How I Made it in Marketing

Let’s step into these shoes for a minute. You’re the sole marketer at a B2B startup. You’ve been hustling, pitching investors, and finally you close your Series A. Suddenly, you have the budget to make real progress. What do you do next?

Here’s the lesson that stood out to me in a recent guest application: “There is no real progress in marketing, especially in B2B and post-Series A, without product marketing.”

I love that lesson and ...

I love the movie City Slickers.

If you’re unfamiliar, Billy Crystal is a Manhattanite, has a midlife crisis, and goes out West on a cattle drive to try to figure life out.

Spoiler alert, the crusty old cowboy teaches him that the secret to life is – ‘One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shhh…” Well, you get the idea.

It struck me that this is a great brand lesson as well. You’ve seen the stats – ...

Instead of burning budgets on Facebook ads, Talya Elitzer, CEO, Overmind Merchandise [https://www.overmind.co/], grows global merch sales with just seven employees by building worlds, not products.

In this episode, she reveals the underground community-building strategies that transformed grassroots buzz into international demand. 

Hear her playbook using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming s...

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

That is a famous quote from Anton Chekhov, and it has informed everything I personally do in writing and marketing. 

And it’s why I was so excited to read a podcast guest application that referenced the famous writer’s maxim I’ve lived my career by – show, don’t tell.

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I sat ...

Yes, the Super Bowl ad. How exciting. The experiential activation with the major influencer. The new branding campaign roll out. So wonderful.

But don’t stop there.

You could have the most compelling and creative ad campaign, but if you don’t optimize for every customer touch point, you are undercutting the expectation you have built for the customer with the reality your brand is actually delivering.

So I love this lesson from a rece...

It’s a noisy world out there.

So anytime you have that most valuable of things – a small window into your ideal customer’s attention span – are you clear and memorable with your value proposition?

Of course, that is all the more complicated by the fact that the small window of attention isn’t only when they see your big TV campaign or whatnot, it can come from so many places – it’s also when they step into your store, add something t...

Data-driven marketing.

That is an oft-repeated phrase in our industry. It’s hard to find a LinkedIn profile that doesn’t make a claim of being a data-driven marketer these days.

And while data is helpful, it’s not the only thing that should drive you, my next guest says. Be human first, because people drive brands.

To hear that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Desiree Sanchis, VP of Marketing for Beliv U...

Timing is key to successful marketing.

If you broke it down, that’s probably a third of it. Right offer to the right prospect…at the right time.

But how well do you focus on timing for your personal brand in your own career?

You can hear ideas for that from this episode’s guest – she said one of the key lessons in her career is ‘know when it’s time to leave.’

Here to share the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-fille...

If there’s one word that defines what I’ve seen in the marketing industry in my career, it’s ‘acceleration.’

When I started, I was writing print ads in The Wall Street Journal for clients all over the country. So the deadline was when FedEx came to our building…or if we were really pushing it, FedEx’s deadline at the airport. This created a natural ebb and flow.

Then PDFs came along, and well, that deadline got pushed much farther ba...

As an entrepreneur, as a marketer, the world is conspiring to grab your attention and distract you.

For example, when I started in this career, there were really only a few channels you could go to. Newspaper. TV. Radio. Direct. Maybe outdoors.

Now, that number has exploded.

Just one example of how many things you could possibly do with your business and your campaigns and your budget and your time.

But to find success, my next guest s...

Career growth is a funny thing.

That is the goal after all right? Junior copywriter, Senior copywriter, creative director, etc.? We all want a career path.

But that journey towards something – often people leadership – can also pull us away from something else. And it can be the thing we were most passionate about and got us into this industry to begin with.

So when I saw this lesson in a recent podcast guest application, it grabbed m...

I’ll tell you what happened in my career before. Maybe you’ve been there, too.

There’s a sponsorship, sometimes a fairly high-profile sponsorship, and I have gotten asked to write it about it in an ad or email…but, there wasn’t really a strategy. 

That is not the way to get the best ROI, the most juice for the squeeze.

Sponsorships truly succeed when they tie into the value proposition of the brand. So this lesson in a recent podcast ...

FUD. Fear, uncertainty, doubt.

I first learned about this sales and marketing tactic – which is aimed at influencing perceptions by highlighting potential negative outcomes – early in my career when working with big tech companies.

An example – nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.

Then later in my career when I worked with cybersecurity companies, I saw the tactic on steroids.

But I always wondered – is this really the most effective ...

The artificial intelligence revolution is upon us. Today we see AI doing everything from taking orders in a drive-thru to serving as a pseudo boyfriend or girlfriend.

But, according to my most recent guest, more importantly – AI boosts revenue.

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Dario Markovic, CEO, Eric Javits [https://ericjavits.com/].

Eric Javits had $15 million in revenue last ...

There are always tough times as you build and grow a startup.

So how do you keep a team going when times are tough? ‘Culture is the glue’ my next guest says.

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories, I talked to Dawn van Hoegaerden, CMO, DefectDojo [https://defectdojo.com/].

She is building out the marketing department at DefectDojo, has three vendors, and recently made her first hire. DefectDoj...

Want to move up in your organization? Here’s the best advice I’ve gotten in my career – ‘train others to replace you.’

Hey, it’s a bit scary. If others can replace you, it’s easy to fire you, right? However, if you’re truly providing value, once others can do your current tasks, it also makes it possible for you to move up to the next level in your organization.

Now here’s another version of that same wisdom – ‘automate your job.’

Tha...

I realize everyone who listens to How I Made It In Marketing is not a marketer, per se.

Entrepreneurs also listen. Not native to our industry, so to speak, but you still need to know it well enough to get customers…so you can run your business and do whatever it is that you really are passionate about.

Well take heart in a lesson from my next guest – everything is learnable. Even marketing. Even photo shoots.

To hear the story behind ...

Perception changes everything.

Think about many of the chores your customers endure in their lives. Or you do personally. The perception of a chore is not positive, right?

Take shaving – dragging a sharp metal object across your face every morning to meet societal norms…sometimes even drawing blood. Ouch. Literally.

So how do you turn something like that into a luxury experience? According to my latest guest, that is ‘the power of sto...

Would you ever launch a campaign celebrating your brand as second best? That’s exactly what Sandy Rubinstein did at Nick at Nite.

I sat down with Sandy Rubinstein, CEO, DX [https://dxagency.com/], to discuss that story, and many more lesson-filled stories, in this episode of How I Made It In Marketing.

DX is a 20-year-old company with $20 million in revenue. Rubinstein manages a team of 70 across five cities in three countries.

Storie...