Your 2024 Marketing Starting Lineup

Your 2024 Marketing Starting Lineup

2023 was a spectacular year for marketing podcasts! All my friends at Marketing Podcast Network absolutely crushed it. And for my little show, the Marketing Starter Podcast, well, we had a pretty darn good year. We got some big bumps in listenership and hosted 21 world-class guests! I wrapped up the year with a fantastic episode on customer experience with Dan Gingiss, aka The Experience Maker, but there were many other great marketing minds that I got to sit down with throughout the year.

It all started with my good friend and founder of CMO Huddles, Drew Neisser, where we talked about Selling (Marketing) through service. Soon after, I got to hang out with Robin Daniels and talk about how to remove the tension between brand building and delivering results. Then I met with Kent Lewis, Hema Thanki, Karla Jo Helms ★, and Ethan Beute, MBA, to name a few more. Every guest had a unique take on starter marketing that formed from their unique backgrounds and work styles. From product marketers to public relations leaders, chief marketing officers to chief evangelists, we put pins all over the map!

2024 is bound to be even better. Today I’m kicking off season 4 this week with my first guest of the new season, Bryan Law, CMO of ZoomInfo. We dug deep into how being distinctive is more valuable than being different – a great tip for marketing starters kicking off the new year.

Be on the lookout for interviews with Ali Hanyaloglu, Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe, Steven MacDonald,  Oliver JP Osborne, and more in 2024!

Have a listen and tune in twice a month at tnhines.com/podcast or on your favorite platform.

#neverstopstarting

3 Considerations For Marketers When Chasing AI

3 Considerations For Marketers When Chasing AI

By now, every marketer is aware of AI, as it’s the hottest issue in marketing since email marketing debuted nearly 40 years ago, and everyone has been talking about it in depth this year. Most of the content out there to date has been focused on getting the world up to speed on all the interesting tools that marketers have at their disposal and how to use them to ease marketing efforts.

But the question is, just because AI is the shiny new toy for marketers to play with, should you? My quick take is, yes, why not, as long as you dont use a set-it-and-forget-it attitude. In this article, I want to call attention to a few things to consider before you jump into AI head first.

1. Brand & Tone

Let’s be honest, robots sound like robots and if you copy and paste from Chat GPT, your customers will sniff it out. AI is fantastic at writing information based on what it learns about your business, but it doesn’t understand your brand’s complete uniqueness, yet. Human oversight is essential, as AI algorithms lack the contextual understanding required for more complex brand communication. It can however discern patterns and nuances that define a brand’s voice by analyzing vast volumes of consumer interactions and content that already exists about your business.

2. Confidentiality & Privacy

AI-powered analytics let you process vast amounts of consumer data, so you can tailor marketing campaigns. However, this capability raises concerns about the confidentiality of personal medical information — if it’s a concern for your customer, then it should be a concern for you. As AI delves deep into consumer behaviors and preferences, there’s an inherent risk of mishandling sensitive data, potentially leading to breaches of confidentiality and privacy. Striking the right balance between utilizing AI’s insights and safeguarding customer information has become paramount.

3. Differentiation

Back to my brand voice point above… If you just copy and paste what AI creates for you, then how will you maintain differentiation and a competitive edge? You have to be intent and specific in the way that you use AI and make sure that you aren’t doing the same thing that every other business is doing. Through data-driven insights, AI can distill invaluable information about consumer preferences, behaviors, and trends, allowing marketers to craft more targeted and relevant offerings. The key here is never forgetting who you are as a brand and what you believe in and keep it unique.

The Sum

From personalized customer experiences to enhanced engagement, and data-driven insights to predictive analytics, AI is redefining how marketers connect with their audience and operate within their landscapes. The integration of AI not only improves marketing operational efficiency but also enables marketers to provide more personalization and stand out from the competition. Ultimately, AI empowers marketers to embody innovation, customer centricity, and adaptability and ultimately helps them be more human in their approach to marketing.

This post was originally posted in partnership with PCCA on their blog in a pharmacy marketing format.

Celebrating My Book-Versary

Celebrating My Book-Versary

This week I celebrate the one-year anniversary of publishing my very first book, The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Spirit Will Make You a More Savvy Marketer. And after selling a ton of copies, giving a ton more away, collecting some fantastic reviews, and of course, helping fellow marketers, I can safely say it’s been quite a year!

From time to time I have people ask me how sales are going, but honestly, as cheesy as it may sound, that was something I never cared too much about. Sure, sales have been pretty good for a first-time author, but it’s not like I pine over my Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account every night watching my sales tick up. Actually, I think I have peeked at it a total of twice since launch.

What I cared about were two things. One, offering great advice to business folks searching for a unique path to navigate their careers, and two, building my personal brand, adding to my resume and checking a very cool item off my bucket list (I can say that now that I’m 40).

It was a great time to publish when the book came out in early 2022; the world was looking a bit brighter as the pandemic was finally weaning and business seemed to be getting back to normal. Now, especially in marketing, we’re starting to see more market uncertainty, which only further validates my hypothesis that marketers need to forge a starter path to make it.

Whatever comes in the future, I do know this: writing a book was one of the most challenging things that I have done in both my personal and professional life — especially learning to self-publish!

Just like last year, it’s time to pop some champagne!

Would you kindly help me celebrate by nominating me for the AMA’s Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award? All you need to do is click the link above to create a quick nomination account and fill out the form. Here’s everything you need:

  • Author’s Name: Tim Hines
  • Exact Title of the marketing book: The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Spirit Will Make You a More Savvy Marketer
  • Date Published: March 28, 2022
  • Publishers Name: Marketing Starter Publishing

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read the book, and this post, and nominating me for the award!

My New Book is Here!

My New Book is Here!

Ladies and gentlemen, today is the day – my new book, The Marketing Starter: How an Entrepreneurial Mindset Will Make You A More Savvy Marketer is finally on the shelves!

It’s been a few years since the idea for the book struck me like Doc Brown in Back to the Future, and while it may not be as revolutionary as time travel, I’m hoping that starter marketing will soon grow within business circles.

“What the hell is starter marketing?” you may be asking. Well, that definition will obviously be fully flushed out and formulated within the book, which you can now get in paperback and e-book on Amazon. However, I can tell you that my definition of a marketing starter is a marketer who applies an entrepreneurial mindset to all that they do. Or, as I illustrate in the book: a marketing starter is one part marketer, one part scientist, and one part entrepreneur.

In the book’s introduction I dig into the philosophy and my personal story that brought me to writing the book, then I go on to share valuable entrepreneurial traits and tactics that I picked up along the way — from building my own companies to working for startups and scale-ups throughout my career. My goal with the book is to help marketers and marketing-adjacent professionals make a career of mastering the start.

The start. That is the core difference between an entrepreneurial-minded person and the rest of the world. Everyone — just like entrepreneurs — can have great ideas, but what sets them apart is taking action on those ideas, or starting. It’s that grit and tenacity that I speak to throughout the book that will help anyone define their unique edge in the way that they do business.

I hope you will support my effort by purchasing the book today, for yourself or a marketer in your life, and please, please leave a 5-star review on Amazon — that’s the only way a struggling author can climb the charts these days.[/vc_column_text][ut_btn button_text=”GET YOUR COPY” button_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Famzn.to%2F3tPPMaN||target:%20_blank|” button_background=”#4cb7eb” button_text_color=”#ffffff”][vc_column_text]You can also tune in to my show, The Marketing Starter Podcast, which is in it’s second season on your favorite platform. In the podcast, I interview other starter-minded marketing pros from around the world.

Lastly, check out my interview with Jason Falls on his show, Digging Deeper below…

5 Tips to Survive the Post-Digital Age

5 Tips to Survive the Post-Digital Age

Some of us may be old enough to remember when the interstate freeways in the U.S. were built and transported people across the country in a matter of days and created the infamous suburban flight. And it wasn’t long before advertisers saw the benefit of erecting 50-foot tall banners to display their messages to commuters. Today, these billboards have become not much more than an aging distraction.

Here’s a news flash… our digital advertising is going the way of the freeway billboard.

In the new post-digital world, digital is now the boring normal and B2B marketers must find new ways to stand out to their audiences. Marketers need to immediately halt recycling their digital methods that numb potential buyers into a slow digital death. Post-digital marketers can mix up their strategies to reach buyers where and how they want, with the right message to win new business.

Here are my 5 tips to consider when working toward implementing your post-digital strategy:

  1. Don’t be selfish – It’s so easy to market yourself, but it’s not as easy to market a solution. We must not get caught up with glorifying our brand and focus on what the customers’ needs are and try to reach them where and how they want to be reached. I can tell you right now that it’s not through pop up ads!
  2. Creatively stand out – To avoid the billboard effect, we need to find new ways to stand out. We can supplement our digital with more content, conversational selling, account-based marketing, engaging influencers, or even hyper-personalization with hand-written notes. What is old can be new again!
  3. Deliver massive value – Customer expectations are at an all-time high and we must strive to meet them constantly (billboards won’t do it). Luckily it is easier than ever to listen to customers and understand what they want. Leverage the wealth of behavioral data from customers and prospects to better understand them and market with more value.
  4. Don’t expect purchases on first click – This should go without saying and could have been easily lumped in with the being selfish point, but just because you have a great campaign doesn’t mean someone will buy. Listen up sales people! Marketing is a journey of building trust and nurturing prospects before they buy – which is becoming more and more common in B2B. We need to reach them with multiple touch points like in point 2.
  5. Cultivate a user (human) experience – In the book, Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins by Mark Shaefer, he teaches that marketers who behave the most human will build the deepest and longest-lasting connections with their audiences. So, we must think like humans, not products or services, to connect with humans to ultimately make a sale.

I recently gave a talk on this very subject at the Product & Growth Summit this past September, where I covered what marketers can do to step up their game. I also went a little deeper into the concept of post-digital – you can watch the talk here ?

Get the slides here ? https://www.tnhines.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Post-Digital-Marketing-Trends-Presentation-Tim-Hines.pdf 


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