Marketing

A Series On The Marketing Solopreneur: #1 Dan Koe

Peter · March 6, 2023 · Leave a Comment

I am doing a series on the world of the solopreneur that offers two things.

1) Insights from a serious thinker/doer that will help you grow your business. I am talking solopreneur.

2) An alternative career path roadmap. No working for the “man”. Even if that man/woman/person is you, as in someone that runs a marketing agency.

Definition…According to Merriam-Webster, a solopreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise without the help of a partner.”

#1 solopreneur is the design guru Dan Koe. He delivers courses +

Dan offers courses on writing, productization, and a Modern Mastery system. These range from $150 to $999. He makes a lot of money. I am considering the book course even though I am now completing my fourth book and am outlining my fifth. Never too late to tap into someone else’s experience. Factoid… Dan has 75K followers on LinkedIn. 295K Twitter followers. 223K YouTube subs. 1.2 million Instagram peeps. Yikes!

From Dan’s website – a very cool website by the way:

Hey, I’m Dan.

I’m a brand advisor for 6-7 figure creators and influencers.

I’m the guy they come to when they want to go from starving artist to a highly-paid and authentic creator. No fancy sales funnels and pushy marketing in this household.

I help them systemize their workflow, marketing, and content so they can work for 2 hours a day, charge more, and sell their products & services without manual effort.

As a freelancer turned consultant turned creator, I’ve developed effective systems with time, skin in the game, and experience with 4000+ students and clients.

Four Things For You To Do

Sign up for future newsletters to scope out even more interesting and way active solopreneur thinker/doers.
Pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Tell Dan you love him. -> LinkedIn
Go here to read my series of 850+ blog posts.

SmarterChild Beat ChatGPT by 22 Years

Peter · January 25, 2023 · Leave a Comment

As BuzzFeed Said About SmarterChild… (way before ChatGPT)

From BuzzFeed 2013: “50 Things That Look Just Like Your Childhood” – “A chat with an online robot”

Did you play with SmarterChild? I was one of the founders and CEO. Was nice to be part of the Internet’s childhood.Who knew then that ChatGPT was coming?

Here is a start-up video … 2000… (Microsoft eventually bought us – ActiveBuddy. And, now they own a chunk of ChatGPT) Yes, that’s me.

A New Kick-Ass Email Tool

Peter · October 13, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a new subject line email tool that will increase opens.

I got an email today from one of my favorite email newsletters – Josh Spector’s For The Interested. The email pointed me to omnisend’s email subject line tester

The omnisend promise: Boost your email open rates: analyze and improve your subject lines before sending your next campaign.

I used the tool to create this blog post’s subject line. It scored high.

You can see more tools and resources right There’s more! Here in my advertising, marketing agency resources list.

WTF Takeaways From Ad Age Small Agency Conference

Peter · August 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Ad Age Small Agency Conference: Stating The Obvious… Way Too Often

Here are some smart, yet painful, takeaways from The Ad Age Small Agency Conference. I am not surprised at what the speakers say. But also a bit horrified. I mean, what you are about to hear are what I would consider no-brainers for how to run an advertising agency.

No Brainers… That is my What The Fuck. Am I being too dramatic? I don’t think so.

The issue is that these expert takeaways and advice should be ingrained in all advertising, digital design, and PR agencies. Clearly these takeaways are not. But, YMMV. I include some thoughts and links to “helpful’ thinking. Mine.

Not Speaking Client Language. From Mirren:

Brent Hodgin, Mirren’s Managing Director, is focused on language. As in client language.

“Clients are focused on growth and revenue and most agencies are focusing on brand reputation and positioning,” Hodgins said. “And that is a gap.” Awareness “in and of itself is not an end benefit,” he said, because you can grow awareness and still not move one product off the shelf.” He added: “When you don’t use the language of your client … it’s like you are an outsider trying to be an insider.”

The Levitan take. Hey, agencies are selling services to a prospective client that wants stuff. Figure out what stuff they want (gee like more sales and customers and the right analytics + KPIs) and talk their language. Do the upfront research.

Get past typical agency “branding” talk to talking about “sales”. Like ROI.

Some “CLIENT” language from my pitch book:

Here is a quote from an interview I did with Ian Beavis who has been EVP Automotive at Nielsen and ex auto CMO (Kia, Mitsubishi.) He has been pitched by dozens of agencies (and ran the Toyota account at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, as well)

Levitan: A final question. Agencies have a hard time creating a competitive agency brand positioning. Any insights and advice you can give to the agency world on how to be distinctive in this highly competitive category?

Beavis: You rarely hear of an agency being a business solution provider, as it just doesn’t sound cool or creative. A good agency solves a client’s business issues and is a partner. Very few qualify and even fewer truly embrace this challenge.

Clients want agencies that understand business objectives and business results. They want to hear that you get it. That’s it, folks. This WTF is about not doing the research to learn what that prospective client wants.

Agencies Have a Serious Branding Problem. From The Martin Agency.

Free Google Marketing Tools (2022)

Peter · May 8, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Must Use Google Marketing Tools For Your Advertising Agency

I love free. I love it when you can head over to a list of free Google marketing tools that will help you market your advertising agency. These tools and dozens more can be seen and loved on my Big Advertising Agency Resources List page.

Google Marketing Tools To Help Build Agency Insights

Google Scholar: Want to look smart? Google Scholar searches through thousands of research-oriented articles and emerging studies. It aims your search at articles, new ideas, books, abstracts, and court opinions. Results are from academics, professional societies, online repositories, universities, and other websites.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This is a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not in Google’s search universe. It is also a great tool to help you find the right (hot) subjects for your next blog post.

Google Alerts. Stay ahead of your client, a prospective client (as in category, brand, and people), and industry news by creating a list of Google Alerts. Frankly, this should be a primary business development tool. You want XYZ account, right. Then create an alert for any XYZ news.

Google Marketing Tools To Help Your Agency Improve Its Business Development Programs & Platforms

Google Online Marketing. Learn from the leader.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google Analytics. You want to track your website right?

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at y’all on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

Free Google Marketing Tools For Advertising Itself

Advertising works. While your agency has a bunch of advertising options, clearly Google Ads should be considered. Usually, agencies will by relevant keywords like: “Dallas advertising agency” or “medical marketing ad agency”… but, there are some other options like buying an ad on “Trudy Hardy” — go ahead and see what I mean.

Google Ads. Yes, your advertising agency can run ads for itself.

And…