the bucket of leadership driven marketing. And this is what you want your leaders to be doing, to be creating online, is doing stuff like this. She also goes on to to make other posts. You know, she has college football freight. So she has another post that shows all of the different routes for college football. So it's, it's really, really cool, really, really in depth. She's also advertising, you know, on her own personal LinkedIn page. I might add, you know, different happy hours and different meetups for trucker tools. And I just think that this is a fan. If you're looking for examples of great marketing and freight, we talk about them all the time with the freight Friends episode. And then also, we've mentioned Carrie before on how great of a job that she does. But I just, I felt like this was worth mentioning again. Now to give you a kind of a little bit of a roundabout of other good freight marketing, I actually keep a bookmark of this. Anytime I am on social media, I have a folder that I keep tabs on and that if I see some good marketing going on from folks in freight, I'm saving it to this bookmarked folder. So just going through, you know, a couple of these tanker trackers who were tracking tankers in and around the Olympics. I thought that that was great. Also shout out to Colin Mansfield. He is, gosh, I'm blanking on his title, but I know he works at yardage, yard management solutions, another former guest on the everything is logistics podcast. But he actually made a whole website to create memes for the freight industry. Really, really cool, really creative. And so just kind of thinking outside of the box that this kind of stuff is taking place. It's really cool in this industry. So I wanted to bring up another photo, which I, you know, it mentions Jacksonville. So I just thought that this was really brilliant. He's not really a freight guy, but great. Greg Eisenberg, he shows a photo that says, sales versus mark, sales versus marketing. In one photo on the left hand side, you can see the sales photo, and it's a guy holding up his thumbs up, trying to hitchhike. And it says to Jacksonville. And then the on the marketing side of the promo, it says two moms for Christmas, so same image, just different ways of getting your message across. And so I thought that that was a really important reminder to have in my folder of good freight marketing, of the difference between sales and marketing. And that is sales, it's you're headed to Jacksonville and marketing is two moms for Christmas. So it's two different messages. Both hammer home the same point, but one is significantly more emotional ties than the other one, and that's what you want in your marketing. You you want it to create that emotional tie. Next up the Washington State D, o, T, Department of Transportation. Account made this.
Unknown:
14:22
You so that was a tick tock of, uh,
Blythe Brumleve:
14:29
what from the Washington D O T account of showing all of the different road construction projects that are coming on. And in case you can't tell, there's a little fun vibe to it. And so I just thought that that was really, really fun to mention that you can have some fun with your marketing. You don't have to be stuffy. You don't have to, you know, just, I don't know, just do the things that everybody else is doing. Have a little creativity, you know, allow your especially like some of the younger folks within the. Office if they have a good social media presence already, that is a fantastic opportunity to take someone who already has a strong social media presence and try to help them make content for our industry. That's how I got started in this industry, and I've done pretty well for myself, and I firmly believe that there is talent inside of your office that you could be empowering in order to make some content for your own company. Another, another company that I've mentioned before, also former guest on the show, is load partner. I think that they have brilliant marketing. It's fun, it's, it's It's modern, it's, you know, who knows how many leads they're gonna get from this, but I'm showing you on the screen, and they just, you know, they, they have, they, they're an ai, ai solution that is a voice tool. And so they take a common meme, and then they as super, not superimposed, but they edit in their own sort of UX and UI into the meme itself, and it's just, it's fun, it's cool to see truck stop. I can't talk about good freight marketing without talking about the next two people in my saved bookmarks folder, and that's truck parking club and truck stop. Both of those accounts have a variety of different ways that they treat their marketing. I think it's all stellar. I think it's fun. And you can check out either of those two feeds we're looking at x right now. But if you go over to LinkedIn, they have a lot of really great marketing that goes on over there as well, and it just really sort of rings home the point that you can have fun with your marketing, and that you can do different things, and you can do creative things, and you can do informational things, like what Carrie does. And so I think that there is, there's room for all of these different solutions. It's just a matter of what's going to work well for your audience, and not necessarily creating marketing, just to create fun marketing, but you do have to kind of have a purpose behind it. So just a few notes on good freight marketing in case you know you might have, you might have missed any of those different posts, in case you missed it. So hopefully you'll like those. Next step that I want to talk about is I am part of a group called ballast. It is for logistics founders, and it's run by Nate Schutz. He is find him on LinkedIn. Connect with him if you are a founder in logistics. I cannot speak enough about how pivotal this group. We meet once a month. He has various different meeting dates, so it's like Wednesdays and Fridays and some Thursdays, but you can pick which day of the month that works best for you, and it's a cohort of around 15 to 20 people that join a call. Now it is starting to grow to where we talk about a lot of things that I can't actually mention on this show, because it would violate the trust of that group. But one of the things that we do have regularly is special sessions. And one of those special sessions was covering LinkedIn, what works for some people, what doesn't work, questions around LinkedIn, algorithmic changes, things like that. And so Cara Brown, Charlie safro, Curtis, de Garrett and to Garrett, I think it's Curtis. Curtis, Garrett, sorry, Curtis and Trey Griggs, all folks and myself as well. We were all on that call, and we all kind of helped to share our in the trenches knowledge with exactly what is working for us on social media, specifically when it comes to LinkedIn. And so there were a lot of tips that were really, really beneficial, and just it centers around how pivotal LinkedIn is as far as a growth mechanism. And might feel a little crowded. It might feel like you don't have enough time in the day for this, but I can tell you that I can attribute, I would say 30 to 40% of my leads that come through for digital dispatch and everything is logistics come through because of LinkedIn. It might be more. I'm actually redoing my analytics reports, more on that in a minute, but just from sort of my own sort of anecdotal experiences of seeing leads come through the DMS that I get a good majority of my leads come from LinkedIn, and we have since doubled down on our presence on LinkedIn, both both on my personal page and then also from a business page perspective. Now your personal page is always, always going to have more reach than your business page, because LinkedIn is a business they make money off of advertising. They want businesses, especially business pages, to advertise, but personal, the personal accounts is really where a lot of the magic happens, and that's where we put a lot of our energy and a lot of our focus. So you can do. Do the same. And in this balance session, where we were going over a lot of the different tips, I wanted to share a little bit more, not of anything, you know, business, personal, that would get me in trouble with that group, but just some of the things that we have learned, specifically myself and also Charlie saffro, because we have been partnered with LinkedIn in the past, and so we have a little bit more insight into how the algorithms work, what things they're trying to push, and why they're trying to push them. And one thing that I thought was really interesting is what Charlie learned about the LinkedIn rewarding human engagement. So behind its algorithm, it measures engagement and promotes content that has high engagement. And engagement is measured in this way, a like on your post is worth one one point. The See More button is worth two points. So you know how, if you're on LinkedIn, you might not have noticed this, but next time you're on the platform, open up LinkedIn, and a lot of times you'll see a post that starts with a sentence, and then you'll see that see more option. If you click on that, see more option that is a signal to the algorithm that someone is interested in reading more of that post. So your intro sentence should be very strong, because that's where two points in LinkedIn, you know, algorithmic measuring contest, whatever. Okay, so, so and the other ones, original author repost with thoughts. So you LinkedIn also has that feature, you can repost with original thoughts. This, that one was actually new to me, because I just repost things without adding an original thought to it. So this will actually helped me change up my own strategy by knowing that that is worth additional points in the post itself. So we're going to repost it with my own original thoughts. And you can too instant reposts are six points. So that's that's a little contradictory, actually, because instant reposts are are so much easier than having to off, you know, have the author repost with an original thought that one is only three points. So if an instant repost is six points, that's it. That is signaling, and this is not just your content, but someone else doing the instant repost on your content. So that is worth six points, not just you reposting your own posts, which I am guilty of. I have done it, but I have my reasons too. A comment without engagement is seven points. A comment with author response is nine points. Comment with a response from other author is 11 points. Now going back to that comment with the author response, that is one that I focus on a lot, so I spend I check in with LinkedIn two or three times a day. So typically it's first thing in the morning when we have a post. Go live. I check to see if there are any comments. If there are comments, then I will go in and I will personally reply to those comments. And so knowing that I'm trying to entice the conversation. I'm trying to engage the audience. I'm trying to add more activity to the post itself. This has been a strong focus of mine, I would say, for the last six or seven months. So it's cool to see that that is worth a lot. And if we're gamifying social media, which that's really all an algorithm is, is gamifying your attention, then commenting with your author response. I think is, is really, really vital. And I think that that is one of the things that should be done more often, on on LinkedIn, and just really in social media in general, just keep it civil. Just keep it, you know, educational or nice, like, there's i for LinkedIn. I think it's the nicest social media experience, and I think it's the nicest and I don't think I know, just based on my conversations with folks that work at LinkedIn, is that they want to reward people that have those conversations in a civil manner, but they also want to reward the conversations that, how do I put this that are not edited? So, for example, you have your name, your company name, attached to your profile that is very enticing, both to advertisers, but then also from a brand safety perspective. And so from what I have learned is that there are a couple things going on. So number one, advertisers are, there's a lot of if there's a lot going on with advertising, and we're, I'm actually going to get into a little bit of what's going on with the Google drama a little bit later on. Bit later on. But advertisers want to know that they're advertising in a place that makes sense for their audience, but is also brand safe. They don't want their ads showing up next to controversial topics. They don't want their ads showing up next. To You know, like religious or political content, it's just muddying the waters that most advertisers don't want any part of. So with LinkedIn being a more professional network, they are marketing themselves as the safe place for advertisers to put their put their dollars and to put their content. So that is one layer of it. Another layer of it is that you can now, and I don't know how many folks know this, but for folks who don't know, you can now edit your posts in LinkedIn. And so with that in mind, LinkedIn is also coming at it from a brand safety perspective, where, if you are editing your post in the first 40 minutes of the post, no, I'm actually, I'm reading that wrong. I'm sorry, within the first hour of the post, don't edit it, because what that signals to LinkedIn, what they what they don't want to happen is someone to like the post, to engage with it and then have it edited an hour later to say something different. That is a brand safety thing. Most people are editing for spelling errors, grammatical errors, things like that. But editing your post within that first hour is a signal to LinkedIn that this person is not that sure about this post, so we're not going to serve it to as many people as we maybe should. So try not to edit your post within the first hour, because as a whole, LinkedIn is trying to market itself as the safe place for advertisers, especially with an upcoming election, especially with, you know, the world feeling as divisive as it is, it's really it's there's actually a lot more good in the world than there is bad. That's a story for another day. But from a brand safety perspective, that is what LinkedIn is thinking about. And if that's what they're thinking about, then that's also what they're awarding on the algorithm standpoint. So if you want to play the game, play the game, but do it in a way that is not robotic. I think that there are certain people out there that are commenting on posts, and I can tell that you used AI to do it that, to me, is not authentic. I'm probably not going to respond to those types of comments, those types of posts, just because I don't if, if you didn't take the time to write out a sentence yourself, then why should I take the time to respond to you? And if I can clearly see that you are using AI, and when I say clearly, I mean using the word like, delve into this exciting opportunity, revolutionary, innovative, you know, all of these words I'm so tired of hearing, and it's just the dramatic increase of these, like specific words as just, it's, it's, it's insane, if there's some chart out there that that uses, especially when it comes to the word Delve, AI tool, chatgpt, Claude, all of these different AI tools, they love the word Delve. And so the amount of posts that now include that word is just astronomical since these AI tools came out. So that kind of language, I would say, just put it. Here's the easiest way to do LinkedIn. Set aside 30 minutes in the morning. Set aside 30 minutes at night, respond to people post comments on other people's posts that you find interesting. Connect with people that you find interesting, that you possibly want to do business with them. Don't send them a creepy cold DM the second after they accept your connection request. Just be normal. And then, over time, you will build up a good social media presence, and you will learn what works and what doesn't work. Another last tip that I will bring from this session is, is what Charlie likes to call, like the the selfie reset, where she's maybe she's done a couple posts in a row, and this is, I believe, she learned this from LinkedIn, that where she does maybe, like, a few posts in a row, and they don't hit as hard as they typically would, or, as you know, maybe they usually would show she calls it. She's like, I'm gonna play the game, and I'll post a selfie with a thought accompanied with the selfie. And it works. It works as a reset for your algorithm, because the thought process behind it is, you use the selfie reset method, and then after you use the selfie reset that lots of people are going to engage with that post, and the people that engage with that post are more likely to see your next post. So if you think about it from a strategic standpoint, say you got a new product announcement or a new product launch. Post the selfie first with a good thought behind it. Don't just post some lame quote or be cringy. Post the selfie with some valuable information behind it. Do the selfie reset, and then your next post can be about a new product, a new launch, something that you want more eyeballs on. That's the way to do it organically. Mechanically. And I think that those are a bunch of really good tips, just a few of the tips that we learn during our sessions with the ballast community. And so I cannot speak you know enough about how much value this group has brought into my life, into my business and just overall, just sort of work life balance and managing the stress around it all. It's really like a therapy session once a month. So if you are a logistics founder, I highly, highly recommend joining ballast if you have the means in order to do so, it is paid for itself in dividends, from my perspective. Okay, next up, I want to talk about, you know, so just from, like, more of like, a quick thoughts, like rapid fire. Next one is, I'm really thinking about balancing the quality and the quantity of the posts that I put out into the world. So for folks who are familiar with this show, you know that I have regular interviews, and I would argue the first six to seven months of 2024 has been really, really interview heavy, interview focused, where I'm creating less solo shows like this. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's a bad thing. I personally love doing shows like this, because I can get more of my thoughts out there and what I'm kind of thinking and, you know, based on the analytics behind the show, it's you guys seem to like them too. And so hopefully, you know, being able to the way I'm thinking about content is getting away from just having someone on the show just for the sake of having them on the show. What we are moving more towards in the shows that I have really, really enjoyed is when I take a subject matter expert and I pair them with a topic. The first show that comes to mind is the show that we did in that we released in January, with salmer cogliano. He is the host of what's going on with shipping, president of Sal's fan club. In case anyone is out there trying to take my spot. Don't even think about it. Former guest on the show of everything is logistics. But he talked about how war affects shipping at that time, you know, this was a few months after, you know, Israel and Hamas war started. You know, we're also got the Ukraine and Russia, a war that's still ongoing a few years later, and so he was really able to take these complex topics and break them down into a way that affects our industry. If I could have those kinds of conversations every week for the rest of my life, I feel like I would be the smartest person on the planet. It was, I love doing shows like that, and I want to do more shows like that. This NASA series that, you know, we've been releasing, and that, you know, I started releasing in August. I'm pretty sure this show is might drop at the end of August or early September. It's still kind of summertime, in my mind. But this is the kind of flow that I want to get into. Is having interviews that are more topic focused, where I can have that subject matter expert really speak to the nuances and go in depth with that conversation at hand, mixing in different compilations, mixing in solo shows like this, so I'm really starting to think about, how can we continue to raise the bar with our content, so that we're not like everybody else? I want this show to consistently be about getting a little bit better each and every day, and whether that is really powered through conversations with really smart people. So I want to have those conversations, but I want them to be a little bit more focused on a central topic and less so about career history. I think I've leaned a little little too heavy on the career history aspect, and a lot of my conversations just over the last few years. I think that the career backstory is important context to the conversation that we're having, but I need to do a better job of steering that career backstory and why it's relevant to the to the topics that you guys care about. That's ultimately my responsibility is to make content that you care about, that I care about, because it's going to show in the in the Listening analytics, it's going to show in the performance of the show. I'm not going to get as many advertisers or sponsors for the show if I'm not drawing in those eyeballs. So I need to be better, and so that's how I'm thinking about being better is balancing the quantity and the quality of the shows. We currently release two episodes each week. I think that's still a pretty good cadence to keep on. That's eight episodes a month. That gives us the flexibility to go in depth with a few different topics and still be able to take care of. Sponsors with tie and with SPI and really drilling deep into that the folks who are in the trenches and learning that day to day knowledge, so that we can continue to try to break down these information silos that exist in this industry, so that that's how I'm thinking is balancing more quality and quantity. I feel like we're we're hitting the quantity, but I do feel like there's always going to be ways to get better with the quality, and that includes optimizing headlines. What is the show title? What is the subject line on the email newsletter? What is that first sentence on a LinkedIn post that causes somebody to hit the See More button. I'm trying to find the nuances of all of those different aspects that go into creating content, and hopefully it shows in the continuous, hopefully improvement of this show what we talk about and why we talk about it. I've kind of mentioned a few times about analytics reports. It has been such a pain in the ass. I'm just being frank, of trying to create Analytics reports that help me make actionable decisions. I think for far too long, I've been looking at, you know, HubSpot reports. Been looking at Google Analytics, for reports which suck. Google Analytics four is so bad, but we have started taking that data and building Looker studio dashboard reports. Now, Looker studio is maybe you've never heard of it, but it's essentially a data tool that you can take in different different integrations from all of these different software programs you're probably using, and be able to pull all of your data into one place and be able to create a report off of that so you can get the most important information of how your marketing and your sales is performing. It
Unknown:
37:01
is stressful to create. It is
Blythe Brumleve:
37:05
annoying to create. I thought that I was going to have this thing launched by May. It is almost September. I am close, but we're not there yet. And what I mean by that is that Google Analytics four has been, frankly, largely useless since they since Google moved from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics four. If you've historically had Google Analytics on your site, this summer, they actually discontinued Universal Analytics, and so you have to use their new Google Analytics four. The trouble with Google Analytics four is that the reporting data is just it. They've had to sort of just cut and remove and piece together all of these different aspects of Google Analytics, because of privacy concerns and because of legal and, you know, EU regulations and things like that. They want Google wants to be able to offer Google analytics across the globe, but with European like GDPR rules, you have Colorado, you have Utah, you have California, you have all of these different states that are enacting their own sort of privacy laws. And so Google Analytics has to, you know, it's free. At any time, some a product is free, you are the product. And so knowing that Google Analytics had to, and I'm just going to call it GA because I'm tired of saying that the whole It's a mouthful, Google Analytics, in fact, I need to take a drink of my water because of this. But I forgot my train of thought. Long story short, it sucks so, but the data is still there. So we can take the data from Google Analytics, from HubSpot, from MailChimp, also from Google Sheets, our lead forms, podcast data, all of these different sources, I'm able to now pull in to liquor, liquor, Looker studio, and then inside of Looker studio, I'm able to make these dashboards that can bring all of the most important information to the forefront. So when I say the most important information, right off the top of my head, the How did you hear about us? The free text field that is on all of my high intent forms, on all of my websites, even my client websites, it's a free text field that asks, How did you hear about us? We take that in, we take that information, we export it to a Google Sheet. We have some if this, then that you know, sort of formulas that are going on in that Google Sheet that will attribute say, maybe they said, like, oh, a LinkedIn post or oh, this podcast episode with this guest, you know, all of those different phrases and keywords, we have a filter set up to where all of that data then funnels into a more signal based data to borrow a phrase I. Com, from refine labs and their demand. Gen podcast with Chris Walker, I know that's probably not the title, and I think it's revenue. Vitals podcast with with Chris Walker, fantastic podcast. It changed my marketing life. Highly advise. You know, following him on LinkedIn, he's always dropping every day he is dropping a gem on LinkedIn of how to think about your marketing, how to think about your data, where you're collecting it, and why, and how you can turn that data into signals, and then use those signals to to really drive home of what is moving momentum, to get folks to become aware of you, to then inquire about your services and ultimately become a customer. I cannot, I speak very highly of Chris Walker, because he has, like his insight and his data has changed my marketing life. But using that thought process around what are the most important pages on my site? Is there a form on that site? Are they filling out the How did you hear about us on that most important page? How far are they scrolling? Are they scrolling 50% of the page? Are they arriving to the page not scrolling at all and leaving? Are they is the traffic to the page trending up or down? Is homepage traffic trending up or down. So being able to see those important stats can really be extremely valuable into showing you what's working, what's not working. Where can you adjust in the future without becoming overly obsessed with all of this data to the point where you're, you know, pouring over spreadsheets every day. None of us have time for that. So the point of these analytic reports that I'm building inside of Looker studio is to bring the most important pieces of data from my marketing and sales tech stack and putting it front and center so I'm not overwhelmed, so that I can look at all of the most important pieces of data, get that eagle eye view of what's working and what's not working, so I can take that Eagle Eye View and get into the nuances of all of the other stuff that we're doing. And so that's something that we are building inside of Looker studio. I'm actually going to be deploying it for myself here very soon, and then after that, we're going to be doing some testing with some of our clients on the digital dispatch side of things, which side note, yes, I've seen the news. Yes, I don't know if most folks know what I'm talking about, but yes, I've seen a major company using the word and try to brand a tool called Digital dispatch. I'm aware of it. Thank you for sending those messages to me. It's being handled. It's all I can say on it right now. There are going to be more information on that in the future, but for the real digital dispatch clients that are using or that will be using this Looker studio template, because that that's, that's what we're going to be doing, is we're going to be turning this into a template that our clients can replicate, so they can kind of get that same Eagle Eye View as well, and pulling in a variety of different sources from their entire sort of marketing and sales tech stack. Now this is going to be ideal for, you know, the small teams, the small to medium sized businesses, for the enterprise level customers, you probably already have something very sophisticated, and probably something very similar, that you are using as well, but we're going to have more information on that soon. So it's marketing. It's just It's crazy. It's so much data, it's so much to sort through, and not enough time to really give it the attention that it needs. So hopefully these reports will solve that. A few more quick thoughts here. I'm also thinking about all of my different transcripts that I have from meetings. I'm sure you've been part of meetings where you have either Fathom note taker. Otter is my personal note taking app of choice, where it automatically joins the meeting, takes notes for you, creates action items and takeaways, and then it emails it back to you, or it emails it out to everybody that was on the call. Really, really fantastic tools that have helped me personally to be able to focus more on the meetings themselves, and be able to be more present in a meeting and not feel like I have to take notes every single step of the way where I might be losing information in the process. So I'm also thinking about how I can take my otter transcripts, using that proprietary information, that proprietary data, and turning them into a chat bot that lives on on top of my website. So that that's something that I'm thinking about doing here in the next few months, should be fairly easy. I say that it should be fairly straightforward. In order to create that process, there will be some fine tuning that needs to be done. One, but it's trying to use to continue to evolve the a website in general, there's a lot of, I would say, discourse on LinkedIn around, what's the usefulness of a website? Do you need a full blown production, or do you need something simple? I tend to lean more towards the simpler, the better, especially well, especially for businesses, I should say for content sites, everything is logistics. Is never going to be a it's going to be simple in its presentation, but it's always going to have so much data, because it's importing YouTube and podcasts several times every day. So that is going that is a content heavy site, but presented, hopefully, in a simplistic way to where. And I mean that by when a visitor arrives on the site, they can find what they need, quick, very quick, as quick as possible. That is my ultimate goal. For a lot of businesses, you can get away with a handful of pages on your site, but thinking about it from the lens of how can you use your site to answer sales questions that someone might have during the buying process, during the research process, during the exploration process, to see if you're a good fit. Buyers are doing their research before they ever pick up the phone, before they ever fill out a lead form. They're doing that on their own. So how can you use the website to provide that intricacy, that in depth knowledge, but also not overwhelm the user that could potentially become a lead for you. And so that's where I think that these different meeting transcripts will really play a role, because I have them bucketed in two different ways. So I have leads for everything as logistics, and then I also have leads for digital dispatch. I separate those transcripts out into their own specific folder. And so knowing that, how can I take the transcripts from those conversations and create a chat bot that is powered by those conversations to answer frequently asked questions in a way that sounds like me, that sounds like digital dispatch, or it sounds like everything is logistics. And so that's what I'm thinking about, and I'm toying around with, you know, and I'm doing this on the side. So this is, you know, as much free time as I think I might have, I don't, but I just, I like tinkering, and this is something to tinker with. And so just an idea for other businesses out there that might be thinking about this too. Might be something worth exploring, especially if your company has already been using a lot of these different note taking apps is, how can you take that data and turning turn it into something useful? And I think that that's going to be a very, very good use case for us in the future, because I'll give you just sort of a an answer or an example for me is that I don't offer marketing services. I offer a marketing focused website, website building, website management. But I still have people that reach out and want me to do marketing services for them, want me to do their social media, and I don't do that. I have no desire to do that. So if that chat bot could help answer some of those questions ahead of time, it will save not only me from getting on a meeting with somebody that's unqualified to be a customer, but also save that customer's time like they're looking for a solution. So how can I provide them with the quickest answer as possible that doesn't waste each other's time, them getting on a call with me to find out I don't offer marketing services is not a good use of either of our time. So the my thought process is, is, how can we take the information that we already have and help it turn into or help that information, help the user make a decision on if I'm a good fit for them or not. So that's kind of how I'm thinking about, you know, different transcripts. I think I'm also dealing with a little bit of burnout from conferences. I'll be honest, I've been to a lot of conferences in the last year and a half, and it's a lot, especially for a one person business, essentially a one person business. I do have contractors that I work with, so I don't I don't know, it just feels weird to call myself a one person business anymore, because I do have help. I'm very thankful enough to have that help and be able to afford the budget for that help. But I conferences take so much out of you, and it's not just being at the conference itself. It's the lead up to it. It's the the prepping, all of the content, the information, the things you're going to do, the scheduling ahead of time. It's the follow up afterwards. It's the the catching up on all of the emails and the project notes that you missed while you were out. It. It's a lot, and it can have a very and especially if you're going to a half a dozen, maybe a dozen conferences a year. I did a half a dozen last year. I've done 123, I've done four this year. I got two more on the docket for the rest of the year, and that it already feels kind of like a lot, um, and so I, I'm, I'm thinking about for, especially for 2025 is, how can I pick two or three conferences to go to and really pour a lot of my heart, energy and soul into those and then that way not feel so spread thin the rest of the year. And so I'm thinking about that in that regards, because create a lot of content, and with my content, I look at LinkedIn, I look at social media as a way that I can have a keynote in front of my target audience every single day. And so what is the value of a conference when I already have that reach, and that everybody, frankly has the potential to have that reach, and so the value of a conference is shifting for me to where I only want to go to events that I'm going to genuinely learn something, or that I'm going to see something cool, manifest freight waves, those conferences come to mind as something that I'm going to go wow, and I'm going to want to come back to. And networking is also going to be a big focus. And so knowing that, how can I plan out my year? I'm already thinking about 2025, but how can I plan out my year? So then that way I'm hitting the most important conferences to me at that particular time, if that makes sense. So that's something that I'm also thinking about lastly. And I admit or not, lastly, I have two more topics that I want to get into. The show is already 50 minutes, so I'll try to wrap this up a few more things. I have mentioned Google a few times in this in this episode, and I thought that this was really, really interesting that I wanted to show you guys, and that is Google advertising just in general. So Nike has had a little bit of trouble over, I would say, stock performance trouble, which I guess you know, especially with the market nowadays, there's a lot of stocks that have had trouble as of late, but this one in particular, I thought was really, really insightful, because after the release of Nike's q2 2024, financial results, they lost 25 billion in market cap In a day, and shares hit their lowest since 2018 declining 32% since the beginning of 2024 that is massive as far as losses. And there was a the the former CMO of Nike had a LinkedIn post that talked about it details Nike's and I'm reading now from Gregory Kennedy, and he is the founder of brand Zen, and he says, even if you're not in marketing, you should read this post from the former CE CMO of Nike. It details Nike's transition from a brand driven demand creation engine to a data driven performance D to C model that relied primarily on sales on nike.com the results not good. We just talked about the losing 25 billion in market cap in a day, and declining 32% since the beginning of 2024 but in this LinkedIn post, and Gregory goes on to explain his favorite part or his favorite excerpt of the post. It says, Nike invested a material amount of dollars, billions into something that was less effective but easier to be measured, versus something that was more affected but less easy to be measured. In conclusion, an impressive waste of money, and I think that that is such an IT circles back to my conversation about Chris Walker and his podcast Analytics reports inside of Looker studio, trying not to become inundated with data and obsessive about data to where you are focused on only things that you can measure. I run a podcast. I know that someone is going to listen to several episodes before they ever if they ever reach out to me to become a lead. I can't measure that on a singular data point. I can't draw a straight line of when someone listened to an episode to when they became a customer. It's impossible. Any attribution software out there that is saying that that is possible, are lying. They're trying to get you to buy their software product. And this result is not uncommon. From Nike. This result is. Is massive across all industries, across all sectors where folks are over investing. Take Google, for example. I need to drink water before I say this. Think about what happens in your typical buying cycle. And a normal buying cycle. You see someone on LinkedIn, see someone on social media, you see them regularly post, or maybe it's a company page, you see them regularly post about their product or their service. So what happens afterwards? Do you think that that person knows your website URL immediately of where to convert, where to become a lead, where to make a purchase. They do not so what do they do? They open up Google, they search for your brand name, they find your website, they click on it, and then hopefully they become a customer, or they become a lead, and then hopefully become a customer. Google has been given this artificial inflation of their importance in marketing strategy, where businesses are placing so much money into Google and Google ads because they see it as a number one traffic source. They see it in their marketing reports, where they say Google is sending how 90% of our traffic is coming from Google. Oh, my God, we have to buy more ads. We have to buy it's clearly working, so why don't we put more money into it? But it's not Google is a path through, pass through, channel, meaning somebody is not necessarily. A very small amount of people are searching for so well, let me, let me take that back, there's a large amount of people that are searching. They're either searching for a problem or they're searching for a brand name. When they're searching for a problem, they're not as high quality of a lead as someone who has followed you on social media, who has listened to a podcast episode, who has watched a YouTube video that has seen your you know, freight by state graphics, you know that people are seeing this, and then they go to Google and they search your company, and they arrive on the company website, and Google is getting credit for that, not your LinkedIn post that you spent time with a marketing team and a graphic designer creating that graphic and then posting it out to your social media. Google unfairly gets credit for that conversion, and so instead, what we should be looking at is signals. We should be looking at what is driving someone to go to Google and search for our company, and that's where you can gather this kind of insight from different signals from different analytics providers, but also by asking, How did you hear about us? Not just in your high intent lead forms on your website, but also training your sales team, training your staff to start off their calls with that question, how did you hear about us? Because the people will tell you. They will tell you what stuck out in their mind of what made them pick up the phone to call you, or to fill out a lead form or to go to Google and do a search, they will tell you, and those are the high intent leads that you want to cultivate and that you want to cultivate that relationship for. So it's very interesting that it took Nike this long to figure this out, that they were so obsessed with measuring every single data point, that they lost the plot, that they lost the whole reason of what kind of marketing has really resonated with their audience throughout the history of the company that created that demand for their product wasn't an ad that they saw on some random news site or the ads that follow you around no matter what site you're on, it was the content that you were creating. And there's another company that figured this out a long time ago, and that's Adidas. Adidas figured it out in 2019 that they over invested in digital advertising. It says, Adidas admits that a focus on efficiency rather than effectiveness led it to over focus on ROI and over invest in performance and digital at the expense of brand building. And so this is something that every marketing person, every executive, every CFO, every CEO, should be taking a look at with how you're collecting your data. What are those signals that you are reporting on? Are you just getting traffic reports that show you 90% of all your traffic is coming from Google, because no shit that is the same for many companies, because Google is a pass through channel. They Google your brand name. They Google your company name because they don't remember your website address. And so just keeping that in mind that it's about the overall approach of persuasion. And I'm taking this from from John Long over on x, and He is the senior vice president of creative over at Digitas, but he says people are getting hung up on the headline, digital advertising doesn't mean anything in 2024 it's everything we do is digital so it's not just about digital advertising. He goes on to say it's about the overall approach of persuasion, making your brand famous, even among those who don't buy you, versus targeting, which is cultivating current customers. So there's two different silos of the way to think about this. As far as digital advertising is concerned, and digital advertising from the lens of Pay Per Click ads, there's anybody if you're looking to cut your budget, if you're looking at where you can cut some spending, you should probably look at your PPC campaigns. You should probably look at your social media targeting. You should probably look at your Google targeting, especially Google, I would still make the argument that social media advertising can be very effective, because you have that great amount of Facebook and Instagram got a shit ton of data on all of us, and so you know, having access to that data is extremely valuable for those platforms and help your ads really target, and maybe get into that bucket of persuasion that John Long is hinting to here, and that's making your brand famous, even among those who don't buy you, versus targeting, which is cultivating current customers. So think about where you're over investing in digital advertising, especially PPC, especially on Google, might be one of those things so lastly, and I think, you know, not lastly, just yet, Google is such an interesting company right now it is. There's so many things going on with that company. I do not think that it is the downfall of Google, though they did just actually get ruled as a monopoly. So you could see some splitting up of some of the entities that are under the alphabet umbrella, which is Google ads, which is AdSense, which is the same thing, but YouTube, you know, all of these different suite of tools that Google has, that alphabet has, they did, technically just get rolled as a monopoly. So more to be seen on that front, Google Search remains a challenging thing to decipher, because Google search is becoming less useful. And when you become less useful and you're a publicly traded company, you still have to develop that ROI for your investors. And I think it's something crazy that, like the overwhelming majority of Google's revenue, all comes from advertising. I don't want to say an exact percentage, but I know it's over 50% and so an enormous amount of their money comes from at search advertisement. And so of course, Google is going to over inflate their importance in analytic reports. And so it's up to us to become more cognizant of these tools, the data that they're reporting, and then really doing the hard work of talking to our customers and figuring out how they found us, because all of these different tools are going to tell you about how valuable they are. But it's really up to marketers. It's really up to the executives to to become smarter about how you're spending marketing money and why, but then also at the same time, recognizing that you there is no singular point A to point B of putting out a social media post and that person becoming a customer there, it doesn't exist. So stop obsessing about it. Worry about the the important metrics. Don't worry about all of the metrics. Check out your signals, check out your high intent pages visits there are they trending up or down? Your lead forms, the amount of people filling those out, trending up or down, sales calls, trending up or down, the the amount of high quality leads that are coming through, trend trending up or down, seeing how much money you're spending on lead gen software, and, you know, things like that, are they really, are they really pulling their weight? So all of these things should be factored into, what are the signals that your that your customers are giving you, and then reverse engineering from there, so that that's sort of my, my. Soapbox, especially around Google, because they are a publicly traded company, when the search results, when people stop trusting the search results, quite frankly, and when AI is just such a massive thing, elephant in the room, like bull in a china shop type thing, that is going to disrupt Google search, and when it it's already happening, social media started the trend where users are starting to go to Reddit, they're going to social media to search for specific answers to questions, and Google is now really being used in a vastly different way than it was even five years ago. So when it's being used in different ways, and people are trusting the search results less and less as a duty to their shareholders. They still have to make money, and so what does that mean? They're going to be serving you more advertisements. The quality of search is just going to slowly degrade, because it's going to be this vicious cycle where they have to add more advertising in to make up for the income lost, to make up for the less people that are using their platform. So it's going to be, I think, a slow death for Google search, and maybe they evolve, and maybe they can get Gemini right. I think that remains to be seen. They are still a massive company, and they still have a bunch of alphabet has a ton of other companies that they're going to be in business for the, I don't know, probably the next 100 years, for all I know, but I do think that Google search as a marketing tool, as an SEO tool, as you know, some place that we go to to trust the results. I think that that is evolving very rapidly. And I don't know that when that rapid change of user behavior happens. I don't know that these big companies like this can evolve as quick as they need to. So there remains to be seen, but that's sort of my thought process. I think I'm going to do a little bit of a larger episode on this, but I've kind of talked about it to, you know, a lot in this one already, so y'all let me know, if you want to hear, you know, more of like a, you know, sort of overall Google episode on their historic rise. And maybe what we're seeing is, is the downfall, not necessarily with the rest of their products, but with Google search, especially when it comes to SEO. It's a strange time for a lot of SEOs out there for trying to optimize websites, to try to optimize social to try to optimize for AI, it's SEO in general. I do not envy the SEO pros out there who are trying to navigate these waters, because I it just remains to be seen. Okay? For real, for real. Last thing, Oh, my God, I have talked a lot about content. I've talked a lot about measurement, and so bringing all of that together, I have a new product, and it's an affordable product, and it's a one time purchase. It's only 75 bucks a marketing template, and it's available on the digital dispatch website, and it's for content marketing strategy. It's a template and video walkthrough. I was kind of toying around with the idea of of turning some of our processes that we use to publish two episodes to to YouTube each week, to publish two episodes to the podcast each week, various social media messages every single day, going out to a variety of channels, email marketing. So bringing together of what our content process looks like, how I was able to build out this. This very podcast itself started off as the digital dispatch podcast that I was using to talk to my customers, but now it's evolved into its own independent show, and so using that methodology, and using everything that we have learned both as a solo founder who now has a team, so using those two different strategies, built this marketing template and a video walkthrough. It's less than an hour long, so you don't have to worry about like the cringy courses that are out there. This is a very specific goal of being able to turn content into a machine. How do you how do you start making that content? What does the distribution process look like? How are you handling editing? How are you handling post production. How are you handling social media? How are you handling the pre production of just what the hell you're actually going to talk about on a podcast or YouTube? It's incredibly valuable as a company to have a podcast or YouTube channel, or both at to use as a communication mechanism, either for your internal employees or your leads and your customers. Ideally you want it to cover all three of those different segments. So managing all that content is kind of a lot, and I say kind of it is a lot. And so we just recently launched a content marketing strategy for founders. It's a template and video walkthrough. I'll go through the brief product description here, $75 one time purchase. And it says our founder driven marketing plan is your ticket to mastering content creation without the stress. We'll teach you how to effectively organize your ideas, manage your projects and produce a steady stream of engaging content that resonates with your audience. With our easy to follow system, you can handle everything from podcasts to video clips, all while maintaining your day to day business activities, you need to elevate your personal brand and stay ahead of the competition with a content strategy that works as hard as you do. So this is a Google sheet. You can download it immediately after you purchase it. There's a video walkthrough, and then the template is yours to keep. I even put so I made it so that you can plan a year in advance. I talking a lot about planning in this episode, in this template, you'll be able to do the same, even if you don't have a year's worth of content to plan. You can also use different strategies, such as what I what I prefer, and what I actually do both of is I have two shows that I work on, as if I don't have enough to do the everything is logistics podcast, and I do. I record Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays for that throughout the month. And then I have another show for another company that I was CO that I'm a co founder of, called Jax podcasters united. It's a Northeast Florida based community, but we talk about podcasting on that show. For that show in particular, I record once a month, and we are we record being my co founder, also my fiance, we record once a month together. And so in that once a month, we're recording four different topics. And so we take those four different topics and that becomes a weekly episode for us. So we only have to devote two hours once a month a lot of times, not even a full two hours. Last time we recorded, it was like an hour and 40 minutes, but we got four shows out of it. And so thinking about it from a batch perspective, that's another way of how you can manage your content and think about it. And this template, this template, will help you manage that to turn, have a system for ideas, to have a system for recording, to have a system for distribution, thinking about your entire supply chain of your content, much like we think about our supply chain for any given product. So this template is aimed at the small marketing teams, the founder driven teams that want to use content as a way to connect with their audience, whether it's your leads, it's your customers or your internal employees. Highly, highly recommend it, obviously, or I wouldn't have created it, but that's using our 10 plus years of creating content online into an effective, efficient template that you can take and you can replicate and do the same thing. So hopefully that is of interest for you guys. I do have a link. I will have a link to purchase it in the show notes. Like I said, it's 75 bucks. It's one time. You have lifetime access to the template, and also the video that will walk you through it, that you can refer back to at any time. This is a first of the templates that we are going to start offering, just to sort of replicate the processes that that we've had going pretty smoothly for a while now, and so hopefully you will find some value in that as well. But That about does it for this episode, I hope you enjoyed this little bit of a different approach, where I'm talking, you know, bunch of different topics, but culminated into one episode that hopefully will help you map out the rest of your 2024 leading into 2025 if you have any topics that you want me to cover in the future, please let me know. We do have a new feature on the podcast itself. If you look in the show notes, it should say, send me a text. If you click on that link, you can send whatever topic idea you have in mind. You can send it directly. I get those texts. I read all of them. So make sure that you use that tool. If you have any questions about from this episode, you have any questions about the marketing template, or any just question future topic in general that you want me to cover, please let me know, because I do use those to determine my future content plans. We also have a form on the everything is logistics website. If you want to suggest a topic there, just make sure it's a topic that we've actually covered on this show, or, you know, central to this show, don't, you know, I don't got a PR pitch the other day for some tax professional, and I'm like, Well, I don't know that a local tax professional makes a lot of sense for my podcast. Or even, you know, that's neither here nor there. I'm rambling. Now it's time to close the show. So that's the pod. Thank you for listening and catch you real soon. Bye.
