Tag: marketing (Page 1 of 2)

The Strategist’s Dilemma: When Even Google Says “Just Let Us Run It”

July 27, 2025 / Andy

Early in my career, I was a tactician. Email campaigns, SEO, SEM, building landing pages, hacking together A/B tests. Whatever the job needed, I’d figure it out.

Then I got older. Took on bigger roles. Strategy became my thing. I got an MBA, which basically teaches you how to never do real work again. Just make PowerPoints and use fancy terms like “ubiquitous” and “leveraging synergies.” Just kidding. Kind of.

Then I taught at UW. Strategy-heavy, theory-driven. But not much time for learning how to troubleshoot a broken Meta ad pixel or chase down why TikTok didn’t like the file format you uploaded.

Fast-forward to a recent client gig. A small, scrappy brand with big potential. I figured with AI at my side, I could go back to being a full-stack marketer. The headlines promised that AI was like hiring a 12-person team. All I had to do was show up and prompt. Well, that’s what I thought would happen…

Does the 3-30-3 Writing Framework Still Work?

June 22, 2025 / Andy

Does the 3-30-3 Writing Framework Still Work?

There is a writing model I’ve followed for years. I swear I stole it from someone else, but whenever I try to find the article that taught it to me, I can’t locate it. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe it was a late night conversation at Ad Club.

Regardless, the idea is simple:

You get 3 seconds to grab someone’s attention and earn 30 more seconds.
You have that 30 seconds to earn their interest and earn 3 more minutes.
Only then, in that 3 minutes, do you get to earn enough trust to shift their mindset, earn a response, or close the deal.

So, does it still work today?

1. 3 seconds to stop the scroll

The Nielsen Norman Group says most users decide whether to stay or leave a page within 10 to 20 seconds. But if you can keep them for the first 5 seconds, the odds of them staying longer go up significantly.

Mobile is even less forgiving. A Meta study found people make up their mind about content in just 1.7 seconds while scrolling. First impressions matter. A lot.

2. 30 seconds to hook curiosity

The average reader doesn’t get far. According to Chartbeat, more than half of visitors spend less than 15 seconds actively reading a piece of content. But if someone makes it to 30 seconds, their chances of continuing to the 1-minute mark nearly double.

That’s where interest turns into attention.

3. 3 minutes to actually do something

If someone spends 3 minutes or more with your content, they’re in it. A Nielsen study showed that readers who stay that long are more likely to subscribe, share, or convert. Heatmaps from Crazy Egg show that serious purchase intent tends to happen after the 2-minute mark, when people have read enough to feel confident.

So yes, the 3-30-3 model still works.

It lines up with how attention works in real life. People make fast decisions, scan quickly for value, and only commit when they feel something is worth it. If you can clear those three checkpoints of attention, interest, evaluation in one piece of content, you’re doing more than getting clicks. You’re actually getting through.

Does LinkedIn Still Belong in 2025 Marketing Budgets?

December 15, 2024 / Andy

As companies (like my clients) finalize their 2025 marketing strategies, many are asking whether LinkedIn still warrants a dedicated line in the budget. Once a critical space for B2B visibility and thought leadership, the platform now faces new competition, rising costs, and declining returns for some sectors. Plus, it seems like hardly anyone actually works there.

It seems like for every reason to keep it, there’s an equally valid one for abandoning it.

Engagement Is Still Strong—But Flattening

For B2B marketers, LinkedIn has historically been unmatched in terms of audience intent. But engagement metrics suggest the platform may be nearing a plateau. According to LinkedIn’s own Benchmark Report, click-through rates on thought leadership posts declined year over year:

2023: 0.55%
2024: 0.49%

Meanwhile, a June 2024 Socialinsider study found carousel posts remained the most engaging format, especially for professional services firms. Short videos, once seen as a growth area, now underperform outside of HR or recruitment content.

The Cost Equation Is Shifting

Advertising on LinkedIn remains expensive—often prohibitively so for performance marketers. Wordstream’s Q3 2024 report shows stark differences in average CPM:

LinkedIn: $38.12
Meta (Facebook/Instagram): $14.74
TikTok: $8.91

For campaigns focused on lead generation or direct conversions, the ROI may be difficult to justify compared to cheaper alternatives.

When LinkedIn Still Delivers

Despite those challenges, LinkedIn still drives value for certain brands—particularly those with high-ticket offerings or a professional audience. Sectors continuing to see returns include:

SaaS and enterprise software
Management consulting
HR technology and recruiting firms
Financial services
Executive coaching and leadership training

These industries benefit from the trust and credibility that LinkedIn still holds with decision-makers.

For Consumer Brands, Less Justifiable

For lifestyle or direct-to-consumer brands, LinkedIn rarely makes sense. The professional context limits emotional storytelling, and users are less receptive to brand content unless it’s tied to employment, entrepreneurship, or career development.

Even brands experimenting with employer branding and culture posts are seeing limited traction unless the content is truly unique or backed by a hiring initiative.

A Tighter, Smarter Approach

LinkedIn isn’t dead, it just isn’t automatic. Marketers should reevaluate its role based on goals, cost, and audience fit. For brands that use it well, the platform can still offer high-quality engagement. For others, 2025 may be the right year to scale back and reinvest in channels with broader reach and better value.

ChatGPT Is Not a Copywriter. It’s a Brutal First Draft Machine.

July 4, 2022 / Andy

Let’s get this out of the way: I like AI. I use it. I even talk to it more than some of my friends. But let’s not pretend it’s Don Draper.

What AI is great at? Vomiting out a rough idea so you can sharpen it. Rewriting headlines until one of them doesn’t suck. Spitting out 20 variations of something you weren’t even sure how to start.

But it doesn’t know timing. Or tone. Or how to write a line that makes you pause, not scroll.

A lot of brands are skipping the human part. They’re posting AI-generated sludge and calling it “content.” That’s not innovation. That’s

laziness dressed up in automation.

The good news? If you still have a voice, your own. You can make AI your assistant, not your replacement. But it starts with knowing who you are before you press “generate.”

Ask a Marketer: Video Marketing

March 6, 2018 / Andy

In the last two segments of the “Ask a Marketer” series we covered Paid Search and Email Marketing. This week’s topic is Video Marketing, and we talk to Derek Merdinyan of Video Igniter.

Q1: Give me the 3 second pitch – Why should I spend money to add video into my marketing mix?
Video enables you to package up and present your message in a way that is educational, entertaining, engaging and easily sharable.

Q2: What are some examples of things I can explain better using video than if I just tried to write it in a blog or white paper?
Software, technology, systems, stories, anything that is complex and better explained through analogy. In almost every case, it is possible to explain things better with animated video instead of ‘filmed’ video because animations can be used to focus on the specific visual details that make it easier to understand new material.

Q3: What are some ways I can take the money I spend on video, and use it in other areas?
If you are speaking about animation specifically, be sure to ask your animator for a full project archive – odds are you can repurpose the visual images they created (i.e. characters, icons, charts, etc) and turn those images into image posts for social media.

Q4: How much should I expect to pay for a video? What’s the range and what determines that range?
If you go to a freelancer marketplace website, you can expect to pay $300 – $5,000 – the range varies by a few factors, notably the production quality, the number of revisions you can request, and the overall responsiveness, creativity and professionalism of the person you are working with. Hiring a full on animation studio can run you $5,000 – $50,000 or more. 2D projects tend to cost between $3,000 – $15,000/minute for visual quality you will be proud of. Quality 3D animations are easily going to be north of $15,000/minute.

Q5: A standard line is that on a project, there’s Cheap, Fast and Good, and you can only have 2 of the 3. Is that true for video as well?
100%.

Q6: Anything else we need to know about Video Marketing?
Most people think you just make a video, put it online, and promote it. Few people analyze and optimize their video – which for many companies is their largest marketing asset. When you first put your video online, you should host it with a service that provides you analytics to see what % of people click the thumbnail to play the video & how long people watch the video before they stop. Are only 10% of your landing page visitors clicking the play button? Maybe you need a better thumbnail for the video. Do most people watch the whole video or are a large number of people dropping off around 14 seconds? If your video is animated, it’s much easier to revise and recreate part of your video to make it flow better for viewers; live action videos are harder and more expensive to optimize because it means bringing back the same film crew, actors and booking a location just to re-shoot an alternate segment. It would be wise, for both live action and animated marketing videos to create multiple alternate endings for your video to see which variation leads to more conversions (i.e. sign up here, call this #, download the app, join our newsletter, etc).

Ask a Marketer: Paid Search

February 16, 2018 / Andy

Last week we started the “Ask a Marketer” Series with Email Marketing tips from Elizabeth Case. This week we shift to paid search, with Local SEM Expert Rick Read.

Q1: Companies seem to be moving almost all of their Paid Ad budget to Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. What are you seeing from clients?

Rick: Yes. Paid media dollars are being moved to Search (Google//Bing), Facebook, and LinkedIn. Search always seems to be a steady driver of clicks and usually if examining the whole funnel search usually plays a role in influencing end clicks elsewhere in the funnel. FB and LI, have great results because of their ability to deliver more engaging content/creative and have powerful targeting capabilities. For all channels I would recommend leveraging custom audiences and re-marketing where you can.

Q2: What kind of landing page work should you do before starting a Paid Search campaign?

Rick: We see best results with a Clear top of page/above the fold CTA. If you at driving to leads to gated content, I recommend testing that to see if it works with your audience and campaigns. Search works best with as few steps to an end action as possible.

Q3: What is the minimum budget you need to make a Paid Search program worthwhile? How much for media, how much to hire help?

Rick: This is a difficult question as it has a lot of dependencies. Vertical, Keywords, brand awareness, and competition. depending on your KPI. You can allocate your funds in equal proportion and as your campaign runs you begin to shift budgets to media that perform better. But avoid the “last click” measurement model, try to measure and take into consideration the value search has on a FB click, even if search doesn’t get the last click.

For search you can use Google’s keyword planner and get an idea of search query volume and average CPC and then project that over the QTR then year. initially you want use this figure and add an additional 10-20% to it and run for 3-6 months and measure the results. You may find you cannot spend the money, or it may not be enough and will require additional investment. As far as staff resources, depending on account size, you may need a minimum of two people. one for PPC and one for Social. One can do it but they are two different practices that are involved enough to be a challenge for a single individual. But there are plenty of Agencies that handle any size business, so that is an option.

Q4: What are some ballpark Paid Search CPC and CPM rates these days for different industries?

Rick: Again this is a difficult question to answer. You can find a lot of info here https://trends.google.com/trends/ . CPC is effected by brand/non-brand keyword mix, Brand power, competition and quality score. etc. We have $40 keywords and keywords as low as $1 on branded terms. so again these are hard numbers to pin down.

Have more questions for Rick? Shoot me an email or find him on LinkedIn..

Ask a Marketer: Email Marketing

February 8, 2018 / Andy

Doing what I do, I have the privilege to engage with a number of marketing professionals who are among the best of the bunch. Upon reflection, I realized that some of the things we talk about may also be of interest to people who stumble upon this blog. Thus, I am starting a new series called, “What Marketers Need to Know.” And yes, I know we need a catchier title.

Each article in this series will feature a semi-deep dive into a topic area marketers need to understand. The answers will come from an industry expert who speaks from real-world client experience. To start the series off, I asked my friend Elizabeth Case of Yellow Dog Consulting to give us some real-time thoughts on Email Marketing.

Topic 1: Email Marketing – Elizabeth Case, Yellow Dog Consulting

Q1) As you look back at 2017, with what kind of strategies or tactics did your clients find the most success?

Elizabeth: Simple word – Newsletter.

I will forever be a broken record on this and I am OK with it! Consistency is key in email marketing. If I only ever hear from you when you have a product or workshop to sell me, that’s not going to work. I had one client who at the end of 3 months wanted to wrap up because they weren’t getting registrations for their workshop. I wasn’t aware that was the goal of their newsletter and if you read the newsletter, you wouldn’t have either! I’m not saying don’t offer a product or service, you can do that on occasion, but you must earn the right to be heard first.

Also, make sure you have good systems in place. One successful client includes a simple “sign up for a free 30 minute consult” link in the end of her monthly newsletter. It goes to a page to schedule on their calendar. Not 15 steps back and forth for a prospective client – one click, two clicks, boom – new lead ready to talk to them. Every month they get a new (or returning) client from their newsletter.

Another good system is automation…“Click here to download…” and then have that system automated. Don’t worry about it. I have 3 offers in the footer of my newsletter (yeah that may be too many, I’ll work on it) and they are automated so I don’t have to worry about it.

Q2) Now as you look ahead to 2018, what strategies and tactics will you change? What will you do more or less of?

Elizabeth: So far in 2018 I’m seeing a lot of folks automate their processes which is GREAT! You created an awesome program or free download on your website – let’s get that system working for YOU. Nurture and educate these leads so you can keep doing what you love each day.

One conversation I often have with clients is about frequency. Do I really need to hear from you once a week? I don’t have time for that. And I certainly don’t have time for it at 10 AM on a Tuesday when I’m in the middle of my work day. Depending on what you do, I may have time for it in the evening or weekends or over my lunch break. But if you’re sending me something daily or weekly it better be damn good or I will find that unsubscribe button really fast…

There are newsletters that I look forward to receiving each month and ones that I delete each week because it’s too frequent. You know your audience and if the open rates are there then fantastic, but if you’re hovering under 20% it’s time to reconsider if your schedule and frequency are really working for you.

Q3) How important is a lead nurturing campaign? At what point do you move your clients from a standard newsletter to a customized drip campaign?

Elizabeth: Lead nurturing campaigns are awesome depending on the size of your company. It may not make sense for a solo-prenuer or a small business with just a couple sales folks to have a big drip campaign setup. But if you have systems in place, as you grow you can start to automate that nurturing.

You have to use your campaign software, it will tell you when to start dripping. If you aren’t reading reports after each campaign is sent, you’re missing out on the MOST valuable information about your content. What links do they continue to click? How many of the last 10 campaigns have they opened? What are their demographics? If someone is constantly opening and engaging with your content, it’s time to start nurturing that contact. You don’t want to leave low hanging fruit out their to dwindle away and hire the competition. Start to pay attention to frequency and build a plan around it.

And when that nurture is done – make sure they continue to hear from you on a regular basis so you stay top of mind for them to either hire you again or refer you to a colleague.

Q4) If a company is just getting an email marketing program off the ground, what tools or technologies would you suggest they invest in?

Elizabeth: I’m always a big fan of MailChimp, especially when you’re just starting out. They offer free automation and are perfect for a small and growing company (and your contact lists). If you’re a larger company you can’t go wrong with HubSpot. It will help you integrate and automate so your teams aren’t stepping on each others toes which is always a safe move!

Email marketing continues to be one of the best and most intimate communications you can have with a potential client. If you aren’t taking advantage of all those contacts in your CRM you’re missing out on a LOT of fantastic and low hanging fruit just waiting to be reminded, or introduced, to how awesome you are.

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If you’re struggling with your email marketing, you should chat with Elizabeth. And if you have some topics you’d like to see next, let me know. I’ll be asking my marketing friends to share their insights.

5 Simple Copywriting Rules for Non-Writers

September 21, 2017 / Andy

In my career, I’ve learned there are two types of people in the business world – those who hate writing, and crazy people. Since I spend a significant amount of time writing for companies, I guess I fall in the latter category.

I love to analyze the differing styles of writers, and the ways they work with their words in order to make a good story great. It’s essentially my version of competitive research. I especially enjoy reading articles from writers who can engage readers without clickbait headlines such as, “5 Simple Copywriting Rules for Non-Writers.”

So this seems like a good time to share a few tips aimed at those of you who hate writing, but can’t escape doing it.

You have three seconds to earn a reader’s attention so they’ll read for 30 more: If you have never had to write a sentence for a living, you probably didn’t even bother to click on the title of this article in your feed. That’s fine. You’re not my audience. But if you clicked on this link, I had about 30 seconds in the first three paragraphs to hook you into the meat of the story. If you’ve gotten down here to the bullets, I estimate I now have earned about three more minutes of your time. I’ll try to make it worth it.
Never use an Exclamation Point: Exclamation Points are the lazy writer’s way to show importance about something. If you can’t make a sentence interesting enough to stand on its own, rewrite the sentence. When you are talking to someone in a meeting, do you suddenly shout at them? Of course not. No exclamation points. Ever. Got it? If you have to change the way you type to make sure “Shift-1” is harder to reach, you should do so.
There is no such thing as, “very unique”: “Unique” is defined as, “Being the only one of its kind; unlike anything else.” When something is “one of a kind,” it can’t be “very one of a kind.” Don’t exaggerate for exaggeration’s sake.
There’s a difference between who and that: There are many times when a person who ((not that)) has a lot of subject matter expertise, can present information on a blog that ((not who)) has readers who ((not that)) will benefit from it. Understand that “who” is for people and “that” is for things.
Never use the same word twice in a sentence: This is a tough one for many companies, especially those that have precious few adjectives to describe their product’s features and benefits. Just be conscious that when you are producing content for your web properties, you should be able to write the content in a way that the content doesn’t require the same word multiple times. See, that sentence just sounded silly.

Writing can be a difficult game, but you should never fear it. A bad writer with great ideas is still more interesting to read than someone who is grammatically correct in their description of paint drying.

Was this useful? Kind of useful? Useless? I’d love to hear your own writing tips and tricks, as well as any grammar and punctuation rules that I’ve violated in this article.

More Money for Marketing – Budgets to Increase Again

March 12, 2017 / Andy

Good news for companies with products that target Marketing groups. There should be more money to go around this year. According to a Gartner report published in October of 2016, the average Marketing budget is now up to 12% of company revenue.

The numbers don’t vary too greatly between B2B and B2C companies, with B2B companies receiving 12.3% of the company’s revenue vs 11.6% for B2C brands. Unsurprisingly, high tech companies devote the largest percent of revenue to marketing, at 13.3%

The key in the budget escalation is that large enterprises have accepted the new world of marketing. For many years, social media was a place where the smart and hungry start-ups could out-maneuver their established competitors for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing budget. But according to Gartner, enterprises have adapted. “Large established brands must out-market startups. As scrappy disrupters threaten the hard-earned franchises, these more established companies are forced to compete defensively, which may necessitate higher investments in everything from customer insight to innovation to advertising.”

One traditional marketing tactic appears to continue its importance. 65% of marketing leaders surveyed said they plan to increase spending on digital advertising, with 23% expecting a significant increase. This is being led by the increased importance of video, which is more expensive than other digital techniques for both media and production.

But many people ask, “With all the marketing automation tools and programmatic advertising designed to decrease marketing costs, why do budgets need to increase?”

“The problem with marketing automation tools is that everyone has access to them,” says Marketing Consultant Elizabeth Case. “So instead of competing for a customer’s eyeballs in a landscape of 100 touchpoints, we’re all competing to attract that same eyeball in 100,000 touchpoints. Thus, while they may get more for their money, they still need to spend more money to find the eyeballs.”

However, the news is not all good across the board. While the average marketing exec expects a bigger checkbook, a higher percentage than ever before (14%) expect to see a cut back. So why the contrarian approach from this group? Ironically, it’s the media companies that are cutting back their marketing spend. The industry that is most reliant on advertising to survive, is being forced to slash their own marketing budgets.

Also, marketers at smaller companies are being asked to do more with less. “CEO’s of small to mid-sized businesses read the articles and believe the promise that whatever technology they invest in can save them 10-50%,” says Derek Merdinyan, CEO of video production company Video Igniter. “So the marketing folks at SMB’s are being asked to run premium campaigns on a shoestring budget. Meanwhile, the enterprises are now spending more so they can catch up to the ways they’ve been traditionally outmaneuvered by start-ups.”

So what kind of technology companies benefit from this shifting landscape?

First, Gartner sees a tighter integration between sales and marketing teams. Marketing programs that easily integrate with CRM’s are likely to be adopted.
Next, the CMO is gaining responsibility. According to Gartner, in more than 30% of organizations, at least some aspects of sales, IT and customer experience report into the CMO.
Finally, Gartner states that Marketing leaders will set aside 10% of the marketing budget for innovation. Customer experience and digital commerce are the top two areas of innovation projects marketing leaders say they’re currently pursuing — 53% for customer experience and 51% for digital commerce.

So in the end, there’s more money to be had from Marketing departments. But it’s not a simple gold rush. Companies must be wise in what they offer and who they target. If they have the right use case for the right audience, they should be able to grow their own revenues.

Top B2B Marketing Whitepapers and Reports

February 26, 2017 / Andy

If you’re like me, your Facebook and LinkedIn feeds are inundated with articles, whitepapers, and industry reports. Now most of you probably skip them, but I find these much more enlightening than the latest political argument my friends and colleagues are engaged in. So to make life easier on all of you, I’ve listed a few of the reports I think are worth a read.

(Note: Most of these will require you to provide an email address to the company that wrote it. Be a good marketing person and reward the content team for their hard work.)

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CRM Lead Management: The market for CRM lead management applications continues to grow, evolve and mature. This Magic Quadrant evaluates 17 providers to help IT leaders find the right choice for their company, in collaboration with marketing, sales and digital commerce leaders.
2016 State of Marketing, from Salesforce: Trends and insights from nearly 4,000 marketing leaders worldwide.
The State of Inbound 2016, from Hubspot: HubSpot’s 8th Annual Report, Tracking the Future of Inbound Marketing and Sales
The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2016, from Freely: 347 marketing statistics for 2016 that you can use in your own content.
Inbound Marketing Examples, from Hubspot: Hubspot Academy-approved examples of what others have built with the platform.
Digital Marketing Resources, from Salesforce: A library of Salesforce’s most popular pieces on topics like list growth, Facebook marketing, mobile marketing strategy, customer lifecycle marketing
Mobile Messaging Report 2016, by Mobile Ecosystem Forum and mblox: The MEF indexes the messaging habits of nearly 6000 respondents across nine countries worldwide.
The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to B2B Marketing, from LinkedIn: Learn how to leverage LinkedIn’s marketing solutions, including content marketing campaigns, native advertising, sales lead generation, and brand awareness.
The State of Facebook Advertising, by Marin Software: Year-over-year trend charts detailing spend, clicks, and CTR, the growth outlook for Facebook on mobile devices, and why Facebook is paying so much attention to its video ad formats
2016 Mobile App Retrospective, by App Annie: App Annie details the markets that saw the most growth in 2016 for downloads and usage, the growing monetization opportunity for publishers across categories, the top industries that are being transformed by mobile apps, and the trends publishers must stay on top of.
Top 10 Big Data Trends for 2017, by Tableau Software: Tableau highlights the top big data trends for 2017.
Mobile Messaging Report 2016, by Mobile Ecosystem Forum and mblox: The MEF indexes the messaging habits of nearly 6000 respondents across nine countries worldwide.
How to Nail a Mobile Campaign Using SMS and Mobile Apps, by mobileStorm: Mobile apps now give your brand limitless choices on how to communicate, but this whitepaper details how to incorporate them into a larger mix that includes SMS.
Mobile First Brand Loyalty Strategy Guide, by Punchkick Interactive: Learn how your brand can use mobile to build a more effective customer loyalty or rewards program.
Top App Marketing Agencies List 2016, by mobyaffiliates: Need a Mobile Agency? Use this as a handy starting guide.
B2B Marketing Strategies by 2020, by Sundog Interactive: Predictions for the future from an interactive agency.