7/5/2022

Hey hey 👋

In episode 192 of the CMO Moves podcast, Randi Stipes, CMO of IBM Watson Advertising & Weather, said that regardless of marketing discipline, the most important skill a marketer can have is…

The ability to tell a story.

Before you roll your eyes, hear us out. Here is why storytelling is important:

• The stories you tell your target audience is how you make them trust you.

• The stories you tell your team internally is how you drive influence within your organization.

Being able to tell good stories (and being an effective communicator) is how you drive influence and growth.

Next time you want to influence someone, think about it in this framework:

• DO: What do you want someone to DO?

• FEEL: What does someone need to FEEL to want to take action?

• KNOW: What does someone need to KNOW to feel and take that action?

This framework is generally known as KNOW-FEEL-DO, but we put DO at the beginning because it's important to start at the end and understand what your objective is.

Here’s an example when marketing externally:

• DO: Get you to refer a friend to Marketer Milk to unlock our guide (see the bottom of this email).

• FEEL: Feel inspired that you CAN grow a website’s traffic by 900% after unlocking our guide.

• KNOW: Know the process for how to grow a website's traffic organically.

Here’s an example when marketing internally:

• DO: Get your manager to give you a promotion.

• FEEL: Make them feel your passion around increasing your scope of work, and make them feel confident that you want to stick around for a long time.

• KNOW: Make them know the gaps you’ve addressed and the impact you’ve made so far to drive growth.

Following this framework will make it easier to craft an outline for your message — whether it’s for an ad, a landing page, or how you speak internally within an organization. The more clear your outline is, the more effective your words will be.

Okay, now that we know how to tell good stories, let’s see what we have in store this week:

• Marketing news from the past week

• Marketer's Talk

• How to improve conversion rates

• 8 traits of a senior content marketer

• The new future of SEO

• Ad from the past

• Website of the week

• Cool marketing jobs

• And much more

🗞 In the news

• Google Analytics is banned in some European countries

• FCC commissioner calls for TikTok to be removed from US app stores

• Meta launches new NFT display options on Facebook

• Marketing automation startup Retail Rocket raises $24M

🎙 Marketer's Talk

This week, we chatted with Faith Storey — a six-figure freelance marketer. Faith has experience working at a marketing agency, in-house for different companies, and is now a full-time freelance marketer.

We asked her some questions. Here's what she had to say:

• Why did you choose marketing as a career path?

  • To be honest, I knew it was an easy degree to get in university and I also knew it would pay well. I initially didn't go into marketing thinking I'd love it. But overtime, I realized I do like the work I do because I can help founders and companies grow.

• What made you make the switch from in-house to freelance?

  • I switched to full-time freelancing after my 3rd job working in-house at different companies. I noticed that I would leave a job every year because I would get bored, and freelancing seemed like a solid alternative. I also knew that I could work less hours and get paid more as a freelancer. Working with multiple companies has kept me more engaged (for longer) than previous jobs I've had. Overall, I'm happy with my decision to go freelance.

• How did you know what services to sell?

  • While I was working at an agency, I transitioned from a broad marketing role to a more specialized one focused on paid advertising. I wanted to get closer to the sale, which is where the money was. Advertising seemed like the way to go. I'm also very analytical and I'm naturally good at making ad creatives. Because I specialized in ads at my previous job, it just made sense to offer advertising services. I also worked in tech, and noticed that there was more demand than supply for contract advertising work. Most freelancers that offer ad services focus on ecommerce companies, which gave me an advantage in going after software companies instead.

• How do you find clients?

  • Initially, I found my first 1-2 clients using Upwork while I was freelancing part-time. When I went full-time, I joined other freelance marketplaces like MarketerHire and Growth Collective. After about six months of freelancing full-time, 95% of my clients starting coming from referrals. These referrals were either from past clients I've had or from other freelancing friends. For example, a friend that offers SEO services may reach out to me and ask if I want to offer ad services for the company they are working with. Lots of successful freelancers have told me most of their clients come from referrals and it has been true for me as well.

• Which goes in the bowl first, milk or cereal?

  • Definitely cereal. Anyone who says milk is probably a sociopath.

📈 All things growth and product

Driving growth by choosing the right marketing channel, using growth marketing to help SaaS companies, examples of great product marketing, and how to improve conversion rates.

✍️ Content, social media, and emails

What makes content good, traits of a senior content manager, the best time to post on social media, and subscriber email examples.

🍭 Marketing tools and resources

Twitter's trends 2022 report

⚙️ SEO (search engine optimization)

The new future of SEO, 10 search results are no more, and Google's mini algorithm update.

📣 Ad from the past

A McDonald's ad from 1988. A classic example of the relativity trap.

The concept of a relativity trap is an example of the anchoring effect, a cognitive bias that describes when an individual relies on or fixates on an initially available piece of data or information in the decision-making process. (Source)

💻 Website of the week

Earth.fm lets you hear the sounds of nature — from around the world.

🧠 For the mind

💼 Cool marketing jobs

Check out some cool marketing job opportunities right now:

• Head of Growth at Lofty

• Content Marketing Manager at Lambda

• Marketing Coordinator at Mentorcam

Okay, that's it for now 🧡. See you next Tuesday!

“To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept you soul alive.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

Riddle answer: Short