Breaking BizDev

Digital Marketing Strategy for Consulting Firms

• John Tyreman & Mark Wainwright • Season 1 • Episode 56

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For consulting firms that have exhausted their network and the referral well has run dry, a digital marketing strategy is essential to attract new clients. But how?

In this episode, Mark and John walk through a step-by-step framework perfect for experts and firms who need to reach a broader audience to generate new business opportunities. This doesn’t mean you need to become a well-known celebrity or go ‘viral’ at a Coldplay concert. Instead, build visibility within a tight, focused slice of the market. Become well-known to the people who actually value your services.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro & Welcome
03:13 Overarching Themes
07:08 Research Your Buyers
12:17 Create a Lead Generation Framework
16:06 Source content from a podcast
17:47 Optimize ALL your content (not just web pages)
19:44 Use LinkedIn
21:37 Weekly email newsletter
24:35 Create and Continually Refresh Evergreen Content
27:12 Create a Measurement Plan
30:36 Conclusion & Final Thoughts

Read the full article from John: https://www.redcedarmarketing.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategy-for-consulting-firms

Past episodes mentioned:

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

Mark Wainwright:

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I am here with my co-host, John Tarman. Hello John. How are you today?

John Tyreman:

Hello, mark. I'm doing well.

Mark Wainwright:

Good. Good. I'm taking the lead here, John, because I am gonna do the questions here and hopefully you're gonna be sharing a lot of content because today we're talking about digital marketing strategy for consulting firms. Any type of firm out there who is selling your expertise, you have, penned some content on this. We will link to that and other relevant information in the notes. what do we got for people today, John?

John Tyreman:

Well, I think this episode is really for firms who wanna get serious about investing in marketing to grow their firm. Uh, a lot of firms start out growing on the backs of referrals and relationships, but in many cases, and from what I've seen out there, firms grow to a point where. Maybe that referral well is running dry. Maybe the relationships, they don't have as many or they've tapped into as many as they can, and they need to explore other ways to attract new business for their firm. And so we're gonna break it down.

Mark Wainwright:

Good, good. And, and this is hyper relevant even for firms that I work with right now. There's just in expert firms and you, if you're in an expert firm out there, it's likely you are, it is that your partners, principals, senior team leans really heavily into. Relationships, back slaps, handshakes, all good stuff, folks. But really there is a strong need. And not to get too hyper specific as far as sort of the macroeconomics of things, but you know, we're in a time right now here kind of, you know, 20, 25 ish where things, the ice is thin from a sort of macroeconomic standpoint. And you need to be exploring all different ways in order to, maybe not even just like grow your firm, but maybe just kind of like keep things rolling along and not have to make big changes in, in your costs, if you know what I mean. Yeah, absolutely. This is super important and many firms just simply neglect this. So you've got, there's some, there's some concepts that we'll walk through and not even go as far as to call it sort of a. know, a recipe or a, a blueprint, for firms to implement a really good, digital marketing strategy. And I'm gonna foreshadow a little bit here, John. It includes a podcast.

John Tyreman:

It is a, a formula that I've used with my clients to some degree of success and to with myself for, to some degree of success. And so I wanted to package this up and share it with our listeners and it's, it follows a similar a lot of the similar overarching themes as what we've talked about on this podcast. So I'm excited to share it.

Mark Wainwright:

Good, good. Well, let's, let's move through sort of those themes and then we can kind of boil down to the, specifics on this. So you wrote down a number of, the big ideas here, what we wanted to kind of talk about. Why don't you, why don't you walk through some of those.

John Tyreman:

Most businesses out there are small to mid-size businesses. I mean, we're, there are a few large firms out there that probably listen to the show, but I'd venture to guess that 80% of our listeners are probably in that small to mid-size range.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And those are the kinds of firms that do have a significant advantage of being able to be flexible enough to focus on specific niche. And I just wanna do a quick callback to a previous episode. Don't boil the ocean, where we talked about focus, differentiation, and positioning for these smaller firms. And that's a really, a foundational part of marketing is getting that positioning right.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And so often I see it the, you know, there's firms that are the best kept secret in the industry. They do great work. They've got great people, great communicators, great project managers, experts at their craft, but they just don't have the visibility to attract new clients.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And so how so how do they do that?

Mark Wainwright:

yeah. It's painfully, it's painfully true. I work with'em constantly. I work with really smart people. You know, a lot of times it's, you know, John, I show up. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. But yeah, these experts are really good at what they do, but nobody knows it.

John Tyreman:

Exactly.

Mark Wainwright:

the folks that are working with them, the work product is great. Lo and behold, they do a great job. You know, it's really fantastic. But they get lost in a sea of others who, AB by the way, are actually pretty good at what they do as well. And they believe that they've embraced this lifelong sort of, you know, mantra that their expertise is gonna be the thing that differentiates them and not the visibility, right? It's, It's just, I'm really good at what I do and people are just gonna know that and we're just gonna have work to do and it's gonna be great and we're gonna be successful. And they neglect this really important component that we're talking about, which is this sort of visibility, right? There's a lot of people out there in the world that talk about a visible expert or a visible authority, right? We hammer on that, that sort of term a lot. So you are spot on that one. Good. What other themes are you gonna work through?

John Tyreman:

Yeah. So, other themes that this formula, for lack of a better term, this process leans on are, you know, one, we, we just talked about it, that mere exposure effect, the familiarity bias of being there and showing up, being visible. But also people wanna do business with other people that they know and trust. And so it's important that marketing builds familiarity and trust. Not with the broad market in general, but with the right kinds of people. that's another core concept of this approach to digital marketing strategy for consulting firms is understanding who those right people are and then building familiarity and trust with those people. I.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah, it's a big one.

John Tyreman:

So the, those are really the core concepts, and that's why I wrote this blog posts, links in the show notes. And it's really a guide to help. Firms, consultants, experts share their expertise and their personalities, which is an important part of this in a way that leads to meaningful new business opportunities.

Mark Wainwright:

Good. Good. I like it. All right, so let's walk through this a bit and maybe a little counterintuitively. Our very first step forward in this sort of formula or blueprint that you've created here is not about us, the consultants, right?

John Tyreman:

Correct.

Mark Wainwright:

first. The very first point you wanna make here very first step is begin with an understanding of, you know, your customer, right?

John Tyreman:

Just like when you are submitting a proposal or walking your clients through a proposal, mark, we've talked about this, that statement of understanding

Mark Wainwright:

yeah. Super.

John Tyreman:

and.

Mark Wainwright:

first thing. It's like, here's, here's what we know about you.

John Tyreman:

Exactly and so this is the same principle just applied at a, in aggregate and on on a broader scale. So the first step that we have is gain an understanding, an aggregated understanding of your ideal customers. So we've talked about the ideal client profile. In past episodes, we've talked about different ways that you can research buyers. We've talked about quantitative. We talked about qualitative, primary and secondary ways of researching your audience. All of these are tools that you as a marketer can use to gain an aggregated understanding of your ideal customers, to get to know your buyers better.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Yeah. And in your marketing role over the years, you've used a, a bunch of these and just to drill down on some of the specifics that you have, you've got some stuff listed sort of in that, in that blo, in that post that you There's a handful of really tactical sort of things you can do to actually get in front of and start talking to your customers. And

John Tyreman:

That. Totally. Yeah. So here some examples from the blog post, like if you host regular webinars, reserve time at the end for a q and a right. And it can be 15 minutes, 20 minutes at the end of your presentation, or if you, decentralize it and just take questions as they come during the live presentation. It's a useful way not to, not just to engage with the folks that are on the other end. But to keep tabs of what questions are they asking, right? What's most important to them, because those questions then, you do an export from whatever webinar software that you use, and then you can kind of tally up, okay, how many times did people ask this question? How relatively important is this? And then you can even just rip that straight from the webinar. And put that q and a right up on your website as like, like a FAQ section, right? So that's like a slam dunk if that's part of your pro of your marketing process right now.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah, I love it. And that's, you know, it's, it's not just leaving a little bit of space in the last three minutes. It's actually make being really intentional about this being at a really important part of this thing, right? Experts just default to the fact that, oh, I'm gonna be in a webinar. I'm just gonna spew my expertise and it's gonna be received well. by the way, the audience is going to want to react and interact, and we need to prioritize that time and space for them. So good. I love that one. What are some others?

John Tyreman:

I've probably moderated like a hundred webinars. And just one quick point to that, oftentimes I've used what I call Turkey questions. There's just a plant question where, you know, you get the juices flowing. So nobody wants to be the first one to ask a question. So if you say like, Tom from Idaho asks, blah, blah, blah, blah, oh, that's a really great question, Tom. You know, everyone knows that it's a plant, but it, it signals to the other listeners that, oh, it's okay if I ask a question too. So it kind of lowers their defenses a little bit. Just a pro tip,

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Pro tip. Love it.

John Tyreman:

another way that you can un get to know your market better, get to know your buyers better is to interview your ideal clients on a podcast.

Mark Wainwright:

But yeah, but that means you have to have a podcast.

John Tyreman:

It does.

Mark Wainwright:

I digress. We'll get there in a second. So, yeah, tell me more about, tell me more about that one.

John Tyreman:

Yeah. Well, it's just like you said, we're gonna get to it in a, in a minute. But, podcast as a content vehicle is super efficient for professional services firms. Because not only are you creating content, but you are engaging with specific people that fit your ideal client profile. Or maybe they fit a referral source profile or maybe they're. Ideal candidates that you wanna hire. There's a number of ways that you can use a podcast, but the big benefit here is you have a synchronous conversation where you can ask really good questions or you could kinda surface insights that you wouldn't be able to in another setting.

Mark Wainwright:

Yep. No surprise here. No surprise. We love it. Alright. What are a couple other, you had some other stuff there. What are ways that we can engage and then sort of get this information out of our cl ideal clients?

John Tyreman:

You could turn to secondary sources, so you could turn to search trends, long-tailed keyword data. You can survey your audience too. That's a primary research function, but you can do it at aggregate. I know there's survey fatigue now, but if you haven't surveyed your audience, maybe consider doing so.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Hey, you know, I'll spend 10 minutes of my time with, to get a coffee card.

John Tyreman:

Exactly.

Mark Wainwright:

I'm okay with that'cause, you know, people's, people's opinions are worth something, yeah, absolutely. So

John Tyreman:

Good.

Mark Wainwright:

All right, so get to know them first. Right? Big first step. What's next?

John Tyreman:

All right. So once you have an understanding of your buyers, the next step in this process is to visualize a framework for how you are going to generate leads or generate new opportunities. And part of that is focusing on your offer strategy. And we did an episode on that recently. So if you want to drill down into an offer strategy in that key part of lead generation, check out that episode. But it's important to be intentional with how you're viewing this framework because, you don't wanna go into it half cocked, right? And you don't wanna just go into, we need to invest in marketing and then not see the outcome of that because you failed to plan and create a framework for lead generation.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Yeah. You need to create a plan, a roadmap. You need to give it time to play out. You need to watch, prospective leads kind of wander their way through it. You need to make sure it works. All of that. So, yeah. So this, um, this whole thing takes some time. Absolutely. So you have to have a, have to, have a plan. Makes total sense.

John Tyreman:

Yeah, and I'll give you a quick example of what that might look like for our listeners, just so I'm not just glossing over it, but,

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

So the marketing funnel is a visualization that is common. People understand it, it's simple. And, we talked about how people like to do business with other people that they know, like, and trust. I.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And so what I've done and the visualization is in this blog post, if you wanna check it out, is I've overlaid that on top of the marketing funnel. So if you think about that top piece, it's you want to get to know you, right? You want your buyers to, to know who you are. And then the next layer down is you want these prospective buyers to like you. And then finally that, that bottom layer, the bottom of the funnel, you want your buyers to trust you enough to have a conversation about potentially doing business with you.

Mark Wainwright:

That overlay totally makes sense in that funnel, right? The know you is their familiar, and I'm gonna get hyper specific this on, on this, right? Know you as they read your

John Tyreman:

Right?

Mark Wainwright:

The, like you is literally, they give you the thumbs up. They like your content, right? So they're suddenly engaging and they're like, oh yeah, I like. We like that.

John Tyreman:

Let's go into it. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright:

the trust again, to be hyper-specific sort of in a social media content thing, is that trust you means they start to share it, To kind of engage in conversation with you about that stuff.'cause they're sharing stuff. When people share content, somebody else's content online, they're saying this stuff is credible. This is the real deal here. So yeah, you should, you should read this. So I went hyper tactical and specific on that, but I totally see it. Know you, like you, trust you. Yeah. Love it.

John Tyreman:

Exactly. And you know, those aren't the only metrics that you can use. There's a ton of other ones too. And so I think this is where you wanna look at, your buyers and what signals, what signals that they know you, what signals that they like you, what signals that they trust you, and then build that framework, and then have a very compelling offer so that you can convert from. Prospects to leads to opportunities.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Got it. Good, good. So that's the plan. This next one here should come as no surprise. You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman:

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright:

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman:

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright:

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman:

So the next step in this blueprint is to use a podcast as your source of content.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

Of course.

Mark Wainwright:

it. Yeah. I'm bought into that.

John Tyreman:

And there's a few reasons for that. number one, a podcast gives you the ability to create all forms of content, written content, video content, audio content. Those are the three macro categories. Podcasts are also a way for you to showcase your personality. I don't want to just gloss over that either, because that is such a critical part. In today's age, you don't know who is just generating. AI content copying and paste it. Who's using a ghost writer to write their content on LinkedIn? Right. You don't know, but what you do know is that if someone records a video and they have, you see these video clips on social media, you're like, oh that's John, that's Mark, that's their voice. Sure. There's AI avatars out there today, but it's more challenging for AI to imitate personalities than it in on video, than it is in writing. Yeah.

Mark Wainwright:

totally. That makes total sense. And, you know, and, when your personalities start to show through, hopefully it's, appealing, to the right people and less so to others. So you start to surround yourself with, people that are more and more familiar with you, that look at the world. The same way that you look at the world, right? You guys have the same or similar sort of point of views and things. So yeah, lo and behold, they get to know you, your personality. And it's not just that content, it's also sort of, they start to align with your sensibilities and things like that. Yeah. I love it. Good. Yeah, I'm sold on the podcast, thing. John Abs. Absolutely.

John Tyreman:

The next step in this blueprint is when you're bought into using a podcast as your source content and you've, you're starting to produce content through your podcast, and I mentioned this earlier, how that podcast content can take the form of video, can take the form of audio or text-based content. All of that content and all of the channels that you're distributing should be optimized to some degree. So for example. On Buzz Sprout where we have our podcast, we host through Buzz Sprout and we upload audio along with a transcript file to Buzz Sprout, and then that distributes the content to Apple, to Spotify, to overcast, to Amazon music, to all the audio players right When we upload that content, attaching that transcript file is a form of optimization. There's also tags that you can tag on the episode to help the, technology, categorize the episode within the different genres and sub genres.

Mark Wainwright:

There you go.

John Tyreman:

The title and the description are real estate, where you have an opportunity to introduce keywords. So this is just one example. You know, the same thing applies to YouTube. For YouTube videos. The same thing applies to a blog post., On LinkedIn, there's different ways to optimize the content. So it's not just optimizing your webpages for Google, you're optimizing your content on the channels you're creating on for search within those platforms.'cause people are going to Spotify and searching. They're going to Apple Music and searching. They're going to YouTube and searching. They're not just going to Google.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I, I have done that exact thing, right. I'm not searching on Google for podcasts. I go to Apple Podcasts and I'm searching for specific genres or content or whatever else. We have to get the content so that it's searchable and people can find it, and that varies channel to channel. That makes total sense. Speaking of channels, you kind of, your next little step here, you call one out specifically, I, I'm a fan of.

John Tyreman:

LinkedIn and I mean the, I'm, I'm probably a broken record at this point, and if anyone's not using LinkedIn, who's listening to this podcast, I think you're a little late to the party. But you should be creating there, you should be creating on LinkedIn, you should be using LinkedIn for content distribution. We recorded an episode recently about the mere exposure effect.

Mark Wainwright:

Right.

John Tyreman:

And you wanna be visible to the right audience of people. So the people that are on LinkedIn, if you're selling B2B, if you're selling a professional service, if you're selling a consulting service, LinkedIn is probably gonna have a more relevant audience to you. Then, Facebook or Instagram.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Yeah. And, and it, it brings with it this level of credibility that you don't have to work as hard on other channels to achieve.

John Tyreman:

It's true.

Mark Wainwright:

you know, you have to work pretty hard and all these other, you know, YouTube, I mean, there's a thousand things you can look at on YouTube and a bunch of'em that, not great stuff. And there's some that are good. There's, I. It's not like there's quality filters built into LinkedIn, but there's sort of this sort of understanding that it's like, look, if you're gonna be posting content regularly and want to get any sort of traction there, you need to make sure you know your stuff. So yeah, there's a certain level of credibility and trust that's kind of built into that platform. So I like it. You like it. Oh, by the way, folks, it's not just for job searchers, it's actually a place where people go to find expertise. So I'm with you on that.

John Tyreman:

I think, like 20 to 25% of my new business opportunities come from LinkedIn.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And so

Mark Wainwright:

makes total sense.

John Tyreman:

just networking there, growing your network, connecting with relevant individuals, having conversations not to sell, but to just establish relationships and build rapport, and build familiarity and trust. That's the role of LinkedIn. good.

Mark Wainwright:

so the next one we talked about the podcast, we talked about, SEOs, different channels and stuff. We talked about LinkedIn, but this next bullet point you have here, right? Kind of hearkens back to the old school days a little bit.

John Tyreman:

Yeah email marketing. It's critical. So all of these different layers that all of these steps in this process are somewhat sequential. In my mind. I. That you know, you want to start with that understanding of your clients. Then you want to build the framework for how you're going to execute, and then you need a source for the content that you're gonna fuel the machine with the podcast. Then you need a primary channel. You need to opt, well first you need to optimize the content. Then you need a primary channel to distribute the content, which is LinkedIn.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

And then from there, I believe that an email is, the email is the next most logical channel. To expand. I found success in mirroring podcast content with, newsletter content

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

to where, you know, you record on the podcast. You can even have like thumbnails where you direct people to YouTube and the, the newsletter. Or you could go so far as to run the transcript of your podcast interviews. Through some sort of an AI tool. There's dozens of them out there. And then generate blog content or newsletter content, written content that you can use. So there's efficiencies that you can gain. You can start to see it with recording, with a podcast and using the clips on LinkedIn, using the transcript for newsletters and blog content. So you create once with that source and then you distribute it on key channels.

Mark Wainwright:

No, it, it's good. And this isn't simple folks. I mean, John just kind of makes it,'cause he's a marketing pro and he just makes it sort of, seem like it's really easy. I do truth be told John, and you probably kind of know this is I do a terrible job at email marketing. So others out there, it's, you know, what we've got here is a pretty comprehend. This is. painting it to be simple, but it's not easy.

John Tyreman:

It takes a lot of effort.

Mark Wainwright:

a, it takes a ton of work, it takes a ton of resources. This is a, a challenging thing to do, but getting at here is, some really good, marketing results. so yeah, it's, taking the obvious of we've got podcast content, how do we get that out to an email list? So yeah, that's a big one. Good.

John Tyreman:

So many times I've, I've been, I've talked with clients and prospects who, they want results as fast as possible, but to get to the results as fast as possible, you need to be aggressive in how you invest in marketing. So there is that balance with, okay, do you want results fast or do you want results over X amount of time? So there's different goals that folks come to the table with, but it's important to understand that yes, to your point, to achieve your desired outcomes, it's going to take a minimum level of effort of X. And so that's that. That's, those are the early conversations that I have with my clients and prospects to just kind of set those expectations.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Good good. All right, good. You had a next bullet point here, which is obvious, to me, but yeah, it's a good one.

John Tyreman:

Hopefully you are creating evergreen content as part of your content strategy.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Evergreen's one of those terms that's, you know, anybody can read it regardless of time, season, whatever. Yeah,

John Tyreman:

A blog post that you wrote three years ago is still relevant today. If it, if you wrote it three years ago and it's outdated and it, it doesn't apply today, then it has a shorter content lifespan than it should, right? I mean, if we're in professional services, if you're offering consulting engagements, then you should be creating evergreen content.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

Part of your strategy, you might be able to have, you know, hot takes here and there, but it largely, it should be on evergreen content to that point, there may be aspects of that evergreen content that maybe fall flat, like maybe there is a, a research stat that you cited five years ago that you need to update. So going back and refreshing that core content, whether it's old podcast episodes, old research studies, old white papers, blog posts, et cetera, and then reformat that for distribution. Give it a fresh coat of paint. Chop it up into smaller content and then distribute that on key channels. So that's kind of like a, an ongoing process that I advise to my clients is, don't let content that you publish just sit there and collect dust, replay the hits. You know, throw that old record back on the record player and let's jam.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. And obviously this bullet point John. This is kind of an obvious comment, but it. This one assumes that you've got some content in the first

John Tyreman:

That's true.

Mark Wainwright:

So hence this sort of recurring theme of marketing is playing the long game and you need to have some existing content to take and refresh and recycle and rethink. If you have very little or almost no sort of content out there, you need to go, you need to find some and get it going.

John Tyreman:

Well, and that's why it's so important to focus on the evergreen aspect of it. But it's also important just to your point, that if you do plan on doing this best practice of refreshing your content, then the investment that you make in creating new content today expands well beyond the ROI of that expands well beyond this year. Into next, if you can look at it the right way and view this as an asset that you are creating to help reinvest in future marketing growth,

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. Good, good. All right and, and this last one is near and dear to me because none of this is worth it without results,

John Tyreman:

right? Measure the success of your marketing appropriately. And this is kind of like you gotta kinda work backwards from what is your ideal outcome that you want, and then what are the leading and lagging indicators of that. So for example, a lagging indicator of marketing performance would be net new revenue from generated from marketing or attributed to marketing

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah.

John Tyreman:

a leading indicator. That your content or that your marketing program is working, could be lead generation, it could be inquiries, or it could be increase in search traffic. So you could go as far upstream as depending on what your goals are, you wanna make sure that you are assigning the right leading and lagging indicators that help you measure whether or not your marketing program is effective.

Mark Wainwright:

Yeah. And, and, and I even see, the kind of level of activity. as a leading indicator. It's just what are we doing really far upstream? What's, what are we doing?

John Tyreman:

Right.

Mark Wainwright:

did the what did the, what plan did we set and what is the quantity of posts? What is the quantity of, of podcasts? What got content are we refreshing? Is like, what is our level of activity?'cause that's way upstream. And then, here we are downstream kind of looking at. You know, those big leading indicators that are, that were happening there, so way upstream. So yeah, so that's measurements, super critical. And yes, marketing should be getting right? It's not all Know, close the deal, handshakes and backs slaps. It's, what is marketing doing way upstream to frankly make selling better and easier, right? It's establishing that foundation of familiarity, starting to build trust. All that stuff, so yeah. Super important.

John Tyreman:

I would say, just to add onto that the maturity of your marketing program should dictate the kind, the kinds of things that you're looking at and measuring. So if it's a very, very nascent, immature marketing program, you're just getting it off the ground, you're starting to create new content and Absolutely. To your, to your point about looking at the, that activity, I would probably overindex on activity in that scenario. Whereas if you.

Mark Wainwright:

right, you're not gonna get the results at for a while, so Look at activity and then eventually you start looking at your, the results. So

John Tyreman:

It's like the, um, you know, those, like I've got kids and, you know, we would have bath time, right? And you'd have like put those like suction cup things on the back of the, like the bathtub and then you'd pour water in it, right? And they would kind of like flow its way down.

Mark Wainwright:

yeah, yeah. Those little bathtime tools and toys. Yes.

John Tyreman:

And I liken it to that, where it's like, okay, well, you know, like start our marketing program. Let's pour some water in. Oh, okay. Where did it like fall out and not go to the next tube? And then you gotta focus on that a little bit and fix that, and then pour some more water through. And like, where is it leaky,

Mark Wainwright:

visual just jumped into your head. That was just like, that was just, yeah. See, right folks, this is where you get, right. This is the content you get on a podcast where you don't know the, where the heck it's going. Here we go. We got bath time and tubes. Here we go.

John Tyreman:

Well, you know, it's kind of like a funnel, right?

Mark Wainwright:

you go. Kinda like a funnel. Yeah,

John Tyreman:

Bringing it back.

Mark Wainwright:

No, I like it. That's good. So

John Tyreman:

yeah.

Mark Wainwright:

this, this has been good, John. This has been a marketing heavy conversation, but well needed and well deserved. I appreciate the, kind of laying out this formula. I. Blueprint sort of thing. This is helpful. So if, people wanna sort of know the how to, here it is. And oh, by the way, if you need help, I'm sure John, would be happy to lend a hand. But there's this podcast, there's, a post that you've written. I'm sure you've got other bits and pieces that expand on this content as well. So I think this has been, good. It's been really helpful.

John Tyreman:

Yeah. Yeah. If folks want to check it out, links in the show notes. Again, there's lots of visuals in here. There's links to the episodes that Mark and I mentioned on this podcast. I'm sure that this podcast will be embedded on the post at some point, so check it out. Let me know what you think. If you have any questions, happy to have a conversation.

Mark Wainwright:

Good. All right. Fantastic, John. Until next time.

John Tyreman:

Until next time.

People on this episode

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John Tyreman, Founder & CEO, Red Cedar Marketing

Co-host
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Mark Wainwright, Principal Consultant and Founder, Wainwright Insight

Co-host