In the Headlights, January 13, 2021: Marketing in Crisis, Podcasting - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

Welcome, Agorapulse Summit friends!

Well, That Happened

With all the major news happening (new daily records in the pandemic, armed insurrection, etc.), how are you handling it from a marketing operations perspective? Earlier this week, Katie and I sat down and discussed it (which you’ll hear on our podcast episode below) but one of the strongest conclusions we reached was that now is the time to add focus on true inbound marketing.

What does that mean? True inbound marketing is a focus on things that are actually inbound. When we publish social posts, we’re broadcasting, we’re outbound. Even this email newsletter is technically outbound, because we’re sending it to you. True inbound marketing is when the customer comes to you, not the other way around.

So, what meets that qualification? The contents of your inbox. Inquiries from your website. And most critically, all forms of search. Organic search, paid search, podcast search, YouTube search – if someone’s looking for you, be there.

This shouldn’t be a strategic shift of much consequence; after all, search is already part of your marketing mix. What’s changed is that we want to add focus to it. Add budget, add resources, add inventory.

Why? What does this accomplish? In a very charged, volatile environment, you can do real reputational damage to your company by appearing tone-deaf, by carrying on “business as usual” when the circumstances affecting the lives of your customers are anything but usual. Depending on your customer base, business as usual may be perceived as a personal affront.

When you focus on search, you’re focusing on people who have demonstrated through their actions that they are conducting business, that they’re trying to get things done and not just spend the day doomscrolling (no judgement, lots of people are doing it). Search indicates intent, and we want to fulfill that intent as quickly as possible.

So, what should you be doing right now?

First, make sure your organic and paid search operations are powered up and running as efficiently and as effectively as possible. It’s okay to pause your outbound marketing and focus on inbound for a little while until things settle down a little.

Second, put together a Twitter list of your top 10 or 20 customers and prospects individual personal Twitter accounts as well as brand accounts, and use that to read the room. If all your best customers and prospects are talking about business as usual, you probably can, too. If all your best customers and prospects are doomscrolling and doom-posting, you know it’s not the time to resume business as usual. Let the data guide your decisions.

We did this for ourselves; many of our customers, prospects, and friends were focused on anything but business as usual, so we’ve suspended most of our social posts and our livestream shows, etc. until we see indications people are ready to begin thinking about business again more fully.

Finally, make sure to take care of yourself. It sounds all granola-crunchy and New Age, but the reality is that any kind of crisis situation puts stress and strain on your body, provoking a cortisol response – the fight or flight response. Be sure to take time for yourself in whatever health-giving ways help you relax. Take a walk, take a five minute break to listen to a favorite song, browse cute animal photos, play a round of your favorite mobile game – whatever it takes to stimulate the neurotransmitters that counter cortisol’s effects.

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Thank you for voting! We post the results of our polls in our Slack community, Analytics for Marketers, so swing on by.

In this week’s In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris talk through how to make marketing operations during a crisis. When big, macro events have the world talking, what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to marketing? How should marketing leaders weigh the different operational decisions?

Watch/listen to the most recent episode of In-Ear Insights here »

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In this week’s Rear View Mirror, we fielded a question about the overall podcasting landscape from our Slack group, Analytics for Marketers, so we decided to dig deep into podcasting since everyone and their cousin seems to have one these days.

First, let’s answer a simple question: how much interest is there in podcasting? Based on data from the Spyfu research tool, we see more than 7 million clicks and 10 million searches every month for the top 10,000 search terms around podcasts. The top 35 podcasting related terms comprise 1.2 million searches:

These terms also help us understand what the top podcasts are on the market; no surprise, Joe Rogan’s show is the top searched show by a substantial margin.

What’s the key takeaway here? Podcasting is hot right now. What does that mean for your marketing strategy? Starting your own podcast might not be the right call, because the landscape is very, very crowded, but finding a show to sponsor – even if it’s not in the top 100 or even the top 100,000, as long as the show serves your audience – is definitely a move worth considering.

Methodology: Trust Insights used Spyfu data around the core search term podcast and all related variations. The timeframe of the data is December 12, 2020 – January 12, 2021. The date of study is January 12, 2021. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.

Do you want to understand data science better as a marketer? Would you like to learn whether it’s the right choice for your career? Do you need to know how to manage data science employees and vendors? Take the Data Science 101 workshop from Trust Insights.

In this 90-minute on-demand workshop, learn what data science is, why it matters to marketers, and how to embark on your marketing data science journey. You’ll learn:

How to build a KPI map
How to analyze and explore Google Analytics data
How to construct a valid hypothesis
Basics of centrality, distribution, regression, and clustering
Essential soft skills
How to hire data science professionals or agencies

The course comes with the video, audio recording, PDF of the slides, automated transcript, example KPI map, and sample workbook with data.

Get your copy by clicking here or visiting TrustInsights.ai/datascience101 »

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