Inbound Success Podcast

Ep. 265: What is social permitting ft. Jeff Risley

What does inbound marketing have to do with large public sector projects? While it’s not the typical use case we think of when someone says the phrase “inbound marketing”, the same concepts that were developed to attract, convert and close B2B customers can be used to communicate with stakeholders and secure buy-in for complex public projects. Jeff Risley and the team at Saxum call this “social permitting” and it involves four steps: Awareness Appeal Activation Advocacy In this epis...

Ep. 264: What really works with press releases ft. Mickie Kennedy of eReleases

In my experience, there are few marketing topics that inspire strong opinions as press releases do. It seems most companies treat them as a given when they make a new hire, release a new product, etc. But ask any marketer whether the bang is really worth the buck and you’re bound to get an earful on why press releases don’t work. At the same time, there are plenty of examples of companies that have seen great success from press releases. How do they do it? And when should you invest in sen...

Ep. 263: How customer stories helped drive Talroo's growth ft. Martha Aviles

Essential worker recruiting platform Talroo has been posting impressive growth, much of it fueled by a marketing strategy that revolves around telling customer stories. This year, the company is doubling down on the strategy and has a goal of producing dozens of new customer stories. On this week’s episode, Talroo VP of Marketing Martha Aviles shares the details of how her team creates and promotes customer stories, and the impact they’ve had on the business. Get the details on all of th...

Ep. 262: The science of virality ft. Estie Starr

“Let’s make a viral video.” Every marketer has heard those words at one point or another in their career. But making viral videos isn’t easy - otherwise everyone would do it. In this week’s episode, business and marketing consultant Estie Starr breaks down the science of virality to uncover the exact ingredients necessary to make something go viral. But she also explains why making something go viral isn’t always the best strategy, and shares when you should - and should not - shoot ...

Ep. 261: Executing a successful topic cluster strategy ft. Stacy Willis

Stacy Willis is one of the smartest marketers out there. I should know. I’ve worked with her for several years, across four companies. One of the things she’s really good at is content - both strategy and execution. And the content strategies she executes lead to real, measurable revenue. Stacy has found that while many marketers understand content strategy in theory, what trips most of them up is the execution. In this episode, she dives deeply into the lessons she’s learned about executi...

Ep. 260: The experimentation framework that Pearmill uses to drive paid ads ROI ft. Nima Gardideh

High growth companies turn to Pearmill to optimize their paid ads spend. With hundreds of millions of dollars of ad spend under management, the company has built up a considerable amount of data about what’s working on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Pearmill founder Nima Gardideh explains what goes into the company’s experimentation framework, and how they’ve used that framework to drive better results for their...

Ep. 259: How to use creativity to drive marketing results ft. Tom Shapiro

Lot’s of marketers talk about creativity, but most seem to think it’s a dark art. Stratabeat CEO Tom Shapiro sees creativity as more of a science than an art, and in this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, he explains the process that he’s used to spark creativity and develop powerful marketing campaigns. Tom’s approach includes the use of specific frameworks - including “the opposite” and “cross pollination” - to get people thinking differently. These are approaches that any...

Ep. 258: How Gated's advisor strategy is fueling its growth ft. Melissa Moody

Gated launched its “noise cancelling headphones for email” product in March of 2022 and has been growing its user base at 30 to 40 percent month over month. In this episode, Gated Co-Founder and head of marketing Melissa Moody describes how the company’s “influence marketing” strategy is fueling that growth. Specifically, she details how Gated is growing a network of advisors and advocates to help spread the word about Gated’s product.

Ep. 257: What a best in class blog looks like in 2022 ft. Sam Boyd

Blogging is a mainstay of any content marketing strategy, but with so much content out there - much of it of a very poor quality - what does a world class blog look like in 2022? CopySmiths content coach Sam Boyd works with clients to create blogs that drive search engine rankings, traffic and revenue. In this episode, he shares the best practices that the world’s top bloggers and content marketers use to get extraordinary results. From planning your blogging strategy, to writing approac...

Ep. 256: The intersection of user research and CRO ft. AJ Davis

How did one company increase conversation rates by 100% in just 4 weeks? Experiment Zone founder AJ Davis was the head researcher at Google Optimize, where she had the opportunity to work closely with the team working on conversion rate optimization. It was this experience that led her to create Experiment Zone, where she and her team marry those two disciplines — user research and CRO — to deliver major ROI to their clients. In this episode, she shares the process they use and breaks do...

Ep. 255: Using advanced segmentation to drive email marketing ROI ft. Sandy Donovan

Sandy Donovan - otherwise known as “The Email Lady” - helps ecommerce brands get better customer acquisition and retention results with email. Her work generates an average 68X return on brands’ investments in popular email marketing platform Klaviyo, and she’s been able to increase revenue by 600%+ in under 60 days. How does she do it? On this episode, Sandy explains why it all starts with proper segmentation of your email list. Whether you’re an ecommerce marketer, or a B2B marketer, t...

Ep. 254: Testing ad campaigns with a purpose ft. Colby Flood

For ecommerce brands, nailing a paid ads strategy is critical. And that takes lots of testing and iteration. Brighter Click CEO Colby Flood specializes in building scalable paid ads strategies for ecommerce clients, and in this episode he breaks down the testing process that he and his team use to refine their approach and improve the ROI of their clients’ ad campaigns. In addition to covering his testing framework, Colby shares how he thinks about the role of ads throughout the funnel, ...

Ep. 253: The 3 principles of marketing ft. Erik Huberman

Erik Huberman’s company Hawke Media has audited and developed marketing strategies for more than 4,000 businesses. Over time, they’ve distilled their process, along with lessons learned, into a methodology for marketing they call the “Hawke Method”. In this episode, he breaks down how the Hawke Method approaches what they call the “three principles of marketing”: Awareness Nurturing Trust We dug into all of this, plus the problem with using ROAS to measure advertising effectiveness, wh...

Ep. 252: Email metrics beyond open rates ft. Emily McGuire of AWeber

Beyond open rates, what metrics should you be using to measure email performance? AWeber customer evangelist Emily McGuire has dedicated her entire career to email marketing and knows what it takes to craft a good email. In this episode, she explains how email tracking has changed in the wake of recent IOS updates and which metrics you can use to determine whether your emails are actually performing, including: Click rates Click to open rates Conversions She also offers tips on thing...

Ep. 251: How to build a high performing marketing team ft. Tim Parkin

What does it take to build a high performing marketing team? Tim Parkin has built his career around answering that question. His approach centers around the thesis that people times process equals performance. What does that mean? Tim digs into it in this episode. It starts with documenting what you’re doing as a team. From there, the next step is to evaluate the team and identify who needs training, coaching or support - and what kind of organizational change is required to support the ...

Ep. 250: How to build a strong brand foundation ft. Bobby Gillespie

Bobby Gillespie spent years working in marketing and observed companies making the same mistake over and over again. And that mistake was trying to do marketing without first building a solid brand foundation. To address it, he created his own agency — Propr Design — where he helps companies do just that. In this episode, Bobby describes the process he takes clients through, including: Defining the company’s purpose and core values Identify your ideal customer profile Establishing a bra...

Ep. 249: How Constant Contact improved pipeline efficiency by 23X ft. Eric Stockton

When Eric Stockton took over as head of marketing for SharpSpring by Constant Contact following the company’s acquisition, he immediately set about shifting the focus from outbound to inbound marketing with the goal of building a pipeline of high intent hand raisers. The result was a doubling of the company’s demo attend rate, from 20 to 40 percent, and a 23X improvement in the number of leads that turned into closed won deals. While making that shift sounds simple, in practice it requires...

Ep. 248: How Tulip Media lowered CAC by 10x with Storybrand messaging

How did Tulip Media Group lower its customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 10X, from $40,000 to $4,000, in a matter of weeks? As a Storybrand certified agency, it was all about taking their own medicine. They started by interviewing their customers to determine their ideal customer profile, along with their pain points and the keywords that they would need to focus on to reach them. What they uncovered in those interviews led to a shift in the company’s messaging away from what they do and i...

Ep. 247: How Visme Went from 0 to 1 Million in Organic Website Traffic Ft. Farzad Rashidi

How does a website get more than 3 million visits per month with zero dollars spent on paid advertising? For Visme, it was all about an on- and off-page SEO strategy focused on creating great content for relevant keywords and then investing time in promoting the content and building up quality backlinks. The strategy worked so well that they developed a SaaS tool to manage it, and now that tool - Respona - is available for anyone to use. Farzad Rashidi is the marketer behind the strate...

Ep. 246: Building authority on LinkedIn ft. Mark Raffan

LinkedIn has undergone a renaissance in the last several years and today is a central focus for many B2B companies’ marketing strategies. But what does it take to do LinkedIn right? Mark Raffan of Content Callout is an expert at using LinkedIn for organic social marketing. In this episode, he explains why you should be putting twice as much effort into individual posts as you do company posts, along with advice on things like: When to use branded versus non-branded content How to create ...

Ep. 245: The role of branded entertainment in the marketing mix ft. Zack Slingsby

Branded content is any marketing content that does not have a direct sales-related objective associated with it. Because it’s not designed to have a straight line relationship with sales goals, many marketers struggle to justify investing in it. But branded content has an important place in the marketing mix, and this week, Human Factor Media founder Zack Slingsby explains why. Human Factor Media specializes in a “branded entertainment” - a subset of branded content focused on video. In ...

Ep. 244: How Everflow improved its Google Ads performance ft. Michael Cole

Ep. 243: Using podcasts in your ABM strategy ft. Harry Morton

With so many new podcasts popping up, how can you create a business podcast that truly stands out from the crowd while also driving revenue? Lower Street Media founder Harry Morton set out to solve for exactly this challenge and on this week’s episode, is sharing his lessons learned. TL;DR - he says it’s not enough to simply do an interview-style show. To get results, you need to lead with narrative. What does that mean, and how can you use podcasting to drive results for your account-...

Ep. 242: Marketing's role in product-led growth ft. Esben Friis-Jensen

Userflow co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Esben Friis-Jensen has devoted his career to providing SaaS businesses with the tools necessary to drive product-led growth. In this episode, he explains why, in what some have termed the “end user era”, product led companies are outperforming their sales-led peers, and dissects what marketers need to know to deliver on the promise of product-led growth. From the importance of making the product the focus of your marketing, to publishing trans...

Ep. 241: The neuroscience of storytelling Ft. Seth Erickson

Seth Erickson started his career in web design but quickly realized that without a good story, the website (and other marketing efforts) would fail to perform. That’s when he decided to become an expert in storytelling. Seth spent months studying not just the discipline of storytelling, but the neuroscience behind why stories are so effective, and shared what he learned in his book How to Hack Humans: Storytelling for Startups. In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Seth breaks ...

Ep. 240: TikTok Advertising Ft. Will Perry of Reason Agency

There’s a lot of buzz about TikTok advertising in the marketing world right now. But how can you know whether it’s the right channel for your business, and how should you get started? Reason Agency CEO Will Perry is a TikTok ads expert who has gotten incredible results for ecommerce brands. In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he approaches TikTok advertising, and shares actionable takeaways that any company - ecommerce or B2B - can use to build a profitable TikTok ads strategy.

Ep. 239: Why I'm excited about newsletter advertising Ft. Kathleen Booth

This week I’m changing things up and don’t have a guest. Instead, I thought I would talk about something I’ve been working on and am particularly excited about — newsletter advertising. Beginning in 2018, when I was at IMPACT and worked with the team there to launch The Latest newsletter, I’ve seen the potential of newsletter advertising to reach new audiences. Since the, I’ve used this strategy at a variety of early stage startups to test messaging and drive new leads. In this episode, ...

Ep. 238: How to get immediate ROI from the content you've already published Ft. Pankil Shah

What’s the best way to leverage the content you already have to drive more revenue? Outranking.io founder Pankil Shah specializes in doing just that for his clients, and in this episode, he shares how he does it. From how to identify existing content that needs to be optimized, to matching the way your content is written to buyer intent, improving internal linking structures, and adding strong calls to action or popups, Pankil explains, step-by-step, how to get more mileage out of your c...

Ep. 237: How Yotpo is using NFTs to foster community Ft. Cris Dinozo

When Yotpo’s global team of employees began to feel disconnected during the pandemic, the company made the decision to form a community powered by NFTs. Today, Yotpo’s “Fabulous Flamingo” NFTs are sought after tokens that signal a sense of belonging, but also serve as incentives for the team to get more actively involved in the company and its community. On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Yotpo Senior Director of Brand Marketing Cris Dinozo explains why Yotpo decided to...

Ep. 236: What marketers should know about Web3 and community Ft. Vyara Ndejuru

What is Web3, what does it mean for marketers, and how can it be leveraged to build community? Late Checkout is a thesis-driven Web3 community and holding company that is focused on the nexus between Web3 and community, and CMO Vyarda Ndejeru explains what that means, and what marketers should know about how Web3 may change the future of community building. From defining what Web3, crypto, the blockchain and NFTs are (in plain English!), to explaining why DAOs (those are centralized auto...

Ep. 235: Get better marketing results Ft. Dominick Keenan of Clickbank

How can brands use affiliate marketing to drive stronger marketing results? ClickBank VP of Sales breaks down what affiliate marketing is, who it is and is not right for, and what you should know if you’re planning to use affiliate marketing for your businesses. From how to manage affiliate relationships to ensure they don’t cannibalize your own marketing, to identifying the right influencers, determining how many influencers you should work with, and how to track and verify affiliate-ge...

Ep. 234: Building a founder brand Ft. Dave Gerhardt

What’s one of the most overlooked, yet high impact, marketing strategies? Dave Gerhardt says it’s building the brand of the company’s founder. It’s the strategy he used to help Drift become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies of all time, and what he later used to help Privy scale and get acquired. Now, Dave has consolidated everything he learned through those experiences into a new book, Founder Brand. In this episode, Dave outlines the three levels of building a founder bran...

Ep. 233: Nailing sales and marketing alignment Ft. Adam Johnson of ActiveCampaign

How can marketing and sales leaders work together to get world class revenue results? During his time with the company, ActiveCampaign SVP of Sales and Customer Success Adam Johnson has helped scale revenue from $20M ARR to $160M. One key to his success has been building a positive working relationship with marketing. In this episode, he shares lessons learned and insights on what it takes for marketing and sales to get aligned, from establishing a common language and understanding of th...

Ep. 232: Using NFTs for B2B marketing Ft. Phillip Alexeev

Why should marketers care about Web3? NFTs? The blockchain? Cryto currency? In this episode, Evergrow.io founder Phillip Alexeev breaks this topic down and explains, in plain English, what the blockchain, Web3 and NFTs are, how they can be used by marketers, and what, specifically, B2B marketers should know about their role in the marketing mix. If you’ve heard these terms and have been wondering what they have to do with marketing, this is the episode for you. Check out the full episo...

Ep. 231: Achieving category domination on Amazon Ft. Will Haire

Amazon represents tremendous opportunity for brands interested in entering the world of ecommerce, but pulling off a successful Amazon launch is a hurdle many brands fail to successfully overcome. In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, BellaVix founder Will Haire breaks down what it takes for brands to succeed on Amazon. From how to structure your product listings and write optimized descriptions, to using Amazon’s DSP to advertise and drive demand, he shares insights he’s develop...

Ep. 230: Using AI to optimize your paid ad spend ft. John Readman

For brands engaged in advertising campaigns across multiple channels, what’s the easiest way to know where to focus spend? On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Modo25 and Ask BOSCO founder John Readman talks about how leading ecommerce brands are using artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize their paid ads funnels and drive better business results.

Ep. 229: What VCs expect from marketing leaders ft. Heather Gadonniex

What do venture capital firms expect from the marketing leaders at the companies they’ve invested in? Heather Gadonniex has filled both roles, having worked as a marketing leader and now as an operating partner at Global From Day One, a New Zealand-based VC fund, and in this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, she shares her insights on what VCs expect from marketing leaders. Heather covers: The metrics that VCs want to see marketers reporting on How to prioritize when investing in...

Ep. 228: Get better marketing results with private podcasts ft. Nora Sudduth of Hello Audio

Podcasting has become one of the most popular B2B marketing tactics for driving top of funnel awareness, but it hasn’t really gained traction for use at the middle and bottom of funnel (and beyond). Hello Audio is trying to change that with private podcasts, and on this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Hello Audio co-founder Nora Sudduth explains what a private podcast is and how it can be used to drive greater content consumption, nurture leads, improve the customer experien...

Ep. 227: The marketing transformation mindset ft. Patrick Ward

Patrick Ward has served as head of marketing at three different companies ranging from one million to three hundred million in annual revenue, and repeatedly found success by focusing on five things which he says comprise the “marketing transformation mindset”. In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Patrick breaks down those five things which include: The company story Using the language of the customer Growing employee advocates Leading with the humans first Experimen...

Ep. 226: Death of the SDR and Birth of Buyer-Centric Revenue ft. Nelson Gilliat

The model that most modern B2B businesses rely on to generate leads is broken. That’s the premise behind Nelson Gilliat’s book “Death of the SDR and Birth of Buyer-Centric Revenue.” In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Nelson explains why marketers need to get off of what he calls the “MQL hamster wheel” and ditch SDRs in favor of creating thought leadership content and investing in organic social.

Ep. 225: Making HubSpot and Salesforce work together ft. Lauren Kennedy

HubSpot and Salesforce are two of the most common platforms in the revenue stack, but while they’re often used together, they’re the subject of countless complaints by frustrated marketers who can’t get them to play nicely. Having clean data is foundational to a successful inbound marketing strategy, which means solving the HubSpot-Salesforce challenge is of top importance. Coastal Consulting founder Lauren Kennedy has dedicated her career to helping marketers optimize their HubSpot and ...

Ep. 224: Winning the second purchase ft. Will Laurenson

Much of the conversation in the marketing world is focused on how to acquire new customers, but Will Laurenson’s focus is on winning the second purchase. As the founder of Customer Who Click, Will works with e-commerce brands on increasing customer lifetime value through repeat purchases, and he does it through a lens of conversion rate optimization. While Will’s focus is on e-commerce, the strategies he uses to drive customer loyalty and retention are just as applicable to B2B businesse...

Ep. 223: Building a cult brand ft. Chris Kneeland

What’s the secret behind the success of brands like Harley Davidson, Jeep, State Farm, and Salesforce? All of them have built cult-like brands with strong followings that have reduced their customer acquisition cost, driven up their valuation, and attracted new customers, employees, and fans. Cult Collective co-founder Chris Kneeland has literally written the book on what it means to build a cult brand, and advises some of the world’s top brands (yes, Harley is a customer) on how to do i...

Ep. 222: Using humor to get better results from your marketing videos ft. Joseph Wilkins

While there’s no formula for making a video go viral, there IS a tried and true process for creating a funny video that will get significantly stronger business results than your typical corporate video. Joseph Wilkins has been helping businesses make marketing and sales videos for years, but it wasn’t until he started using his 8 step process for creating humorous videos that he saw consistently strong ROI for his clients. Today, he uses that process as the foundation for his work at funn...

Ep. 221: Using OOH advertising to supercharge inbound results ft. Sam Mallikarjunan

What do billboards, car wraps, and TVs in bars have to do with inbound marketing? They’re all part of the category of “out-of-home” - or OOH - marketing, and an incredibly powerful tool for inbound marketers to use in generating brand awareness and driving inbound interest. On this week’s Inbound Success Podcast, Onescreen.ai CEO Sam Mallikarjunan pulls back the curtain on OOH and shares examples of where it fits within the marketing funnel, and how marketers can use it to disrupt their ...

Ep. 220: Mastering Google's core web vitals ft. David Finberg of Peaks Digital Marketing

Want your website to rank at the top of Google’s search engine results pages? Start paying attention to core web vitals. In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Peaks Digital Marketing CEO David Finberg breaks down what Google’s core web vitals are, why they matter, and how you can optimize your site for them. From compressing images to using a CDN, he covers all of it, in detail, with actionable information on helpful tools and systems that make it easy to improve your ...

Ep. 219: Winning the modern marketing game with classic storytelling ft. David Fink

What’s the secret behind the success of brands like Dollar Shave Club and Casper Mattress? Postie co-founder and CEO David Fink says its about combining a mission driven brand message with deep authenticity. In this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, David explains why it’s so important to develop a strong brand story focused on the organization’s mission. Think Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why”. But he emphasizes that this needs to come from a place of authenticity, and digs in...

Ep. 218: Winning at inbound in today's competitive environment ft. Matt Heinz

Heinz Marketing founder Matt Heinz is well known throughout the B2B marketing world for his work helping businesses to build predictable pipelines. But he’s also gained a reputation as a community builder by virtue of his involvement in creating and growing the CMO Coffee Talk group. In this episode of the Inbound Success Podcast, Matt talks about what it takes to win with inbound marketing at a time when it seems like every brand is creating content. From how to create content that stands...

Ep. 217: Codeless CEO Brad Smith shares how to create great organic content at scale

When it comes to organic content strategies, Brad Smith really knows his stuff. As the founder of Codeless, he’s helped well known SaaS companies like Monday.com, Chargify, and WordStream create high quality, high performing organic content at scale. And as the CEO of Wordable, Brad and his team are making it easier for content creators and managers to transform content drafts into published articles. In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Brad breaks down the process his team...

Ep. 216: How Rachel Johnson juggles marketing for 6 brands at Threefold

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Threefold Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Johnson talks about running marketing for 6 brands at once - with a team of herself and just one other marketer - all while raising three children under the age of 5. If there ever was a real life super woman, Rachel just might be her! As CMO of private equity firm Threefold, Rachel runs an in-house agency responsible for marketing all of Threefold’s portfolio companies. Some are franchise businesses, and ...