The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Podcast

Business relationships are obviously different than personal relationships, but both are very important. In life, we look to connect with people that share similar interests, live close to us, or have kids the same age as us. But how do we go about initiating relationships with businesses, and more importantly, what criteria do you use to go about this? Annalise Worn takes a creative approach to helping businesses with relationship building as part of their marketing plan. Learning how to foster customer loyalty and long-term engagement by providing information that is directly suited to your customer’s needs, will go a long way in helping you build trust and move the needle and drive sales.

There’s no better time to explore how your small business can use Instagram Reels as a part of your marketing strategy. Reels is the newest way for you to create entertaining 15-second multi-clip videos with lots of new and creative tools to help you drive traffic and sales. Take it from The Instagram Expert herself, Sue B. Zimmerman, if Instagram is where your followers and ideal customer avatar are hanging out, then Instagram Reels is a great opportunity to take advantage of adding music and other effects, while also allowing you to share educational, step-by-step and behind the scenes content. This mobile-only option is also a great way get out a quick video while on the go to let everyone know what your business or brand is up to.

Making connections is an important aspect for all businesses, and we often rely on face to face and in person opportunities to achieve this. But in a time like this with COVID-19, when social distancing has become the norm, how do businesses and brands go about making those meaningful and emotional connections that are so vital to building trust and often lead to sales? Kevin England, CEO of Vonazon marketing agency, reminds you to first get back to basics with the four main senses; touch, vision, hearing, speaking. You want to make sure that you’re always educating, regardless of where your potential client is in your funnel.

If you fancy yourself a bit of an expert in your field and are looking for yet another opportunity to get your name out there and build brand awareness, consider leveraging the power of sites such as HARO to exert your expertise and knowledge on a given topic. Greg Heilers, earned media guru and pitching machine from Jolly, reminds us that media pitching to sites such as HARO offers a multitude of benefits aside form just getting free publicity. Think about the benefits of finding potential collaborators, reaching your target market with you poised as an industry expert, being featured in high profile publications like The New York Times, as well as driving more traffic to your website.

Every business wants to rank high with Google, that’s a no brainer. But what are the top ranking factors that really matter, that will help to get you the top spots? Aside from the obvious things like links, mobile-friendliness and page speed, what are some other factors that rank most for SEO, and pass the ever-changing Google algorithm test? Darren Shaw, Whitespark founder and local search guru, advises you to start with claiming and optimizing your Google My Business profile. Invest your time here and worry less about citations. These days it’s more about conversion optimization than it is about ranking optimization. And never underestimate the power of reviews.

This week we've got a two-fer for you. I've got John Paglio from flyte talking about SCHEMA: what it is, why you need it, and how to implement it on your site.

We’ve all seen business ads pop up in our Facebook feed every day, and you’ve probably scrolled right past a majority of them. But what about leveraging YouTube to advertise your business, products and services? Aleric Heck of AdOutreach has done just that, helping innumerable business reach over 8 figures in sales using the YouTube ads platform.

This week's episode is about moving beyond the pivot. No doubt you pivoted when COVID first upended the world and your business, but did you stop there?   It's easy to fall back into a groove, but thinking things have "normalized" is the wrong approach. In this episode I share five things you can do to make sure you continue to evolve as your customers' needs do.

Do you ever wish you could get free business advice from someone in your industry, or who has been through what you’re going through now? The answer may be in joining or starting a mastermind. We'll delve into what a mastermind is, how to start one, and how to run one successfully.

Influencer marketing could arguably be traced all the way back to the 1800’s when the Conklin pen company wisely and creatively asked Mark Twain to say some nice things about their products. Influencer marketing has come a long way since then, especially if you’re a Kardashian. But just going for the big name is not necessarily the best strategy, says Agorapulse’s Mike Allton.