Inbound Marketing with Michelle Jones

Our very FIRST 3-time guest, Michelle Jones, is back again to talk with Dave and Steve about her company's specialty, inbound marketing. Michelle is the President of Creativate, a B2B marketing agency that helps businesses grow their revenue through inbound marketing. They have over 35 years of combined experience in the industry and specialize in manufacturing, roofing, and industrial sectors. Creativate's team of experts takes a proactive approach to marketing, working with clients to develop a sustainable strategy that aligns with their goals.

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Show Notes:

0:00 - Introduction of the B2B Marketing and Sales Podcast episode
0:15 - Co-hosts Dave Loomis and Steve Miller interview Michelle Jones, President and Founder of Creative Eight, about inbound marketing
0:30 - Michelle explains the difference between inbound and outbound marketing
1:00 - Importance of attracting customers who are already interested in the products or services offered
1:30 - Benefits of inbound marketing, including warmer leads and more effective sales conversations
2:00 - Importance of alignment between sales and marketing
2:30 - Michelle shares examples of successful inbound marketing campaigns
3:00 - Emphasis on the need for specificity in B2B marketing
3:30 - Reminder to continually assess and adjust marketing strategies
4:00 - Conclusion of the episode

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Follow Dave:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidloomis/

Get Dave's book: Marketing Is Everything We Do

Interested in learning how Voice of the Customer can grow your business? Contact Dave: dave@loomismarketing.com

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Follow Steve:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveamiller/

Get Steve's bestselling book: Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition

Want to learn how to generate more business without spending a ton of moolah, and separate yourself from the competition? Steve's online presentations and consulting will make you UNCOPYABLE! Contact him: stevem@beuncopyable.com

Transcript

Michelle Jones - Inbound Marketing

Steve: Hey, everybody. I say that and I always laugh. and, hey everybody, this is Steve Miller, better known as Kelly's dad, marketing Gun Slinger. I'm not going to go through all that other crap that we usually say because we have more important things to talk about today.

All right? And I am, and welcome to the. I know how to do this now. The B2B Marketing and Sales podcast. I'm on a roll. 

Dave: It's the best B2B marketing and sales podcast There is. 

Steve: Yes, actually it is. Actually. It is. Very much And today it's going to really, it's going to, yeah, it's going to hockey stick. We got a good one, with today, and joining me as always is my close personal friend, Dermot Mulroney

who is wait. Oh, with those sunglasses on, you kinda look like him, right? Anyway, there you are. That's you there, you're, yeah. my, my extremely good friend now, Mr. David Mayo Loomis, author of this book. Oh my, I got it ready this time. Marketing is Everything We Do. Okay. Get that. That's true. Get it.

Get it at your local 7-11. 

Dave: It's true. It's -literally everything. Everything. 

Steve: That's right. Hello everyone. We're not here to talk about that. Welcome, sir. 

Dave: Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Today. We, if you're listening, you have not heard a third voice yet, but you probably read the title of the podcast so you know that we have a special guest, Michelle Jones, who is our one and only three time guest.

That is right. And, back by first three times, yes. we've had a lot of requests to have Michelle back and it probably has a lot to do with the fact that Steve and I are getting extremely, see I'm not, I 

Steve: like the background 

Dave: of, him. Very nice. I like it. do you play We need musical instruments.

Michelle, 

Steve: welcome. 

Michelle: Thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's a threepeat. I'm honored to be your third. 

Steve: We were just talking about the fact, yes. This is like Saturday Night Live. Now you 

Dave: owe some money to, whatever, whoever that coach was of the, Knicks who trademarked the word Threepeat. 

Steve: yep.

In the nineties. 

Dave: That's okay. That's okay. Send your money. Send your money in. So for those of you that don't know, Michelle Jones is the president and founder of Creativate. Which is a, multifaceted marketing company growing B2B marketing and, lead gen and all sorts of things. And, she happens to be an expert on the topic that we are discussing today.

Yeah. Yes. Which 

Steve: is, so we thought of her when we were thinking of this topic. We,

Dave: we did. 

Steve: we said we're going to talk about inbound. Marketing. Marketing. Yes. And and we said, who do? Who do? Who do we know that knows anything about it? because we don't. Yeah, it's telling, but yeah, 

Dave: we don't, we've heard of it and we think that, yeah, we think it's, we know that, you know what outbound, maybe we don't even know what 

Steve: outbound means.

No. we're start the question I wanna ask, but before we start Yeah. with Michelle, what have you been doing? Since the last time we had you on the show. Great question. I'm 

Michelle: glad we've been doing, 

Steve: that is a lot of traveling. I know you've been doing a lot of traveling.

Michelle: yeah, we've been doing some traveling That's been nice for work and for vacation. So finding some time to rest and recharge, which is also very important. which sometimes includes leaving the country, which we now know is a luxury. After Covid being able to leave is not something we take for granted.

But yeah. But really been hunkering down the business. I've been doing some more speaking. We're growing, which is great. I can't remember if I had, both of my full-time employees yet the last time I was on the podcast, I don't think, no, 

actually 

Steve: I think Creativate had just really started.

Michelle: Yeah, it was just me. And so now we've got. Two full-time employees, a team of developers, and looking to hire another full-time employees. so the demand for inbound marketing is definitely strong. 

Steve: I'm available four and 

Dave: five right here. Okay. Put in your application. Yeah. It helps if you know what inbound marketing is, probably what?

Yeah. But we're going to know 

Steve: after today, we're going to know. All right. Yep. What the hell? What the hell is it? Yeah. 

Michelle: So in inbound marketing there's two kinds of marketing that are really out there. You can throw them into any, most, you can throw into any bucket. And there is some gray air and area in the middle, but there's inbound marketing and there's outbound marketing.

And for years and years from like the fifties till two thousands, it was mostly outbound. outbound is Let's put up a billboard and hope someone sees it. Let's make some cold calls and hope someone answers. It's more like pushing a message, radio ads, things like that, pushing a message and hoping that you see someone.

Your message reaches someone right when they're at the ideal time of investigating, or they know they have a problem in your product or service, could help solve it. Inbound marketing is more about attracting people to you. like attracts like, so trying to find people that are, looking for the resources and products that you offer.

So we do a lot of that digitally through websites, thought leadership, content marketing, social media, things like that. So it's a much more intentional way of bringing people in when they're at the right phase in the buying process versus just pushing a message out and hoping that you find someone. 

Dave: So do you think the inbound name came from the fact that we are hoping that if we create, say, exa like content that is of value and interest to somebody, that we can that sort of, they'll raise their hand and be inbound to us and then, we can nurture them along that.

Buying cycle or, yeah. Or did it come from somewhere else? The 

Michelle: name? No, that's right. that's absolutely right. If you think about it. Wouldn't you rather talk to someone who is excited to talk to you versus cold calling someone and trying to shove a message down their throat when they're not ready for it?

So it's night and day in terms of how the whole like onboarding process comes on in terms of sales. So this is where sales and marketing have to work so well together because marketing's truly supporting sales. And there, there has to be a lot of alignment. 

Steve: Yeah. I like, and I like, we use that term a lot about getting them to raise their hand,because you, like you say, Michelle, it's more like a, it's more like a warm call.

And when somebody reaches out to you and they say, Hey, I, I have seen something about you. I've read something about you. I've heard something about you. and, and it sounds like you can help me,I'm interested in hearing more. Yep. 

Michelle: I'm interested in hearing more and think of how much better a conversation like that goes and how much more likely you are to close something versus just.

hope and a prayer. So it's like throwing a line out one at a time and hoping you catch a fish. Fish or something bites versus putting a really awesome, you're going after a very specific type of fish or moose and you put the right bait out there. And then the bait you attract brings in the animals that you want.

So moose hunting too. Yeah. 

Steve: Notice how she's, fawning to one of the hosts. and, What do you think the inbound mark, do you actually think inbound marking is better than outbound? 

Michelle: I think there's a time and a place for both. Okay. So I think it depends on the product and I think it depends on the service.

When you have really high stakes and people are going to be spending potentially millions of dollars on something, there's really long lead cycles lead like the time to buy cycles, and so you really have to make sure that. People trust you. If they're going to spend 5 million on a piece of equipment, they better trust this piece of equipment.

They better trust you. They better trust the company, the brand. You need to prove that you know what you're talking about. So if you're looking for a very specific, very small, very select group of people who are in the market for a 5 million piece of equipment, you're not just going to start placing calls to everyone.

you're going to be very intentional about how you go out and find and attract those types of people in. And inbound marketing's a great way to do that, 

Dave: right? Or not, just like putting an ad out there and hoping that you're going to find that one, one in a million, 

Steve: hit. 

Michelle: Yep. Exactly.

Exactly. 

Dave: do you have any sorry, go 

Steve: ahead, Steve. no. I was, I,I was waiting for you. I thought you were going to say some more and then you paused, if you pause. Yeah. 

Dave: Yeah. One of us 

Steve: is just, this is like radio, always going to jump in. The radio hates pauses. 

Dave: Do you have examples?

a couple examples of some things that you know of or even, or you've done yourself that,either using or just disguising the client that are just great. Perfect examples of how inbound marketing works. 

Michelle: Yes, I am so glad you asked that, Dave, because in fact I do.

awesome. Yeah, so I actually sounds 

Steve: like it was set up 

Michelle: right. so actually back in 2015, I was promoted to run a marketing division of a company. And this company was doing all outbound stuff. They were placing ads and magazines. they were going to the trade shows. They were doing all the traditional stuff that you would expect.

But the problem was they even had a group, two people that were just making. Calls all day long. The problem with that is you put a lot of effort out there and it's tough to know exactly what it was that generated the result. So I found out about inbound marketing back then and actually HubSpot, which I'll go ahead and plug them because I'm shamelessly, I'm a HubSpot partner because I used the software so long that I.

Loved it and ended up, when I started my company, I became a partner. But they help you track all of that so you can actually start to see what your R O I efforts are that you're generating. So when I flipped that department and that company from an outbound approach to an inbound approach, we started putting out thought leadership through blogs.

And when you have a really good piece of thought leadership, you can bottle it up and put it out in social media posts. You can include it in your e-newsletter, you can submit it to publications, and then you are now perceived as the expert or the thought leader. But basically we were able to track that.

We would spend, I don't know, $200,000 annually on our website, roughly in the agency that helped support it, and we would generate over 2 million a year in annual revenue through the website. So if you optimize your website and you do all the right things from an inbound perspective, you start to attract the type of people that you wanna sell to, and then you're more likely to close.

Who you're able to measure, you can track and measure, which is so important. That's something that is in so recently, we haven't really been able to do that as marketers. You just, unless someone specifically told you, I saw your ad on a billboard, or I heard your ad on the radio, or I talked to person X at a, so you don't know where that 

Steve: lead came from?

Marshall Course. I'm going to, I have to say something here about that. Okay. I've been teaching that for 30 years. You know how to measure marketing. and the problem was always that the vast majority,it's the guy, the guys up, up high, they, mo most of the guys up,the upper management guys now C and CEOs and presidents and stuff like that.

They're being counters. they came from the financial. place. And so they had, and when, and so when they would s set up a marketing department, so to speak, like what you were talking about, what you had before you switched to inbound,that it was very difficult to prove the value of marketing.

and now, and of course now, and you say like with HubSpot and stuff, you can measure marketing. You always have been able to do it. It was just people were never, weren't taught how to do it. And, and so it was a very vague, kind of generality of results, 

And you had to guess and say, okay, attribution. and stuff was very difficult. And it's much more, it become so 

Dave: specific now. So specific. And the thing about something like HubSpot and there's other tools out there that people use that are similar, HubSpot's great one, but they're almost like the merger of A C R M and an email marketing system and sometimes the website itself.

And when you get that going, It's so powerful. Even the phone, even phone calling can be linked into it. And literally everything that you do can be tracked to that customer record and recorded. And then you can look and see, oh, I did this. And they came into the website and they visited these pages and they spent this much time on it and This one, this thing worked and this thing didn't work.

So let's not do this other thing again. Let's do this thing. Let's 

Steve: do more of that. So you talked about, you were using an example of a company that you worked for. Okay. And now you are,you are consulting for companies to help them. What are you, what are you telling people? what is it when you sit down with somebody and after you've kinda looked at their.

Situation, analyzed it, understand their moose,the target market and stuff like that. You a and I'm going to radically assume that inbound is a huge part. Yeah. Most of the time. Okay. So what typically are you, like what are like the first steps that you would take? Because there are a bunch of different types of tools for inbound.

Yeah. 

Michelle: so I think it's important as marketers that we do a lot of listening. We have two ears and one mouth for a reason. something that drives people. You sound like my dad. I'm sorry. Just here to remind you of that, Steve, that's your friendly reminder for the day. so basically I, companies don't like when people come in from the outside, whether they're an employee or a consultant.

And the first thing marketers tend to wanna do is come in and change everything. Oh, we wanna change a little logo and we wanna change the website, and we wanna change everything. So the first thing we do is listen to really understand what's the current state. There's a reason if you want to do inbound marketing and it's not working right now.

There's a reason it's not working. So for me to come in and do exactly what you were doing before is probably going to generate the same result, which is the definition of insanity. So doing a lot of listening and then. And understanding what's already being done. So we do an assessment and go through and say, okay, what trade shows are you already going to?

Do you have anyone who's already a technical writer or really good writer and they're already publishing thought leadership? Do you already have a newsletter? Are you already doing, paper click campaigns through Google? what are you already doing? And where do you wanna go and why? And then how do we put together a plan to help get you there?

So it's interesting because a lot of companies come in and they're like, we know sometimes they'll say, we know we need help with this one thing. But a lot of times it's, we need help with marketing and we don't know where to begin because we don't have, for whatever reason we 

Steve: had a is this a version?

because I also want to make sure that,I'm pitching my partner, It, it is what you do a version of like voice of customer. 

Michelle: so that's where Dave comes into play. we don't actually, my company doesn't do any voice of customer research, and we're a little bit unique because we know what our strengths are and we're not a one size fits all agency.

So when our clients work with us, we cherry pick. Who we think are going to be good fits for them based on their needs. So if they need voice of customer work, Dave's my first person I call and I recommend Dave, and he comes in and goes, yeah, I 

Steve: just, because you said you had listening was so important, and immediately when I hear about listening to the customers, I immediately think of Dave and voice of the customer.

So I just wanna make sure that, we're, I'm hearing what you're talking about. So you're saying that sometimes it's also something a little bit different. Yeah. There's also. 

Michelle: It's cultural listening, so understanding. Ooh, 

Steve: wow. That's a good statement. That's a good, you should own that.

I'll trademark it. you should. You could. It's a, how do you know I wasn't talking, I wasn't talking to grace. It's a great phrase. It's a great phrase. That's a great note because that is a great, 

Dave: I think that's, I think that's for you, cultural listening. I think it's really good. Wow. You have to understand the organization.

Yeah. And I think that's what you're saying is that before you jump to a conclusion, if I heard you correctly, you're assessing the situation. By talking and listening and seeing what's worked before up to now and what hasn't and so forth. And then is there another step like, okay, what are your goals?

And then you're prescribing certain things, including inbound to get to there or just talk about that part. What's next? After assessment. 

Steve: Yeah. 

Michelle: and especially when we're doing that initial conversation assessment, cultural listing. It's not just about marketing, it's about the whole company.

I wanna know what areas are you looking to grow? What are you, what areas are your bottlenecks? Do you have top line growth goals for the next five years? How are you planning on getting there? Are you hiring what? What does it all look like? Because marketing is not a silo. Marketing has high levels engagement with every function within the company in order operate really well.

Even if it's internal communications piece that's needed, that requires a strong relationship with hr. If it's product stuff, you gotta talk to product management and you gotta talk to sales. So after we figure that out, then we put together a plan. And a lot of times it's, there's inbound marketing related, because most of the time companies either have lead generation goals, which contribute to sales, or they have brand awareness goals if they're in really well developed markets.

And they've been a market leader for a long time. So based on whether they're into. sales growth or lead gen or, brand awareness. Then if it's a sales growth play, then we do more of an in inbound, lead gen piece. But again, we want it to seamlessly integrate with 

Dave: what Steve is a big fan of brand awareness, by the way, Oh, good.

this is, he loves building awareness for no other reason than awareness. Steve? 

Steve: Yeah. I just live for spending money on something that has noth no impact on my bottom line. 

Michelle: and that's the thing, if anyone's being real, even nonprofits are in it for the profit, right?

you still wanna, 

Steve: they're in it. it's ultimately, regardless of who you're working with, ultimately they are looking for more customers. They don't come to people like us to work with their current customers. Now, we can certainly, if we get in with them, we can certainly make a difference there.

But for the most part, when they come to people like us, they're basically saying, we need more customers. And so it's a question of lead generation, conversion, and ultimately then, Creating a long-term relationship with these people. And then also, and also getting these people to give us, find us more customers.

Yeah. Through referral marketing. and to me, brand a brand awareness is a stupid goal. is. Thank you David. I was being 

Dave: a little 

Steve: sarcastic. It's just a stupid goal. Brand awareness to me is a result of all the stuff that you do. It should never be the top line objective because your top line objective is growing your co, your company, and you should be able to, have, attribution to, make that happen.

okay. So I love what I'm hearing here. I just think this is so awesome. so let me throw a little bit of a curve ball at you. Here. can you, have you done anything that you would simply, that you would call an uncommon example of in inbound marketing?

Ooh. 

Michelle: I think a lot of it depends on the creativity that you can use within the campaign itself and the messaging. because even if you have all the right vehicles out there, if you don't have messaging that resonates, it all falls flat. So how do you, and you can track all this in HubSpot too. You can pull in a camp, you can actually create a campaign so you can see exactly what your campaign even is generating.

One of my favorite campaigns that I ever did in terms of inbound marketing, was a company was, they launched a product in 1979 and it was celebrating so many years or. Whatever it was. And so we did 

Steve: everything retro. Wait, you weren't even born in 19? No, not what? What do you mean? What do you mean they launched?

Did you help them launch this product? Wow. no. Wait. Oh, I get it. Okay. I see. I'm sorry. But 

Michelle: it was fine because we made everything retro for years. All Oh, you made everything retro. Everything Retro. So all of the email headers. And ads, which is, that's cool. trade show we had orange ma'am. That's great.

I love it. Record players, everyone loved it. Did 

Steve: you use a font called hobo? I don't remember it half. Oh my gosh. Hobo was the coolest font. Do you remember that? Oh, of course. I reremember. I can see it in my eyes. In. In my eyes. It's in my mind now. It's right. I can see hobo right now. It's puffy. I'm going to go use this.

I'm going to go use it in my next. 

Dave: It's so funny. Oh my gosh. I can see. I can see this stuff now. And the people wearing 70 stuff. That's great. 

Steve: Absolutely. 

Michelle: Oh, I recognize it. I 

Steve: Googled it. Oh, you're looking it up now. That's cheating course. That's cheating. I know, she did it. You don't, if you can't see, automatically see it in your mind, then that's cheating, 

wow. That's that. I love that. I love that, that's it. That is that, that, that's, I mean it's not, it's not something that hasn't been done before, but it's something that is rarely done in the B2B world in particular. 

Dave: Yeah, B2B can be dry. Boom. Hey, I've got something for you, Michelle.

what, how specific do you think the content or messaging should be to, to that Moose? I think a lot of people, a lot of people that I talk to that are clients and people in business, they get nervous about writing things or creating videos or anything that they create that's Too hyper targeted.

they specific, they wanna be a little bit more general because they think they'll reach more people and they're like, only a few people might be interested in, in, in this, and we shouldn't go too deep and we shouldn't do this. what do you say to that? what's worked for you and what do you say to your clients about that kind 

Steve: of 

stuff?

Michelle: I think Steve's experiencing some kind of illness over there. I think he's all right, 

Steve: loves this so much. 

Michelle: now, I would say that if you. If you, I don't understand why people resist some of this stuff so much, because if that's what you're already doing and it's not working, then why would you keep doing it?

Like If you 

Steve: have to get, you have to talk. This is like a 3D movie, isn't it? if you're watching video right now, this is like a 3D movie. Oh my gosh. That is so 

Michelle: smart. Especially so a lot of my clients are in their sales are very technical in nature. So you're going to have to be talking technical.

so your, if your audience is technical, if your buyers are technical, if your moose is technical, then write technical and write to them. and this is why we don't put all of our eggs one basket and say, we're only going after one moose. You have multiple, personas, moose. Moai, whatever plural, moose mooses are.

Steve: Ooh, m Moai to go after what's. Yes. 

Michelle: but this is why, this is why you don't go after all of those. You don't write all of them in the same way, like you wouldn't have a conversation with, different, I don't, I'm trying to even think of a good example. I. you don't, you just don't have the same level of conversation with three different people.

Okay, let's take healthcare for example. You're not going to talk to a doctor the same way you're going to talk to a nurse the same way you're going to talk to the administrator the same way you're going to talk to the person at reception. You're not going to talk to all of them the same way. You're going to have different types of conversations.

Yes, they're all in the same industry, but they have. Different backgrounds and different levels of knowledge and all that. So you're not just writing to healthcare, you're writing to something really specific. And it's the same for manufacturing and b2b. You gotta be more specific with who you're going after.

if you think about what you look for as a consumer of information, you look for something that's very specific to solve a very specific problem. So why would we not do that in b2b? 

Steve: No, I look for the most general generic words possible when I'm shopping for. If I, if I have depression, then I look for anything that says, are you sick?

Yeah. 

Dave: Yeah. I really I like using like the words, even if they are somewhat technical, sometimes using the words that the customers or that our target market uses, just they'll relate to it better. sometimes it shows up in search better. You're just, you're better off. when sometimes when an agency gets a hold of things, they put, a younger, inexperienced person.

This is not, this is a harsh generalization, but they'll put somebody on it, a copywriter, and maybe they're older, inexperienced, who knows, doesn't matter, but they're going to create this advertising, speak around whatever this communication is because they're not an expert in that. And it's really annoying.

I've heard of a lot of instances where somebody gets hired to write blog posts for a company. This happened at one of our clients, Michelle and the person who's the client ends up rewriting it. First of all, they have to get on a call with the agency to tell them all the information that should go into the blog.

Then they write the, then the, per the, they're paying this company to write. The blog post comes back. And the person, the expert in the company re rewrites it basically, because it doesn't sound right. what do you do about that? I don't think you operate like that, but what do you do when you need to really understand the, 

Steve: the topic better?

I'm not listening. 

Michelle: Here's the thing, like. Perfect is the enemy of done so sometimes you just have to get things done right, like just get it done. But I think the other issue, just to tag on what you're saying too, Dave, is that companies on the flip side, instead of outsourcing it, they're like, oh, we'll do everything in-house.

That's also dangerous because you don't realize how much in-house lingo you use in things. So you have to really understand does your customer, do they call what you call a widget? Is that what they call it? Do they call it a knob? You need to write the way they consume information. And I think that does happen.

A lot of agencies as they're like, oh, we'll just, bring in someone to help with this technical thing. And if you have a technical sale, you can't do that. You need someone with an industry background. So that's why it's just, it's so important just to. Vet who you're working with and understand, make sure they know and understands your industry or your business.

People can learn. Absolutely. We all started out at some point knowing nothing about what we do now, when we learned, if you're going to outsource or in-house, outsource everything to a junior writer or bring in an intern for the summer and you're disappointed with the results. can't say I'm surprised.

Steve: Okay. let me ask you a question about this. Okay. because it, this is a tangent with what you guys are both talking about is that, in my opinion, my experience over the last, 37 years, everybody thinks they know marketing. Everybody thinks that. So that when you, and especially when it comes to something like copywriting messaging as you're talking about, is that they will hire somebody on the outside who is an expert at doing this, right?

and then that expert, submits copy messaging, the, because as the three of us know, one of the, one of the. How do you pronounce this? is it Moores or Morays? 

Dave: oh, I might, it, I think it might 

Steve: be Moores. Okay. I'll just say Moores, one of the Moores of our world is in, in, in marketing is, that it's message to market match.

Okay. I like it. So as you say, We are talking their language, right? Yes. Yes. and at the same time, we're also talking to them from a marketing perspective. so we write stuff that is designed to be a message to market match and also designed to,create a call to action.

And stuff. We hand it over to the client and the client goes, oh, I can make this better. And they, like you say, they some, somebody at the company then,edits it, and then it doesn't work. And they blame us. 

Michelle: It's, everything's marketing's fault, Steve. It's just the name.

Steve: they, no, they just blame us because No, they think they understand marketing. They're going, oh, no, I, I fixed your message. Yeah. I made your message better. So we sent that out, right? And nobody responded, wow, you suck.

Dave: Sometimes I think we also put too much emphasis on one thing. Like we're expecting the world to change. Ooh, that's good thing with one thing. And so we try to make it perfect, like you were saying, Michelle, but we really just wanna get it done and out there. And it's never going to be perfect, but we need to do more of it.

We need to do, we need to do it over and over again and learn by doing. If you do something once and you fail and that's all you were planning on doing, then it's just worthless, 

Steve: okay. I'm going to let you answer, but I wanna jump in here because I'm, I love interrupting Dave.

is to, is to say that okay. See, like you made a comment earlier, Michelle, about understanding the sales cycle, the length of the sale, the typical sales cycle. So if you're selling a five, 5 million piece of equipment, as you say, it may be two years, might be the typical sales cycle for the, for that.

And my objective when I'm working with clients is I'm sure that you guys are both the same too. I want, I'm looking to compress that time. Okay. If I can take it from two years to 18 months or even a little bit, even a little bit shorter, that's a win, right? Yeah. but like you say, Dave, that one message by itself doesn't, it doesn't change anything.

it's never going to cut. Doesn't change thing. It doesn't just like, Whoa, man. We only need that one message and that's all we need. No, it's that message plus the next message, plus the next message, plus the next message. And then ultimately, if you do it right, it's going to shorten the sales cycle.

What do you think about that, Michelle? 

Michelle: Absolutely. and this is the beauty of digital marketing. You don't have to print 80,000 copies of something and throw all your eggs in one basket if it didn't work. If their webpage isn't resonating, you're not getting leads, change it up. And we have AB testing.

You can do AB testing. just because you, if you're in sales and you call someone and they don't pick up, you just give up and you're like, I guess I'm not cut up for sales. Christine Hawkmans, my high performance coach. So shout out to Christine, who's awesome. but she uses a story, recently where she was talking about her son and he's learning how to walk and what happens when you learn how to walk.

You fall down and do you look at your kid and you're like, Nope, sorry. I guess you're not cut out for walking. Like 

Steve: walking's not for you. I gave up when I, when Kelly fell. Yeah. Kelly. Oh, Kelly. Yeah. And to this day she still doesn't, 

Michelle: I don't want she crawls. No, but and that's where so many companies though, and this again, this is why culture is important.

What is your tolerance for failure? You have to accept that failure is going to happen. Also, good marketing takes time. So you're going to try, you're going to fail and, but if you don't, trying and failing, yeah, that sucks. If you try and fail and you learn it was worth it. So that's 

Steve: my, can I give you, can I give you a different word to use?

Yeah. Cause it's talk when you're talking to clients, don't use the word fail. and I'm not saying you do, but I, but see, what I always tell people is marketing is testing. Marketing is all about testing and that's what AB is all about. I'm testing a, the control against the new idea.

and I'm looking to beat the control. That's all I wanna do. I just want to beat the control. and so it's testing. It's testing and yeah. And if B doesn't work isn't better than a, then I throw that away and I come up with C. yeah. Abs. Abs, absolutely. Dave, what's the, what do you think is the.

What is your takeaway from this conversation with, somebody of the opposite persuasion? I 

Dave: think the, the key takeaway is that inbound marketing is a, an incredibly important tool in a toolkit. It may not be the only thing that you use as an organization, as a B2B organization. In fact, arguably it probably shouldn't be the only thing that you use, but it should be a very big part of what you're doing right now, especially for B2B companies that are that, that know their moose.

Can identify their target. it's a pretty specific sales, goal. And, I, and it should be working and there's lots of ways to do it, and you can be creative within it. That's another takeaway I love from your seventies story. that seventies 

Steve: marketing. Yeah. That's seventies marketing.

Yeah. I'm shocked that you even understand seventies marketing because, you think of, most people who think of the seventies, they go, oh, you mean the monkeys? and, yeah. Yeah. Most people don't even know who the monkeys are. That's your history books, 

Dave: Yeah, 

Steve: exactly.

So yeah, I read about it in the history books. That's how I know it. That's right. Yeah. Eight track tape players. Yep. yep. So what do you wanna leave us with, Michelle? 

Michelle: I would say that if you have so many leads coming in right now that are qualified and good, then you can forget this whole conversation.

Marketing is inbound. Marketing is not for you, but if you're interested, 

Steve: I'm going to delete that. 

Michelle: No, you're going to keep it if,

Steve: nobody's going to say 

Dave: yes to that. Yeah. Raise 

Steve: your hand. No one's going to hands. 

Dave: We have all the leads we want. 

Steve: We're good. Yeah, 

Michelle: we're good. We have growth beyond Yeah. belief, we know for certain the economy is not going to tank it all this year.

we are confident we are good then. Yeah, you can probably ignore inbound marketing. but if you are looking to. Grow your company, continue to support putting leads into the flywheel or the pipeline, then you should definitely take a look at implementing inbound marketing with your company.

And if you already have it assessing, making sure you're assessing continually, at least annually. You should probably do it quarterly. What's working, what's not working, and why, and making adjustments. So that's my takeaway on how strong they feel about the value of inbound 

Steve: marketing. 

Dave: That's awesome.

And Michelle's company is called Creativate. And if you Google Michelle Jones, Creativate, you will come up with it. and yep. It's c r e a t i v A T E. You got it out of Worcester, Ohio. The booming town of Worcester, Ohio. Worcester, Ohio. 

Michelle: Yep. 

Steve: Worcester. I thought it was pronounced Worcester. That's Worcestershire.

Michelle: Wooster I know. Looks like Warchester. If I, college of Worcester. Yeah, like the College of Worcester. but if I tell Siri Worcester, she thinks it's like Warchester, Massachusetts, so she's oh gosh. Yeah. Come visit me sometime. Love it. Here. Great time of year 

Steve: to be in Ohio. Oh yeah. You have 

Dave: multiple people to visit when you come out this way, 

Steve: Steve?

Michelle: I'll take you to visit all my Amish relatives there. That's my 

Steve: last nugget for you. There you go. I love the 

Dave: Amish. I We'll talk about that next. Yeah. I'm going to put my sunglasses back on first. 

Steve: I was going to, I was like, where did the sun at what point in this conversation did the sunglasses disappear?

I missed 

that 

Dave: part. The sun went down a little bit, but I got the shades back. O on because the future is so bright, especially when there's people like Michelle around. Yeah, I didn't say that. Okay folks, I'm going to take us outta here. On that note, thank you so much for seeing the title of this Can't Kick You Podcast, and for listening in on the B2B Marketing Sales podcast with Steve Miller, Kelly's dad, marketing Gunsinger, all those other things, not the rockstar.

Nope. And our almost co-host at this point, Michelle Jones, of creativity. And I am Dave Loomis. The Dave Loomis, also known as The Voice and many other things, and the author of Marketing is Everything we Do Someday. The intro and the outro will be almost as long as the podcast itself. Because we say so many things about ourselves.

Yeah. I'm patting myself on the back. 

Steve: all When are you writing a book? That's 

Dave: it. I'm writing a next book. It is. I'm writing 

Steve: a next book. He's writing a book. I know that. But when are you writing a book? I've 

Michelle: got a whole stack of ideas. I need to just, I need to commit to one. Outline it and do it.

Steve: Yep. Inbound marketing, young lady. 

Dave: There you go. There you go. We just got, 

Steve: we'll talk about it, your title. We just got your topic. All right. Thank you. Yes, we are done. And it's time to let you know. Time for the final words. Okay. 

Dave: And the final word that I always say is, bye-bye.