7 Min Marketing With Pam Didner

Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More with Pam! Meet my guest, Vidhya Ravi, a UX Design Researcher at Cash App who transitioned into UX research from marketing several years ago. In this episode, Vidhya is going to share how her diverse background in marketing and strategy helps her shape perspective and work in UX research. In this episode: What UX stands for and what do UX designers do at Cash App? How to work with the product development team to develop features and user requirements? How to bring personal experience to the front and the whole product life cycle? What are the most common and effective approaches to design? How does a group of UX designers work together and share the insights with the product team? What tools do UX designers use to drive the brainstorming? Best practices for marketing people to work with and get to know UX designers? How can marketing and UX designers improve their collaboration? What are the key design elements sales and marketing people should be aware o

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. My guest is a sales professional, Ryan Staley, the CEO and the founder of Whale Boss. Ryan is a fantastic and high-performance salesperson, he helps founders and revenue leaders implement 7 and 8 Figure sales operating systems in less than 3 months. Today, we talk about the essential characteristics of effective salespeople. In this episode: What are the tips and tricks to capturing big clients? How to understand your customer and focus on the company's needs? Cold calling tips: how to reach out to the prospects you don't know and get them interested in having a conversation? In what ways sales engagement was changed by pandemic? How can salespeople adapt to the new circumstances? What is the best way to start a conversation with a prospect? How can B2B marketers better support sales? What are the characteristics of effective salespeople? What are some of the salespeople's pet peeves that marketers should be aware of?

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. We are going to talk about innovation today. My guest today is Carla Johnson. She is a marketing and innovation strategist, keynote speaker, and author of ten books. In her latest book RE:Think Innovation, Carla breaks down the exact process that the world's most prolific innovators use to consistently come up with great ideas. In this episode: Definition of innovation. How is innovation different from creativity? What is perpetual innovation? What are the five steps of innovation? In which step of innovation do people spend the most time and why? What are the different types of innovators? How can people regularly work on enhancing their innovation skills? What is the best way to encourage innovation in B2B business? Quotes from the episode: "I define innovation as the ability to consistently come up with new, great and reliable ideas. It sounds like a very simple definition, but each of those words is important." "O

Hi, a big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Today I answer the question that we often don't discuss openly. How to break the bad news in business with a proper presentation deck. A young marketing manager asked me how to share the results of paid social media campaigns with her management that didn't go well and put a deck together. So here are three approaches to use to help you maintain that respect you have as a subject matter expert. In this episode: No Sugar Coating approach Everything is Relative approach Mixed News approach Presentation flow tips Key elements of a good presentation Quotes from the episode: "You need to explain the logic surrounding the initiative's benefit and tell the backstory. But when you are talking about the outcomes, you should also explain the root causes of the outcomes." "There are usually bits of good news and bad news to pull from. Can you identify three good news examples and three bad news examples? I guarantee you can do that." ————— You can also join my Facebook com

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I had fantastic conversation with Steve Kearns, Head of Blog and Social Media Marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. He shares a lot of his experience, including lessons learned in a blog migration and I captured a big chunk of it in Part 1. And now here’s Part 2 and we're going to talk about social media marketing and also blog writing and more so stick around.   Pam Didner: So what social media channels are you using in addition to LinkedIn, of course?   Steve Kearns: We've had a, a bit of like a story journey in terms of figuring out what social media platforms we should leverage, especially organically. Because my team handles organic social media; we're currently across LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. So those are really the four platforms that we want to take advantage of.   Pam Didner: Facebook is not one of your options. Can you tell us why?   Steve Kearns: Yeah. And this is, this is a conversati

I had a great time talking to Steve Kearns, Head of Blog And Social Media for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Our conversation lasted well over an hour, so I split it into several episodes. Part 1 explored how to consolidate country-specific blog sites into a global one. If you are working on global content marketing, you should definitely check it out. Part 2 is about social media marketing and how he goes about doing it.   In this bonus episode, Steve shares how his team evaluates internal and external blog submissions and he also creates content that will rank higher on SEO, and more. Let’s get started.   Pam Didner: How do you manage your writing staff? Are they in-house or outsourced? And do you have any suggestions to the listeners in terms of how to manage the writing staff for enterprises and also for small businesses?   Steve Kearns: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I'll give you a quick overview as to how my team is structured. So I'm focused on leading the strategy kind of cross-functional relationships dot

Hello, from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. My guest is Steve Kearns, Head of Blog and Social Media Marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Today's episode is about scaling global business with a centralized content strategy. We had such a great conversation while recording the show, so I decided to break it into two parts. So, if you want to scale your content across regions, stay tuned for Part 2, to hear more of the business nuggets. In this episode: How does LinkedIn make money? How can a brand consolidate several regional marketing blogs to a global marketing solution destination. Why should a business centralize global content? What does the centralized content strategy look like? How to balance global efforts with content specifically tailored for cultural and language differences? What is the right way to do the migration and what are the important steps to make it efficient and successful? How to perform a proper content audit? How to level centralized c

Hi, a big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. This episode is rather special. It’s episode 200, and I can’t believe that I have published 200 episodes of the B2B Marketing & More podcast. All without any sponsorships… If you are a regular listener, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t always hear from you, but I know you are out there working hard. Keep up the good work. Speaking of keeping up the good work, some of you reached out to me in January and asked me if I have any recommendations on how to ensure new job success. So, in today's episode, I share three things that you must-do if you start a new job. In this episode: How to be opened minded and remain curious. Why it's important to set up as many 1:1's as possible and how to do that. How to understand AND use processes, workflows, and dashboards. Quotes from the episode: "When you meet, introduce yourself, have a list of questions to ask them. Have them share their challenges and issues, and then you can see what you can do f

Hi, and welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. My guest today is Bryan Collins. He was a full-time copywriter at Sage, and now he's a nonfiction writer, and host and director of Become a Writer Today podcast. Today, we talk about copywriting, keywords, technology and how all those elements influence content marketing and modern business writing. In this episode: How to strive to be a better copywriter if you cannot afford to hire someone? Which website should the small business owners or anybody looking for good copywriters go to? How to fit different content formats into your content marketing strategy, and why does it matter? Where does SEO fit into the writing process and modern business writing? What prep work needs to be done before someone starts writing? What is the role of Artificial intelligence in content writing, and what are the experiences with the tools. How to create content that will stand out or breakthrough the crowd? Which approach is better for writers, focus on one chann

Hello from Portland, Oregon. For my first episode of 2022, I want to do something slightly different. I invited my team to be part of the podcast and the video. Yay!  Meet Gretchen Kilby, she's a podcast editor and Iva Ignjatovic, my social media manager. Both of them are the invisible hands that put my podcast together. Today we talk about our content creation process, and how to start a B2B podcast. Gretchen and Iva, welcome. Glad to have you! In this episode: What are the essentials for starting a B2B podcast? How to choose a podcast format? How to get a sound quality? What is a strategic process before starting a podcast? How to find a good podcast editor? What are the B2B podcast branding basics? How to do podcast rebranding? How to maintain quality for listeners and for SEO? Quotes from the episode: "And a big thing I will say is that not everybody can edit content. It's a skill that takes a lot of time. Also, I've seen many relationships break up because it wasn't clear either what the editor could d

Hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. It's hard to believe we're almost at the end of the year. So much has happened. I thought it would be helpful to identify some of the business growth trends and the marketing topics that stood out and that will definitely keep on trending. That also gives me a chance to revisit some of the wonderful conversations on this podcast with my guests. In this episode: Felix Krueger is the CEO of Krueger Marketing. His company focuses on sales enablement and Account-Based Marketing for B2B enterprises. Felix talked about the changes in sales and marketing content that have been necessary to meet a more virtual world, and how we can find the balance between the hybrid, which is face-to-face communication and the virtual. Many of you know Ann Handley from her work as a Chief Content Officer of Marketing Profs and her book, Everybody Writes. When we were talking about writing, we extended our conversation to email marketing bec

Hey, big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing and more. Today, we talk about ABM and how to scale Account-Based Marketing with my guest Danny Nail, Account-Based Engagement Manager at Microsoft. In this episode: What is account-based marketing Is ABM successful and effective if we need to do a more one-to-one approach or one-to-many? How to choose the right marketing tactics for ABM outreach? Who do ABM activities should belong to? How customized content can support account-based marketing? How to scale account-based marketing across different verticals? What are the challenges, and how to resolve them? How to scale account-based marketing on a small budget? What is a sales responsibility during the ABM planning and implementation? What are common success metrics or KPIs for ABM? Quotes from the episode: "There's nothing wrong with having some kind of template guidance. But it needs to be guided, and it shouldn't be something that's set in stone." "Your budget need

Hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. Today's episode features some of my previous guests and a topic that comes up in almost all my podcast conversations: How can sales and marketing teams work together? The answer isn't that simple because so much has changed with the pandemic in the past two years. At the same time, there were also many changes in digital marketing and the corporate culture within the businesses is different from company to company, from industry to industry. In this episode: John Nee is the Principal and President of Act1 Partners and has worked many years helping marketers and salespeople better collaborate and support each other. John shares expert tips on what marketing departments can do to better support sales. Alex Low is a Managing Consultant at PA Consulting in London and an advisor for the social media management platform Lately. He does a lot of work around business development and sales transformation. Our conversation was

A big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. My guest is Paul Cowan, CMO of FreshBooks, a SaaS-based platform, accounting software used by many small businesses and freelancers. Today we talk about how to bridge the gap between marketing and product experience. In this episode: Why is there a gap between marketing and product experience? What happens when the user experience doesn't live up to the marketing hype? How to provide value for the customers? How can businesses ensure that the product experience addresses their target audience's biggest pinpoint? What does it take to bring features into a product in real-time? How to gather feedback and perform testing? How to differentiate from the competition What defines a good customer support process? How can a business carve out a unique market area? What is the role of the marketing team in product experience? Quotes from the episode: "I think the last thing within the tech world is the return to the crea

A big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Yes. I moved to Raleigh from Portland a couple of weeks ago. So now I'm doing my recording in Raleigh. So if you are ever in Raleigh, reach out to me. Let's have a cup of coffee. My guest is Jharry Guevara, a Business Development Manager, Marketing Director at VOIPRIng Network and Zoho Business Software Platform Architect. Today, we are going to talk about what does it take to make a successful career transition. In this episode: What is the right way to make a career transition? How to break into an industry with a high barrier of entry? What are actionable tips people can follow when deciding on a career change? What are the most important things to consider when changing careers? How can you diversify the skillset you have within your field of choice? How should you introduce yourself when seeking new employment after changing careers? What are the challenging aspects of making a career transition? What is the hardest thing about switching careers? How can people

Big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. Today, we have a very, very special guest, Amy Higgins. I love her, and she's also friend. She's a Director of Content Strategy at Salesforce, so welcome, Amy. So happy to have you.   Amy Higgins:    Oh my God, Pam. I love you so much. You're so energetic. I just, I wish I could give you a big old hug.   Pam Didner:  All right. Virtual hug.   Amy Higgins:  Virtual hug.   Pam Didner:  So Amy, given that you are director of content strategy, what I want to talk today, it's really about editorial and also content planning. And given that you are managing the editorial planning in enterprise, and Salesforce is a huge, is a global company, can you talk to us? How is that different than just managing a typical editorial planning in a normal company? Is there any big difference?   Amy Higgins:  Yeah, so first of all, define normal because nothing is normal.   Pam Didner:  Oh yeah. That's a good point, but what about kind

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I talk about everything B2B marketing related from content marketing, sales enablement, pay media, social media, even community management. Today, we are going to talk about something related to community management. And that's actually a great way to drive organic traffic for your brand. I have a very, very special guest. Oh my God! I love her! Melissa Romo, and she is a global head of content, social media, and customer efficacy at Sage. Sage is a $2 billion public company with SaaS based platform for accounting, EPR, and HR, with Payroll as well. So Melissa, welcome. So happy to have you.   Melissa Romo: Thank you, Pam. I'm thrilled to be here, and from Hoboken, New Jersey.   Pam Didner: Oh, yes! How is the weather over there today?   Melissa Romo: Gorgeous, almost 80 degrees.   Pam Didner: Oh my God!   Melissa Romo: And it's the middle of October that we record this, so it's pretty nice.   Pam Didner: Oh my goodness

A big hello from Portland, Oregon! Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More with Pam. I have a fantastic guest today - Kristina Jaramillo, and she is the president of Personal ABM. Kristina is also the co-host of the Stop The Sales Drop podcast. Today we talk about where marketers can better help sales boost revenue. In this episode: What are some of the biggest challenges when working with sales? How can marketers help sales define the problems at hand? Regarding trends, what can marketers do to help the sales in the middle of the purchase funnel? What is the course of action if companies want to be incredibly successful with ABM implementation? Why is it important for sales reps to have their social media presence in order, and how can marketing help? How to get to know the sales team better and how can marketing help sales boost revenue. How should marketers structure their impact? What should success metrics look like on the marketing side? How should marketers quantify the marketing's cont

A big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. I have a very exciting guest: Ramon Ray. I actually met Ramon like literally four or five years ago at South by Southwest. And then we got connected on social media channels, but we never met in person until, well, now we are still not meeting in person! Ramon's with me on Zoom and he's a founder of a SmartHustle.com. And I'm going to ask him how to hustle intelligently. He's an author, writer and even producers. By the way, he started four companies and sold two of them. All right! So he deserves to have a conversation with us. So Ramon, welcome to my show.   Ramon Ray: Hey Pam, thanks for having me here and good to reconnect with you after so many years. But I'm so glad you're still in the flow and groove of what you do and I am, as well. So it’s an honor to be here and share this time with you and your community. So thank you, Pam. I appreciate it.   Pam Didner: Thank you so much. And you talking about smart hustle a

Hello from Portland, Oregon! Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More. Today I have another fantastic guest - Kevan Lee. Kevan is a product-led growth and SaaS leader and the head of marketing at Oyster, a distributor HR platform helping companies take care of the global teams. Today we are going to talk about growth hack strategies for startups. In this episode: How did Buffer ramp up its marketing and increased the number of users, readers and visitors? What is the system behind the high content production? What is the role of proper keyword research and optimization in content success? How can high-pace growth hack strategies keep the momentum over a more extended period? What tools should startups use, and business in general, to optimize their content? What are some growth hack strategies for startups and SaaS companies in the different business stages? How should sales and marketing work together in a startup? Is your business sales-led or product-led, and why should businesses care? How