Marketing Trends

Steve Robinson had been at four different jobs in eight years. So when he joined Chick-fil-A in 1981, he was surprised to find a different culture than any other fast food restaurant in America. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Steve talks about brand loyalty, how they rank-order innovation to put people first, and why his aim will always be to grow bigger, not better. Tune in to learn:How the culture of Chick-fil-A was a “paradigm buster” (6:14) How a ‘brand experience over profit’ mindset is a game-changer (12:45) Why Chick-fil-A employees aren’t going anywhere (15:00)Why simplicity is key (18:50)Marketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for the The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

In a world of saturated online channels, marketing professionals have their work cut out for them. Grand Duncan of Voximpant – a versatile cloud platform that enables businesses to bring their interactions to the next level – is here to talk about how IVR is helpful for growing and scaling a business, why you should prioritize communication over infrastructure, and why international expansion is not as impossible as it sometimes sounds. Tune in to learn:How IVR can help with growing and scaling (8:45)  What the next iteration of low-code tech can mean for you (11:00) How to stand out in a tech-saturated world (15:00) tHow to link goals between marketing and sales (20:00)Why international marking is not as impossible as it sounds (27:00) Marketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for the The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Have you really introduced your company to the world, or are you too caught up in finding out who the customer is? Make your company known, and the leads will come to you. Today we are going to hear from the head of growth at Lemlist, Vuk Vukosavljevic. He’s helped their company grow by leaps and bounds, and was the first full time employee they ever brought on. His knowledge of marketing was amazing, it’s clearly an obsession of his. He even got me rethinking the importance of data that we are all worried about losing due to privacy issues and realizing there’s better ways to reach people. Download this episode now to learn what the world really wants from your company.Tune in to learn:The Growth Circle of Love (00:00)When and How Vuk Joined Lemlist (5:24)How They Structure Their Teams (10:44)Ways Their Marketing Has Changed (20:16)Vuk’s Opinion on Current Events (24:03)Mentions:Lemlist https://www.lemlist.com/$0 to $10,000,000 in ARR bootstrapped - how to achieve the impossible? https://blog.lempire.com/0-to-10m-in-arr-bootstrapped/Lemverse https://app.lemverse.com/Marketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for the The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Michelle Van Slyke likes to be the one you call when things are broken. From Ford to Mercedes to The UPS Store, she’s got a knack for reinvigorating stalled-brands. Now, as the SVP of Marketing & Sales at The UPS Store, she’s tackling a different series of challenges, and she’s here to talk about it all: using data to listen better, tackling the franchise problem, and how she really feels about the Coinbase Superbowl QR campaign. Tune in to learn:How a managerial perspective can help with marketing problems (14:00)Why data can help with shifting perspective (17:00)Reinvigorating a national brand (19:00)Why to expect pushback when bringing in new ideas (20:00)The value of transferring skill sets (22:00)How sometimes a broken place is the best starting point (24:00)What it looks like to create a national marketing plan (25:00)How to listen to the best advice (30:00)Why it’s crucial to own your mistakes (35:00)What Blue Horizons is doing for The UPS Store (38:00)How to Create a Team Culture (44:00)Marketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for the The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMoments Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Culture is changing much faster than corporations can keep up with. But in the end, there’s one thing that doesn’t change - and that’s trying to get your message to individuals. Focusing on a smaller group of people, or even trying to speak one to one is still the most powerful way to market - and that’s something that’s getting easier to scale.Tune in to learn:What Nick is Learning About Now (08:15)How to Tell the Story of Purpose (13:27)How DEI informs Design (15:27)Ways to Work Together in Your Organization (19:51)Nick’s Take on Current Events (30:21)Mentions:https://www.fjordnet.com/Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Data, data, data. That’s the most important tool for any marketer. It’s what you need to make sure your message gets to the right people. It’s what you need to make the boss happy. Most importantly, it’s what you need to make sure your customers are getting the best experience possible. Today I’m chatting with Edward Fenton the VP of Enterprise Platforms, at Ecolab. He’s an IT and tech master. His job is to help Ecolabs collect every piece of information they can on companies to make sure every level of customer experience is taken care of. Don’t miss this episode, it’s full of interesting information from a world you’re probably not familiar with. Let’s get to it!Tune in to learn:How They Were Able to Shift to an Online Only Company (00:00)About Eolab (06:00)Edward’s Journey into His Current Role (19:25)How they get customers to adopt their products. (23:58)Mentions:EcolabMarketing Trends is brought to you by Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For more great marketing insights, sign up for the The Marketing Moments newsletter. You'll get ideas to help you build better customer relationships, invites to upcoming events, and access to the latest industry research. Subscribe at https://sforce.co/MarketingMomentsMission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

What is it that brought you into marketing? For Steven Bushong, he started in product design and loved receiving the feedback from customers to help improve his product. Eventually he moved to one of the biggest companies in the world, Disney, where he continued that passion of direct consumer feedback - which took him to the world of marketing where he stayed for decades. Listen to this episode to hear about what he’s learned working with these massive companies, and how he currently helps businesses improve their teams to create successful products and campaigns. Tune in to learn:Where Steven Started His Career (00:00)His Transition to Disney (5:29)Steven’s Message to Marketing Leaders (10:31)Steven’s Ideal Customer (17:17)How to Improve Marketing Internally (23:32)His Thoughts on the Metaverse (26:45)Salesforce Lighting Round (34:47)Client ad readMission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

“Methodical hustle”. Every so often you come across an origin story that just blows you away. Today’s guests have that story. In just six short years, Garrett Mehrguth went from selling social media calendars on Fiverr to being the Co-founder and CEO of Directive Consulting, a top-rated and award-winning Customer Generation agency. Garrett joins us, along with Directive’s Senior Director of Growth, Drew Choco to talk about their journey.“So I'm not really hustling in the sense of like how most people hustle so much as I'm driving towards a vision and okay with being bad at stuff. So I'm constantly trying to take on new initiatives that if you were just to sit down, put it on paper and say, “Hey, what's your greatest opportunity for the business? And like, if you could do anything, what would you do?” And I kind of just live in that world.”Garrett and Drew discuss their journey over the past six years, share their experience with explosive growth, talk about the importance of intentional capital allocation, R&D and placing value on people and culture.Main Takeaways“Learn, engage, and create.” This is Garrett’s mantra and quite possibly, his superpower. According to Garrett in action this means, learn something new every day, engage with it by practicing it, integrating it and executing it and with that, he creates more value for himself, his company and his customers.Intentional capital allocation “You show me where a company spends its money, and I will show you what it is good at.” Directive learned that a high-level awareness of where it allocates its capital was imperative to the longevity and success of the company. For them, this meant heavy investment in people and culture.Get better at business and marketing will take care of itself. “If you want to get better at marketing, get better at business.” To Garrett this is just common sense. If you get better at all the parts of your business (i.e., product, sales, finance), you can’t help but get better at marketing.Key QuotesGarrett 08:11 “I always just asked myself, what do I enjoy? What am I good at? And then what'll someone pay me for, right? And so when you're 21 years old, I like solving problem. I'm good at solving problems. People think I know the internet because I'm younger than them and they'll pay me to help 'em with digital. I should go learn the internet. And so we, I kind of just like read as much as I could on digital marketing and I'm a pretty avid reader. I really enjoy learning. And so I kind of just came up with little mantra were called learn, engage, create. And the idea was if I could learn something new every day, engage with it, by practicing it, integrating it, executing it that I could create more value for myself, my company and my customers.”Garrett 17:55 (Intentional Capital Allocation) “You show me where a company spends its money and I'll show you what it's good at. And I think what Directive learn and does well now is it has a very high, high level awareness of where we allocate our capital, why we're doing so, and then what we want to accomplish and how that fits our vision.” Garrett 33:23  What if you're really honest with yourself, what you realize is the clients that are successful have very little to do with you. that like you get a great client with a great culture, a great product, a great marketplace. You really can't screw it up and you look, look really smart because you help 'em with this thing that you're good at. You help 'em with that thing. And so I think the key, if you want to get better at marketing is to get better at business, to get better at product, to get better at sales, to get better at finance marketing should just be the application of other spheres of influences information.Bio:Garrett Mehrguth is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Directive, the award-winning Customer Generation agency for SaaS. Andrew Choco began his career at Directive as a paid social specialist running campaign promotions and advertising for multiple clients and now serves as Directive’s Senior Director of Growth.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.  Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Jamie Gier knows what people want. From a young age, she was seeing gaps in the market and finding ways to bridge them – her eye for business had her selling ash from Mount St. Helens’ on a cross-country roadtrip when she was just a kid. But the business side of things will always be second to the human side of a company, and that’s where Jamie’s unique eye for storytelling plays a major role in Ceros’ success. She finds a way to meet the needs of the customer with a storyteller’s grace. “The reality is that you have to be very relevant to a community, and you’re feeding them based on both the heart and the mind. So, intellectually – what are we providing to them that makes them better at what they do? From the ‘heart’ perspective – how do you tell the stories and help them see a better version of themselves in what you can provide?” Her strategy is paying off. Ceros is a rapidly growing software company that keeps culture and creativity at the heart of everything it does. Their mission is to help customers unlock their creativity and build exceptional content using their unique and powerful design platform and resources…all without writing a single line of code. So how does Jamie manage to acquire new clients, find ways to help them meet their needs while also keeping focus on their narrative – all while leading a team of her own? Tune into this week’s episode of Marketing Trends to find out!  Main TakeawaysKeep humanity at the center. A lot of business is focused on data – numbers and figures and profits and losses… but it is important to remember that people are the heart of every endeavor. If you’re leading a group, make sure to take time to connect with them. Ask your client about their reason – the passion that got them to start their business. Remember that your team lead’s daughter had a softball tournament this week – and ask how it went. Those are things that people remember. Data as a substantiator of tactics, not a driver of tactics. Data has changed the marketing game, but it isn’t everything. In fact, the sheer amount of data we are able to collect can be overwhelming. It’s important to use a targeted strategy. For Cero’s, they know three things: some of the data is useful, some should be ignored, and all of it should be secondary to a client’s narrative. The data should substantiate strategy, not create it. Never be the smartest person in the room. Make sure that you’re always learning. Surround yourself with experts, and never stop asking questions. Your curiosity will inform your growth. Key Quotes“A lot of aspiring professionals don’t have a lot of opportunities right in front of them. And if anything, my story might provide a little bit of hope and encouragement that you can come from a small town, not go to an ivy-league school, come from a broken family, and – by pure grit and determination – do whatever you want.” “I was charged with capturing the stories and voices of the people who would be impacted if they didn’t have access to the product that we were selling at the time. And it occurred to me then how important my role was in making sure that their voices were heard… that was the very beginning of being intentional about the industries that I wanted to participate in – where there was some kind of social impact for the wellbeing of other people.” “What led me to stay in the industries that I’ve been involved in… is the story around how we make our customers [the focus], not necessarily the product we’re selling.” “We have to learn to take off our functional hat and be relevant to the broader organization. We need to be able to have an opinion, an experience to share on other aspects of the business, besides what we can do every day in marketing – whether that’s in product strategy, customer access, HR, the programs that make sure we’re attracting the best talent… it really propelled me to have a broader appreciation for all other aspects of the business and getting closer to it.” BioJamie Gier has believes in working with leading technology companies to make a change. From healthcare to education, she is always trying to improve the way people learn, work, and live. Her teenaged son always gives her a reason to be searching for a way to make the world better. Her twenty-five year marketing career has focused on scaling and growing businesses by creating impactful brands, designing revenue-generating go-to-market strategies, and leading high performing teams across product marketing, corporate communications, public relations, digital marketing, and demand creation.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.  Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

The key to successful marketing lies in the ability to seamlessly communicate with consumers – to know what they want, when they want it, and communicate to them how they can get it. In a world of incredibly competitive industries, quick and efficient marketing can be the difference between a business surviving, or not. Chrissy Nolen, the CMO of Colliers, Houston, has made a name for herself as a person who can see the places where critical communication can be improved, and Colliers, a leading commercial real estate brokerage and investment management company has benefited greatly from her vision. “We were very fortunate not to lay anybody off during COVID – we actually went through a huge growth phase. We were having to onboard people remotely, which was new and challenging in and of itself. But these metrics that we were able to pull – we realized that if we created dashboards for our clients, that we weren’t losing any property.” To hear all about how Chrissy went from a front-desk manager at a boutique real estate firm with a bold idea to switch to digital invitations to Chief Marketing Officer for one of the largest real estate companies in the world, be sure to tune into this week’s episode of Marketing Trends. Main TakeawaysSay yes to big challenges. If there’s an opportunity to showcase your unique talents in a work environment, say yes to the challenge – even if you’re not completely sure about the nuts and bolts. Even if you’ll have to google “how to” before starting. The chance to shine and prove your worth doesn’t happen every day – jump at it when it comes! Lean into new communication styles. Leading groups of diverse people can be a challenging task, and the key component of team leadership is the ability to communicate and listen to your team. If something isn’t working, try approaching the problem from a different angle. Ask new questions, and you might just get some new answers. Sometimes it’s a good thing to hit pause. When COVID hit, Chrissy’s team was about to launch an entirely new interface. Instead of being frustrated at the hiccup in their plan, Chrissy and her team took the time to make sure everyone was well-versed in the technology – and that break, that step-down, made it so that when they were ready to launch, everyone was ready. Sometimes, you go farther when you take a beat to make sure you’re ready for the sprint. If an unexpected break comes your way, embrace it. Key Quotes“The biggest thing I learned [about leadership] was how to empower people… I was ready to let somebody go just because it seemed like they weren’t working. Fortunately, I had a great mentor that led me to some great management tips. I was able to turn around and simply by asking ‘what is it that you need from me to be successful?’ and ‘what can I do to help you?’... we were able to turn things around.”   “The biggest thing we’ve done to align [with sales] is the age-old ‘start and stop’. What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What should we keep doing? That turned into… ‘hey, let’s brainstorm about this initiative. Let’s flesh this out.’” “I’m most excited about how easy it’s becoming to connect our technologies and being able to do things without an expensive third-party platform.” “We have so many people that know [our tools] well enough that they’re constantly coming up with ideas about how to do things, and it’s easy to make the change.” BioChrissy Nolen is passionate about innovation and productivity in the workplace, and is constantly seeking a better way to help others succeed. She entered the professional world in high school, where she did everything stuffing invitations and performing endless mail mergers for fundraiser mail-outs or organizing group volunteer projects.She started as a marketing specialyist at the front desk of a small boutique real estate firm, where her first assignments was to build a website – something she had never done before but did, anyway. She’s been innovating ever since. Now, she’s the CMO of Colliers Houston, where she’s a principal of the firm. She’s been named Colliers U.S. Marketer of the Year, been involved in some of Texas' largest commercial real estate projects, and has been listed as a local Top 40 Under 40.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.  Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.