Power Marketing with Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee interviews James Hipkin, who runs Inn8ly (pronounced “Innately,”) a Nevada City, California-based digital agency whose stated mission is to “help business owners take advantage of a modern website without being bogged down with the complexities of a modern website.”

As James notes, the most common website issue he sees when doing site audits is a lack of strategy, not deficiencies related to design or copy. His preferred strategy is known as the “hub and spoke” model — a proven method of organizing one’s online assets for maximum effectiveness. “If you think about your website as the hub, and you think about all these different channels you use to talk to consumers as spokes, email marketing is a spoke, LinkedIn is a spoke social media is a spoke, advertising is a spoke, PR is a spoke, these are all ways to get your message out to people and for people to come back into the hub, which is your website.”

James highlights the importance of creating valuable content and building a permission relationship with customers — the latter being something that many platform-dependent influencers may be ignoring at their own peril. He emphasizes the importance of having a strong “rim” (content and messaging strategy) in a hub and spoke model, as it ties in with the audience’s journey and provides clarity and focus on messaging.

The conversation shifts to a discussion of consumer loyalty, with James observing that that 90% of loyalty problems can be traced back to a flawed sales process, whereas a 1-2% increase in loyalty can lead to a 60-80% increase in net present value. He emphasizes the need for marketers to prioritize user experience and conversion rate optimization across the entire funnel.

The talk wraps with a chat about website optimization and user engagement, with James highlighting the role that technical site performance — particularly page load speed — plays in creating an important first level of trust with prospects.

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Kevin Lee interviews Lesley Hensell, of Riverbend Consulting. Lesley’s company helps 3rd party sellers restore their accounts after a suspension, deactivation, or block.

Lesley and Kevin cover a lot of ground in this interview that should be of great interest to anyone with a storefront on Amazon, including:

– The many the challenges of working with Amazon, including unreasonable testing requests that make no sense.

-The importance of diversification for businesses on Amazon (i.e. maintaining presences on their own sites or via Shopify).

-“Brand gating” and how to avoid it.

– Do’s and Don’ts when using AI to create Amazon product descriptions and imagery

– The importance of keeping accurate invoices and testing documents, given that Amazon may request them in the event of a suspension or issue.

– The key forensic role that Returns Reports play in helping sellers identify and address issues with their products, reducing risk and improving customer satisfaction.

– The importance of optimizing Amazon product listings for SEO, as they can rank higher in Google and Bing than a seller’s own website.

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Kevin Lee interviews Lauren Petrullo, who runs Mongoose Media, an Orlando, Florida-based, digital-first marketing agency. Lauren has been featured in Yahoo!, Thrive Global, Refinery29, Shopify, Advertising Week, ComputerWorld and TickerNews, and is a subject matter expert in Meta advertising, omni-channel marketing, e-commerce SEO, social commerce, and AR/VR for business.

Topics discussed in this interview include:

– The common mistake made by business of targeting average customers, instead of their best ones.

– The challenge small businesses face in competing with larger brands in advertising, particularly in acquiring high-quality customer data.

– How small businesses can profitably use Facebook “instant lead” forms, which can capture leads without requiring prospects them to leave the website.

– The importance of proactive measures in digital marketing, such as conducting audits, to identify potential problems early on.

– The importance of marketing on YouTube and leveraging its community aspects, especially when trying to reach younger audiences.

– Mistakes made by hospitality and e-commerce brands, such as running outdated software and poorly managing marketing emails.

– How marketers can create compelling content, even for “boring” industries.

– The importance of aligning marketing and sales efforts to deliver on brand promises.

– The fact that email is hardly “dead” and can prove a valuable marketing channel if used correctly.

– The continued effectiveness of push marketing.

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Kevin Lee interviews Gregory Elfrink, of Empire Flippers, a marketplace for buying and selling online businesses. Such businesses include ecommerce, SaaS, content sites, FBA, and more. Gregory has a wealth of knowledge about what makes these online businesses tick, what makes them succeed, and causes them to fail.

Kevin and Gregory cover a lot of topics in this conversation that should be of value to anyone involved in online business today, including:

– The degree to which SEO can cause an online business to succeed or fail.

– The negative impact of Google’s recent “Helpful Content” update on many content-focused online businesses.

– The rise of “zero-click” searches.

– The resurgence of direct mail as a marketing channel.

– The importance of diversifying revenue streams in business, particularly for content affiliate sites, to reduce concentration risk and increase valuation.

– The pros and cons of in-house marketing teams versus agencies.

– How proprietors of online businesses should prepare their properties for sale.

– M&A marketing trends.

– The importance of content creation in terms of building trust and engagement with potential customers.

– Best practices for ideating content, including looking for inspiration from other people and feeding curiosity through great content.

– The importance of understanding the emotional needs of customers when selling products.

– The importance of transparency and honesty in marketing.

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Kevin Lee interviews Will Christensen, a Go To Market specialist who’s the head of marketing at Seller Labs, a Georgia-based software tool provider for e-commerce merchants. Will is also the co-founder and CEO of DataAutomation.com, a company that customizes automation and integration processes for e-commerce sellers.

Will provided a lot of great info — including some unbeatable tactical tips — about selling on Amazon that should be of great interest to anyone selling products on this important commerce platform. We cover a lot of ground in our interview, including:

– The importance of the law of reciprocity in sales, where small gestures of goodwill can lead to increased likelihood of purchase.

– How Amazon sellers should go about selecting 3rd party software to improve their selling results.

– SEO strategies for Amazon sellers and the key role played by user-generated content in terms of improving one’s chance of ranking outside of Amazon.

– “Grey hat” SEO tactics that e-commerce merchants can use to improve their chances of ranking.

– Apps that Will finds indispensable, including clipboard managers and password managers.

– The challenges of managing a large number of SKUs on Amazon, including the potential for penalties and the importance of authentic reviews.

– The utility (and danger) of using review syndicates (often referred to as “review mafias”) on Amazon, give that they can lead to account flagging and extra scrutiny on future reviews.

– The role that AI will likely play in ferreting out inauthentic Amazon reviews.

– Amazon marketplace trends, which recently have included large moves by brand aggregators.

– How sellers should regard and quantify the interaction of paid and organic strategies on Amazon.

– The fact that Amazon’s real-time reporting data may not always be reliable and that sellers need to wait a minimum of 14 days before acting based on this reporting.

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Kevin Lee interviews Duane “DJ” Sprague and Scott Brandley, who run Shopper Approved, a Utah-based firm providing tools that help merchants increase trust, traffic, and conversions through the management of user reviews.

Some of the topics covered in this interview include:

– The different flavors of UGC (User-Generated Content), including BGC (Brand-Generated Content), and EGC (Expert-Generated Content)

– The importance of verified reviews for businesses and in terms of not running afoul of regulations from the Federal Trade Commission.

– The process by which reviews are syndicated across multiple websites.

– The fact that today’s generation of young people “live by video” and are quite comfortable creating – and consuming – video reviews.

– The SEO value of strategic Q&A-style content.

– Industry sectors where reviews are particularly more powerful, such as retailers with house brands or manufactured brands from different manufacturers.

– Why consumers in certain health-related sectors may resist leaving authentic reviews due to privacy concerns.

– The fact that having some negative reviews can actually improve one’s trust level among consumers.

– The importance of brands responding reviews in order to show they care about customer feedback and are adept at solving consumer issues.

– Why executives – not just line staff – need to pay attention to consumer reviews, which cumulatively serve as an index to a brand’s overall reputation.

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Kevin Lee interviews Grace Watkins and Holly Rawlinson, of Click Media, on the topic of the evolution of the influencer industry. They cover many topics that will be of interest to brands seeking to reach audiences mediated by influencers, and by influencers and creators seeking to work more successfully with brands. These topics include:

– Misconceptions regarding gamers and gaming audiences that can prevent brand managers from appreciating their value.

– The role played by platform algorithms and meritocracy in terms of surfacing top creators.

– The shift in power away from traditional Hollywood agencies and studios toward independent internet-based creators and influencers.

– The challenges faced by brand managers when seeking to reach audiences mediated by gaming influencers.

– The importance of considering multiple KPIs when working with creators and influencers, such as website clicks, downloads, and engagement, rather than solely focusing on sales.

– The fact that creators with existing friendships can amplify each other’s content and increase virality.

– Instances where brands have successfully worked with a group of creators in a way that resonates with their audiences, thus leading to more organic and authentic content that can often exceed contractually obligated content.

– Why brand managers may struggle with giving influencers and creators sufficient creative freedom to create content that truly resonates with their audiences.

– How influencers are becoming more sophisticated in their approaches to building personal brands, recognizing the importance of having multiple touchpoints with their audiences.

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Kevin Lee interviews Kevin Rowe, Founder and Head of Digital PR at PureLinq, a Florida-based agency focused on digital PR for SEO. This talk covered a lot of topics of relevance to anyone doing SEO, PR, social media, or any kind of organic optimization today: they include:

– The importance of storytelling and social media in SEO.

– The importance of producing trustworthy content in a world where AI-generated content is becoming more prevalent.

– The importance of understanding the different layers of expertise and reputation in SEO, and how Google is now able to recognize and prioritize these factors.

– The crucial role that voice assistants like Google Home will play in the future of search.

– The possibility that the recent Helpful Content update in Google may have been influenced by AI, given that the update prioritizes unique and human-generated content over AI-generated content.

– How to use AI to thwart “Creator’s Block” (formerly known as “Writer’s Block”)

– Potential loopholes in ChatGPT’s training data, including the use of human-generated content to train the AI and the potential for abuse.

– The importance of measuring the value of PR and digital content placements beyond media equivalents.

– How brand search volume and direct navigation volume can be used as a leading indicator of paid media success.

– The growing demand for digital PR and SEO services, as indicated by a 10x increase in Google Trends search interest over the past 5 years.

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Kevin Lee interviews Greg Gifford, of SearchLabs. Greg Gifford is an experienced SEO consultant who has presented on the topic of local SEO at dozens of high-profile industry events. (If you’d like to see some of Greg’s excellent presentations, you can find them on SlideShare at the following link: https://www.slideshare.net/greggifford).

Kevin and Greg cover a lot of ground in our interview and address many topics of interest to anyone doing local SEO today. These topics include:

– The possible impact that Gemini, a Google-developed AI app intended to replace voice-based search, will have on local SEO.

– The role that Google Home may play in terms of serving as a platform for testing and training AI to answer questions conversationally, potentially changing how people use voice search at home.

– How creating and syndicating high-quality content across various platforms, such as Yelp and LinkedIn, can help improve local SEO and AI visibility.

– The degree to which writing better content for one’s website can help improve search engine rankings as AI becomes more integrated in the search experience.

– The importance of optimizing videos for YouTube, as doing this can lead to more visibility and leads in the long run.

– The importance of optimizing Google Business Profiles for local search, particularly in regard to selecting relevant categories for the business.

– Why businesses need to take steps to ask customers for reviews to increase the chances of getting good reviews (even if doing so means getting more bad reviews).

– The fact that that no amount of marketing can overcome a bad user experience.

– Google’s recent efforts to improve local search experiences, including new verification processes and reinstatement procedures.

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Kevin Lee interviews James Avery, Founder and CEO at Kevel, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based adtech company whose ad serving APIs make it easy for brands to monetize their sites and apps. Kevel’s monetization software can easily be deployed within retail media networks (networks allowing retailers to advertise within their in-store and/or online environments), and Kevel itself has been driving the standardization of protocols and ad unit types through a recently formed industry working whose intention is to establish an OpenRTB Protocol for retail media.

Kevin and James discuss the emergence of retail media as a powerful advertising channel for retailers and chat about how retailers can best take advantage of it. They cover a good number of topics in our talk that will be of interest to retailers, e-tailers, and e-commerce merchants, including:

– Retail media and its use cases in advertising.

– The unique value of retail media, given the rich first-party data retailers possess, including purchase history and information related to customer loyalty.

– Looking at Amazon as an example of a highly optimized retail media network, with over 50% of retail media revenue in the category.

– Why it’s critically important for retailers to link online and offline POS (Point of Sale) data.

– How retailers can use programmatic advertising within retail networks media to delight customers through targeted, relevant ads.

– The potential for retailers to share data with brands, which could be used to create more effective targeted marketing campaigns.

– The potential for upside in retail sectors selling large ticket items, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, and for specialty retailers.

– How the development of an open RTB standard for promoted listings will enable retailers to deliver ads programmatically across multiple platforms and measure performance in a more open and efficient way.

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