Ep. 090 – This year’s podcast guests marked the future for 2019
And the main trends in entrepreneurial marketing for the New Year
I often asked how I choose my interviewees for this podcast. I imagine the main reason for the question is the high diversity of the eighty guests on the show since its establishment on March 2017. It’s not easy to find a clear pattern among them.
Can you guess what the connection is between interviewees like: Kate Erickson, Guy Kawasaki, Pam Wasley, John Lee Dumas, Mike Stelzner, Jack Kosakowski, Andy Crestodina, Mark Schaefer, Mark Metry, Mike Allton, Chris Brogan, Pascal Guyon, David Beebe, and Lee Oden, just to name a few?
You already know that they are all successful entrepreneurs and/or influencers (opinion leaders) in their fields…
However, besides these common characteristics, they are all customer focused entrepreneurs, which is what marketing is all about, after all. They, as entrepreneurs, succeeded due to their customer focused approach, or as educators and influencers about this critical issue.
I chose interviewees who left their mark on the field of entrepreneurial marketing.
But before diving into the most meaningful interviews that marked the changing marketing direction for entrepreneurs in 2019, I would like to remind you about the main differentiation of entrepreneurial and/or startup marketing:
It is the need to introduce, sell, and brand a new unfamiliar product or service at least in one aspect – It can be a totally new product, or a new target market for the product, or a totally new business model and the like.
The biggest trends of entrepreneurial marketing for 2019 and who the trend setters and the early adopters of those trends are
- Entrepreneurial successes based on a failure
When I joined the entrepreneurial industry, entrepreneurs were considered as magical geniuses, which were considered to be potential billionaires by the fact they established a startup.
But with time many entrepreneurs and startups fell, and a lot of investments went down the drain.
A few of my guests, like James Arthur Ray, Ovi Negrean, and Josh Elledge talked about the inevitable failures as a base for success.
Ovi Negrean
Even though you might be at one peak at one point, if you want to go to an even higher peak, you will have to go through some valleys.
After 10+ years of experience working in various firms, ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, having also some entrepreneurial ventures in between, Ovi jumped full time into the startup world with nugget (acquired) and is now focused on SocialBee.
He has experience in building and managing software development teams; building SaaS and mobile products; creating ROI-positive social media; marketing and product launches.
He is passionate about helping startups succeed in building great products, finding the appropriate launch sequence, and the best levers to grow. He’s also an idea machine and can really help with brainstorming.
His imaginary friends say he’s a fun guy.
- When I was growing up, I used to climb mountains and I still do. I still like to go snowboarding from time to time and I’m really looking forward to being able to go to Switzerland again. Those are the most beautiful mountains that I’ve ever seen.
- I think also, coming back a bit in the metaphorical world from the physical world, but keeping with the mountain part, I also found that our life is also like mountains; even though you might be at one peak at one point, if you want to go to an even higher peak, you will have to go through some valley
A link to Ovi’s podcast interview:
- Stop selling. Focus on serving your customers
The truth is that it became kind of a mantra to talk about serving your customers’ needs and wants instead of selling and pushing.
I believe that in the coming year, the power of serving your customers as the best monetization enabler will be recognized by most entrepreneurs.
Pascal Guyon who came from the Music Industry teaches us a lesson of how serving your customers can open many doors.
Pascal Guyon
Pascal Guyon is a multi-platinum music producer who contributed to 3 Grammy nominations. He’s also a programmer, a social media strategist, and a speaker.
3 facts about Pascal:
- I am proud to have contributed to 3 Grammy nominations and to over 15 million albums sold worldwide
- I have served as a mentor to 10,000’s of artists and business owners worldwide, through my video game, speaking en-gagements and education programs
- I have also helped some of the most disruptive brands in transportation, cryptocurrency and food dominate social media
Pascal’s best advice about approaching customers
- I think there are two things. When people ask what it’s like to produce music for an artist, my answer is that it is to realize an artist’s dream. I think that if more businesses would think like that instead of pushing to sell stuff that people don’t necessarily need, they would get much better results.
- And the second thing is definitely the use of social media because when people see that you are here to serve them, it builds trust, and we know that trust is everything.
The story I love most is the story of Josh Elledge, who went through financial failures and even a bankruptcy before he discovered the power of serving you customers.
This is the quickest way to gain customers and success.
Josh Elledge
Josh’s best advice about approaching the customer
Josh Elledge is the Founder & CEO of UpendPR and is about to change an entire industry with the mission to help entrepreneurs attract the perfect audiences through PR.
Josh is Chief Executive Angel at SavingsAngel.com and helps consumers get discounts and upgrades on everything through his syndicated newspaper column with 1.1 million readers and on TV in 75 cities. He’s been in the media more than 1500 times.
Through his new model of PR Josh now turns digital entrepreneurs into media celebrities at upendPR.com
- Most entrepreneurial business owners struggle because they keep trying to sell so hard. It may cover the bills, but I believe that in 2017 and beyond, the only way to really succeed is to invest in relationships and spend time in serving, giving, and creating value for your customers through building your sought leadership. Then the customers will come to you.
Biggest failure with customers
- When I started as the owner of a small town newspaper, I was so uncomfortable with sales. I was so scared that I ended up failing miserably. And after that for the next five years I did sales and marketing for a network of law firms and had to sell every day for a commission based salary.
- I was very miserable, and then, one day I suddenly realized that it’s not about convincing people to buy, it’s about listening to people’s needs and finding how I can help them. The minute I understood that, I started to enjoy my connection with my clients and started to succeed dramatically. I found the win-win formula.
- Become the influencer of your new Market Category
From my 32 years in marketing, I know that the best and easiest way to succeed in launching a new product and building a successful brand is by leading your market category.
The idea is taking ownership of a market category in the minds of the customers. One of the four basic market strategy definitions is ‘what market category should we play in’. If you can’t lead the market, you should invent a new market category.
How to become the influencer of your new market?
Become the voice of your new category.
Once you decide, based on research and market overview, what market category you should lead and take ownership of, it’s time to become the voice of this category.
You should make sure to speak “in the name” of the new category; not on promoting your product. People have become more skeptical towards advertising and promotion.
Jeff Bullas, Mark Schaefer, Justin Wu, and many more of my guests are leading the idea of becoming the influencer of their market.
Mark Schaefer
Mark Schaefer is probably the leader of becoming the influencer of your market as he explained in his excellent book, “Known”.
Mark W. Schaefer is a globally recognized author, speaker, podcaster, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world.
He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written six best-selling books, including The Tao of Twitter (the best-selling book on Twitter in the world) and The Content Code, named by INC. magazine as one of the top five marketing books of the year, and his new book KNOWN: The handbook for building and unleashing your personal brand in the digital age.
Mark also wrote the classic first book on influence marketing, Return On Influence. His many global clients include Pfizer, Cisco, Dell, Adidas, and the US Air Force.
He has been a keynote speaker at prestigious events all over the world, including SXSW, Marketing Summit Tokyo, and the Institute for International and European Affairs. He has appeared as a guest on media channels such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CBS News.
- When I wrote my last book, Known, it was about how creating an effective, powerful personal brand is really the only sustainable, competitive advantage we have. I was addressing the question: Could anybody become known?
There are a few other guests that suggested new perceptions that might develop into new trends in the world of entrepreneurial marketing; like the strength of the brick and mortar entrepreneurship’s or a new rise of the concept of ‘stop marketing and start modeling by example’ and more.
For now, I recommend you be aware of these starting trends, see what they mean, and whether and how they should affect your entrepreneurial business.
If you think of a new trend I missed in this list, I’d love to hear about it!
I wish you all a wonderful and meaningful entrepreneurial business year.
