Marketing Leadership: Embracing questions and overcoming pretense (episode #74)

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Good marketing isn't just about catchy slogans or flashy ads; it's about understanding the human psyche. The psyche of our customers, yes, but our own as well.

So in this episode we’ll delve into a psychological concept called ‘action bias’ – this is the idea that we, as humans, often lean towards taking action, even when standing still might be the better choice.

Or as my latest guest aptly put it in his podcast guest application – Ask yourself, ‘what happens if I do nothing?’

To unpack that lesson, and discuss more insights from his career journey, I spoke with Jonathan Kaufman, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Sage Dental (https://mysagedental.com/). 

Originally founded in 1997, Sage Dental has 100 affiliated practices, and it has a 98% three-year growth rate.

Kaufman manages a team of 60, including the new patient management team.

Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Some lessons from Kaufman that emerged in our discussion:

• Everyone is faking it, no matter how smart you are, so it doesn't hurt to ask the question
• Bigger isn't better. What is important, however, is doing the simple things as best you can.
• If you don’t understand how metrics impact the overall business, you’re going to fail as a marketer
• Ask yourself, ‘what happens if I do nothing?’
• The relationship part and the art part of marketing and business is as important as the data and the financial metrics themselves
• Tailor the experience to that audience

Related content discussed in this episode

The Prospect’s Perception Gap: How to bridge the gap between the results we want and the results we have (https://meclabs.com/education/Flint-prospects-perception-gap)

Evidence-based Marketing: Why you need more than just numbers to truly drive ROI (https://marketingexperiments.com/conversion-marketing/evidence-based-marketing)

Marketing Webinar Optimization: Five questions to ask yourself about webinars (https://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/marketing/b2b-webinars/)

Marketing and Brand: Embrace healthy friction (podcast episode #48) (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/marketing-and-brand)

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This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

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