What do HR and marketing departments have in common? Not enough, say the guests on this episode of The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast. Your host Jeremy Francese sits down with Julie Livingston of WantLeverage, a PR firm specializing in brand storytelling, and Erin Mohideen, the People and Culture Lead at the “unconsulting” firm Inspirant Group, to discuss what happens when you create an effective link between HR and marketing and why that might help you to push through the Great Resignation.

Erin begins by talking about her work with Inspirant Group and how they’re leading the change by ditching annual reviews, keeping C-suite executives accessible to all employees, and personalizing communication methods. She then dives into what’s happening to the company culture as Inspirant Group expands and the difficult balance of managing growth while still maintaining a tight bond with each employee. Julie explains the benefits of broadcasting your company culture and shares her top tips on driving engagement through sharing your brand values on LinkedIn.

This episode is full of actionable insights and strategies that you can implement today to help your business culture to evolve and to support your company’s growth. Please share your takeaways on your social media channels and don’t forget to subscribe to The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast to catch upcoming episodes.

Timestamps

[0:29] Jeremy introduces special guests Julie and Erin

[1:27] Grab those actionable insights from this conversation!

[3:07] Julie’s take on the state of PR and marketing today

[4:26] Why should you link up your HR and marketing departments?

[6:15] Erin talks about her background in recruitment and her move to Inspirant Group

[7:55] What recruiting looks like at Strategic Branding Studios

[9:45] The questions that Erin asks candidates during an interview

[12:00] Shifting the focus away from revenue and towards brand promotion

[17:07] A happy workforce is your most valuable business asset, and it’s now easier than ever for an employee to tell if the job doesn’t make them happy

[20:05] The incredible challenge of scaling growth while maintaining culture at Inspirant Group, and why you should get rid of your annual performance review

[23:58] Why you need to keep your C-suite executives accessible to all employees and how that impacts the brand’s PR

[26:52] Offer your employees a test drive of your company culture

[28:07] You need to give your employees a roadmap

[30:25] LinkedIn, still the most underutilized platform to broadcast your company culture

[32:00] Fostering non-verbal communication in a digital world

[39:28] What’s the first step in building up your brand awareness?

[42:43] Brand values as a screening tool in recruitment

[44:25] Advice from Julie about creating your brand’s presence on LinkedIn

[46:30] Erin’s thoughts on getting through the Great Resignation

[47:30] Closing words from Julie on the benefits of connecting marketing and HR

Links

Strategic Branding Studios website

Strategic Branding Studios on LinkedIn

Strategic Branding Studios on YouTube

Julie Livingston on LinkedIn

WantLeverage website

Erin Mohideen on LinkedIn

Inspirant Group website

On this episode of The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast, Jeremy interviews Paul Turner, the co-founder of DeepSync Labs. DeepSync is an advertising and marketing services company that helps businesses to find relevant audiences for their social media campaigns through finetuned data analysis.

Jeremy and Paul discuss how the changing communication landscape has impacted the sales and marketing game, and Paul underlines how quality data illuminates the state of the marketplace and where marketing dollars can have the greatest impact. Paul also breaks down what third-party cookies and third-party data are and what the future of data collection might look like, all of which are topics that are often misunderstood by executive-level decision-makers.

Paul then lifts the lid off DeepSync to explain why he started the company and the logic behind it all, from the easy user interface to DeepSync’s focus on the trustworthiness of the data collected and sold through their software. He also highlights why Facebook’s standard settings for advertising campaigns are great for some companies but miss the mark in many cases, especially in the B2B market.

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast to hear more interesting interviews and updates from Jeremy and his guests, and you can also help others to find the show by leaving a rating and a review.

Timestamps

[0:48] Jeremy introduces special guest Paul Turner

[1:31] How Jeremy met Paul

[4:04] Paul’s marketing background and how that led to him founding DeepSync Labs

[7:10] How working for Google and Yahoo shaped Paul’s view of marketing and advertising

[9:02] The struggle of building intuitive advertising software

[12:51] What the shifting communications landscape means for collecting relevant marketing data

[15:45] Data collection and customer privacy in an ever-evolving landscape

[17:34] Growing a business costs money, which means increasing prices

[20:00] Starting an advertising campaign with zero information about your target audience

[21:07] You have to keep active in new channels and you have to keep testing

[22:55] What “enough data” looks like when you’re making marketing decisions

[27:58] Do C-suite members really understand data and data usage?

[30:25] A marketing campaign is a recipe

[32:41] A lesson on third-party cookies and third-party data from Paul

[36:16] Learning by doing: Starting out a low-cost advertising campaign to learn from the results

[39:27] The decision that Facebook made that prompted Paul to launch DeepSync

[42:20] Paul’s take on trustworthiness in data collection

[45:04] Facebook’s advertising campaign recommendations aren’t suitable for many companies

[47:26] What B2B can learn from B2C marketing

[50:10] The buying process has changed, so you need to rethink how you spend your marketing budget

[52:16] Where to go to find out more about DeepSync Labs and the new developments coming up on DeepSync in the summer 2022

Links

Strategic Branding Studios website

Strategic Branding Studios on LinkedIn

Strategic Branding Studios on YouTube

Paul Turner on LinkedIn

DeepSync Labs

On this episode of The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast, your host Jeremy Francese interviews special guest Prabhjot Singh, the CEO and cofounder of Pyze. Prabhjot has an impressive CV as a Boston University graduate with over 20 years of experience in enterprise software, starting at City Group and then switching over into the world of start-ups, nonprofits, and social enterprises. He spotted a gap in the market for software that would help companies to achieve operational excellence, using cross-platform analytics and low-code solutions, so he took the plunge and launched Pyze in 2013. 

Today, Pyze is leading the field in powering application success, and they have the stats to prove it. Jeremy and Prabhjot dive into the details in their discussion, talking about how operational excellence can boost a company’s ROI, and how businesses should spend investor money to get the most bang for buck. Prabhjot expands on Pyze’s marketing strategy, explaining how they manage to contextualize and sell a service that’s inherently complex and how they get employees on board who may initially be resistant to process change. He also highlights what process change looks like when working with a fully remote team, which is a problem that many more companies are facing since COVID-19 caused a rapid and unprecedented shift towards employees working from home.

To hear more episodes of The Marketing Water Cooler Podcast just as interesting and insightful as this one, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to let Jeremy and the team know what you think of the show.

Timestamps

[0:51] Jeremy introduces special guest Prabhjot Singh

[1:35] Prabhjot talks about his background and achievements

[5:28] How should companies scale up sales and marketing when they receive a cash injection?

[8:22] What Pyze did differently

[9:53] Working on education and channel development

[12:57] How to use education in marketing when the product is inherently complex

[16:17] The problem of creating efficient processes with remote teams, and a lack of awareness around the problem

[21:08] Defining and owning the customer base of Pyze, and moving into supply chain logistics

[25:00] It’s not always about buying new tools, it might be about developing new processes

[27:25] How Pyze works to identify and remove process bottlenecks

[31:12] Conducting a business MRI to combat small-scale patchwork solutions

[34:17] “It’s harder to sell enterprise software today, but you can mitigate it by having better partnerships”

[38:55] What do investors care about when they’re thinking about backing a tech company?

[43:10] How do you combat internal resistance to large-scale process or tech changes?

[45:58] Where to go to find out more about the services that Pyze offers

Links

Strategic Branding Studios website

Strategic Branding Studios on LinkedIn

Strategic Branding Studios on YouTube

Prabhjot Singh on LinkedIn

Pyze website

Pyze on LinkedIn