Activate Your Audience!
Welcome to Activate Your Audience podcast! Here, you'll find a range of episodes discussing all aspects of brand activation and audience engagement, from the latest industry trends to expert insights and best practices.We will delve into topics such as events and experiential marketing, business tips and tricks, and creating experiences, all with the goal of helping you achieve your goals and drive customer engagement.Tune in to learn from the experts and get inspiration for your own brand activation strategies. Subscribe to stay up-to-date on new episodes and join the conversation on @BeImperial on Instagram. Let's activate you, your brand, and your audience together! Learn more about how IBA can support your even'ts team at your brand activations https://iba.imperialbrandingagency.com/i3ba
Activate Your Audience!
Emanuel Rose - Mastering Modern Marketing: Data Storytelling and Mindful Tech
Unlock the secrets to mastering modern marketing with our special guest, Emmanuel Rose, founder of Strategic eMarketing. Emmanuel shares his 30 years of experience in the ever-changing marketing landscape, providing deep insights into how real-time data and low-cost A-B testing can revolutionize your approach. On this episode of "Activate Your Audience," Emanuel Rose dives into modern marketing strategies, emphasizing the power of data storytelling and the mindful use of technology. Discover what inspired his focus on data storytelling and learn practical techniques for integrating these strategies into your business.
Learn how to adopt a fail-fast mentality suitable for both startups and established brands, and discover the art of blending data-driven strategies with compelling storytelling to create human-centric campaigns that truly connect with your audience.
Emanuel shares insights on reclaiming concentration and productivity in a tech-saturated world. He discusses using grayscale phone settings, scheduling daily white space, and balancing digital interactions with nature to stay inspired and effective.
Tune in for valuable takeaways on leveraging data-driven storytelling, mindful technology use, and maintaining a competitive edge in marketing.
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All right. So today we are honored to have Emmanuel Rose join us. Emmanuel is a seasoned marketing expert with over three decades of pioneering marketing strategies. Emmanuel has established himself as a trailblazer in the communications world as the founder and visionary behind Strategic eMarketing. It's a leading digital agency based in Reno Nevada. Emmanuel specializes in direct response advertising and content marketing. His mission is to empower businesses with authentic storytelling, driving them towards unparalleled success. Emmanuel's expertise makes him a sought-after thought leader in the industry. Welcome to the Activate your Audience podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, Luis. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:Me too. So let's kick it right off With the three decades you've had in the marketing industry and communication world. What are some of the current or even throughout significant changes that you've observed, and how have these influenced your approach to developing successful marketing strategies?
Speaker 2:It's been pretty dramatic in terms of what's changed. We are able to get real-time data now. That was only a dream in the past. As soon as somebody goes in and starts looking up digital marketing agency, I can get that lead and start marketing to that person. So those are things that we only ever dreamed of in the past. Ever dreamed of in the past. So the real time and I would say, the ability to A-B test and to test market is unbelievably powerful now compared to what we had to work with in the past.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how have you seen or how have you used or consulted, in sort of using some of that ab testing or any of that when it comes to a strategy for clients or even for yourself?
Speaker 2:just to be able to uh, to spend, uh, you know, two hundred dollars on uh on, say, being able to build some facebook ads or some tiktok ads and and have two different headlines and then see which of those headlines pulls better. To spend $100 on a press release and to see what happens with that. Or to put something on Q Promote and a piece of content and see how much it gets clicked on and shared. So those are all super low dollar testing strategies and important to make viable bigger campaigns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it sounds like the you know entry to barrier or the barrier to entry is lower and even startups and anybody at any level really can afford the sort of fail fast philosophy that has been pretty common in startup world and, with marketing sort of being a sometimes moving target, it sounds like just the ability to afford at a reasonable rate, at a very inexpensive rate. Really, the testing sort of process, sort of fail adapt, et cetera, has been one of the biggest shifts in strategy as far as you see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say, even before you spend a penny right, we have Google Trends and so any keyword strategy that we create, even wild-ass guesses, we can go in and do a compare and contrast before we even spend anything. So that kind of real-time knowledge and data is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:It really is. And now I think a lot of the heavy lift sometimes is even with sort of bootstrappy grassroots. Grassroots you could look at profiles or avatar profiles or certain complementing um avatars or or even conversations for competitors that you can do a bit more, um, somewhat analog, obviously still using the internet, social media etc. But now it's like the, the depth and just the quantity of information. It's like now the data mining aspect at a very technical, high level as well. It's just the basics, like how do you sort out that information? What has been your approach to sort of you know, as you drink from the fire hose or even with small amounts or large amounts of data, actually, you know, activating on it or acting on it and helping you inform in a way that's not overwhelming?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still adhere to the ready fire aim right, and so I don't want to get in that endless loop of trying to make it better, make it better, make it better before it goes to market, because none of us are smarter than the marketplace and we have our theories. We need to get material out and we have our theories. We need to get material out. We need to get feedback from the market in order to have real good idea what's going on versus what we think it should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. I like that approach because we're proactive in that while still sort of balancing both the research side on the with the taking action side. Now with that how do you incorporate storytelling, which is more of like an art? Right, Obviously there's techniques and systems, but when it comes to marketing campaigns, um, how do you, you know, inject that in there, and obviously we know it's a crucial part, but how do you also um, or why do you believe it is that crucial in sort of marketing or even business success?
Speaker 2:We know it empirically that humans want to attach to things that they understand, that it's like them, that they've experienced, or even that they don't want to experience, but is emotional, right, and so, at the very fundamental level, every piece should be problem-s to action, right? This is old radio creative structure, that, uh, that we know from the radio days and um, and sometimes with all the new fancy tools and and the ability to do data mining and all these avatars and this that I see, a lot of marketing that loses, uh, loses this very fundamental structure, which is we're human beings. We need to know, uh, how to solve the problems that we have.
Speaker 2:Sorry about that, no worries yeah, so the real fundamental the fundamental is that we're solving problems for other humans and don't get caught up in in in the fancy part of marketing, but in that real, fundamental part of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's, that's massive. The human element is obviously needing to be there, right, the sort of human connection. But stories, as we know, do connect dots, and so I like that idea of just simplifying it. The mantra of simple scales, fancy fails is applicable to everything. When we try to get too fancy, it's nice to have these resources and tools, but, as you mentioned, the fundamentals and simplicity make it not so overwhelming and actually actionable, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you know there's lots of great examples right now running around with, you know, the simple one sentence emails that are pulling responses. I still use direct mail and dimensional mail to be able to get through the gatekeeper, through the process, and then generate interest that way. So sometimes it's the simpler things that are actually the things that can ring the bell versus all the really fancy stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Could you briefly spend on that? Uh, the idea of, you know, working with direct response, and even is there a meshing of the two, like perhaps one liners in a direct response or has there been a certain case studies that really, you know, come to mind when you think about the success and even the process of working with direct response? Uh, tools and strategies?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So some cases, like for LinkedIn research or LinkedIn lead development, taking the attitude of we're doing a research project and I will, you know I'll trade money for your time or your comments or you know I'll give you a gift for spending time answering our questions that we have about a campaign Like that's a really simple way to open conversations and typically gets very good response rates. And then you know dimensional mail, where you actually in the old days we would send somebody a dollar with a survey and that would increase the likelihood that they would send that survey back to us. You know there's been lots of great ones where if you're going after executives, you could send them a model car like a Ferrari model car or a remote control car and they have to call you for the remote control. Oh nice, so you set up some fun ways to get people to respond that way.
Speaker 1:I like that being creative with again the more back to personal touch, right, you're trying to activate humans. Why wouldn't a human element, like a car or a gift card, sometimes creative ways to sort of accompany the strategy, seems like a powerful tool. Now what are some maybe key strategies that you employ for, uh, effective lead generation at large in, maybe the branding sphere, right, so we know it's story branding and story the whole story brand craze that has been a bit more top of mind for, you know, our industry and communication professionals. Um, how do you ensure that with that sort of lead generation, creative story design, you're making sure that the whole marketing sort of operations is a smooth process and meets, again, the needs of diverse clients? So where do you find yourself? Interjecting, maybe a bit more story and a less, a little bit less of the, um, you know, techie lead generation and vice versa. How do you sort of play within those options At?
Speaker 2:least in the B2B sphere. We know that buyers are doing about six hours of research for a buying decision before they're contacting or making a decision. Rather so the first thing is that I really want to get the CEO or the visionary of the company involved in video production, and it can be very simple, it could be iPhone level video, but we want to get the story from the leader about who they are and why they're doing what they're doing and what was their motivation to starting or participating in the business and telling this kind of birth story. And then we wanted to also tell stories about who the big contributors are that they're appreciative of in both in terms of staffing and vendors and customers, and why those relationships are valuable to that individual. So we have somebody to follow that way and we can start to engage with that person emotionally. And then the magic of that, of having the CEO be the focus of the video like that, is that you're able then to develop every piece of content you need, and it's already approved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that, I like that, I like that. So you're getting the buy in at an emotional level that it sounds like it's both the bilateral story. So they're communicating, they're talking about themselves, about the business, about, you know, the organization, their people, but then they're also emotionally sold, or at least have skin in the game, or at least have skin in the game, and then it seems like everything else will follow, while at the same time what they're actually producing or sharing is a story that will kind of kill two birds with one stone. It's also sharing to the audience a bit of that emotional as well as just the idea of what is the story of this brand. So that's pretty genius. I love that idea of what is the story of this brand. So that's that's pretty genius. I love that.
Speaker 1:Now, what would you say are some of you know somebody who's deeply connected with nature? I know you. You've lived all over the West Coast and you you write children's books. You do a lot of different creative storytelling and marketing. What have been some of your personal passions, whether it's nature or anything else, in how have they been connected with or influenced the way that your professional career has sort of played out? What do you draw on or what sort of lessons or inspiration come to mind when you think about your world, your passion, specifically, maybe nature, right as it can be a very, not just obviously nurturing source, but just deep source of inspiration?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I. I spend time every month outside, disconnected from from work and the internet and the cell phone, usually by myself outside camping, fishing, hunting, and just to stay in touch with the humanity of it. Right, because there is always that draw that you know, we just keep getting more and more into numbers and numbers and forget that we're human beings. So what I find from that why I've prioritized it so deeply is that I come back with a lot more energy, a lot more creative solutions and a lot more excitement about the projects that we have to accomplish for clients or writing projects. So that, and then just the fundamentals that we know from advertising is it's always it's puppies, babies and water, right, if you run out of ideas, you always go back to these things that we all love, right? And water, and moving water is one of those things that I get a lot of inspiration from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's huge. There's been a through trend with the last few conversations we've had on the podcast about the creation of white space. And you know, if we're looking at a calendar block, like most of us are stacked, our clients are stacked like it's red blues, all this and there's no white space. And you know, if we're looking at a calendar block, like most of us are stacked, our clients are stacked like it's red blues all this and there's no white space. And so creating that sort of ability for the individual, for the creative, even sometimes putting that lens that we're talking about service allowing, for example, with our clients and I'm sure you do this with yours is you're expanding bandwidth for them, right? People hire us to solve problems, so hopefully they're taking some of that time that we can, you know, get back for them and that energy and bandwidth and resource and they're putting it into this unplanned space because we know how effective that is for us, right? And at the same time, what I'm hearing is not only do ideas come up from, just as you mentioned, we are clients.
Speaker 1:Everybody in today's technical or modern world is caught up in just screen all the time. We're looking at screens, we're looking at our phones, we're looking at billboards. Everything is just analog, and so one of the greatest tricks really for personal concentration is the idea of grayscale on my phone. Right, if you use just black and white phone or just like people who use like flip phones. Still for that reason, like the world looks so much more bright right there.
Speaker 1:I start to recognize that this machine, these things are tools, they're great, but instead of allowing them to use us, we are using them a bit more. Because once you see that this is just, you know, numbers and all these things that, yes, provide awesome technology. Great, as we mentioned earlier, low level to entry. To sort of democratize entrepreneurship, democratize communication, there is a cost. It's a double edged sword, nature or when, like I'm hearing that your experiences too is, or even just in the practice of putting these tools sort of in their place, not only does it create that white space, because you're not just draining seconds that turn to minutes, to turn to hours, whether it's productive, right, sometimes it's work that we have to do and there's seasons, our clients have seasons. I'm just go, go, go.
Speaker 1:But to create that space, to then shift into understanding that these are tools and little hacks like that, the grayscale, and then to be out and just look up, you know, especially in today's youth, like everybody's, like this right, a rare commodity, right, or it goes from a commodity of time into a valuable sort of, um, just a rare piece of of experience, right, the water, if you're out, you know fishing and you're paying attention to the nuance in your presence. Our minds are naturally sort of churning, so they'll create this idea. So I love that reminder of just the power of nature and how it can also inform both. You know our individual recharging right, the ability to reconnect, but also the inspiration and seeing that sort of need for the people we serve, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. And the first thing that we have to do and I like that white space example is that we have to schedule it in and that's really should be the first thing that we have to do, and I like that white space example is that we have to schedule it in and that's really should be the first thing that we do every day. And the last thing we do at night, uh is to take, you know, 15 minutes and uh get centered in in the humanity of it all and uh and then enter, enter the the work day, uh, energized rather than uh than being bled dry yeah, no, and that's and that's the difficult part, right, like it's a habit.
Speaker 1:Either way, it's a habit if we've been again churning and it's not a bad thing, right, there's seasons where we do have to sort of just grind. But, as you mentioned, we all know the idea and again, again, at an intellectual level, we can sometimes understand like pay yourself first and reinvesting and just how a smart investment and just strategic and sustainable decision that is for an organization, for an individual, especially for a leader, to put that money into. You know, educating their people, educating themselves, investing in you know the future sort of gains and the power of compound interest. But we for some reason have a disconnect when it comes to reinvesting in our time and paying ourself first in that block right, like I'm scheduling my stuff and it's like, yes, the important stuff goes first, but we forget that even before number one, two, three, there's zero of just the order of that part. So that's a great reminder to I think you know, put that in first in your schedule as a, as a lever, right, like that will compound and pay dividends from that investment alone, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And if you don't feel like you have enough time, spending 30 minutes meditating will feel like the longest 30 minutes of the day.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's so true. What was that old monk saying? It's like if the person that's like, oh, I don't have 10 minutes, like to meditate for 10 minutes, he's like well, you don't have 10 minutes, then now you need 30, right, because you forget the habit of you do need that amount of time. Now back to sort of the technical world. In today's rapid sort of changing economy, what advice would you give to businesses looking to activate their audience and stay ahead of the curve with innovative communication and marketing strategies?
Speaker 2:There's tools that work for your prospects and clients, customers to hyper-customize content, to hyper-customize offers, and so it's important that you're allocating an hour a week to doing research and assessing your tech stack and finding leverage inside those tools, because there's the proliferation of them is there in the marketing branding world. We've got to, we've got to be on the horse, whether you think it's the downfall of culture or whether you think it's the greatest thing ever. We have to be as professionals, we have to be assessing those things.
Speaker 1:That's very true. Yeah, I think, like you said, having a sort of allocation back to maybe percentages right of. If our business or marketing department is spending X amount of 50 percent, say, on customer acquisition, 30 percent on creative, then the remaining should probably be as you said, or at least some valuable percentage in getting familiar with tools, understanding them, because we know things move fast and we need to make sure that we are at least aware for our client's purpose. So that's great advice. So I'm going to run it back, sort of what I heard and what stood out for me, and then please fill in anything that I might have missed or anything you want to add as far as takeaways. So the first thing was understanding the ability to adapt and adjust, and I love that. The ready fire aim approach. While we have the easier, cheaper tools that we can use or at least the tools are more out of the box oftentimes and there's a wealth of information that we can afford to get into we still need to take action. So I think that's a massive reminder, balancing those two. The next sort of takeaway that came up for me is the problem solution call to action or any of these sort of fundamental frameworks, whether we're using story or A-B testing or any sort of tools, strategies, modalities, making sure that we are simplifying so that we can scale and actually do something with it, which ties to question one or to takeaway one.
Speaker 1:And then next, I love the idea of that bilateral conversation.
Speaker 1:You know this sort of trick that you mentioned of getting, say, for example, in a communication campaign, a CEO who you're servicing or whose company you're helping with their campaign, having them tell the story and just having this sort of two prong approach of not only are they getting a chance to express and have buy in for what it's going to often take for these campaigns that are, or brand moves that are not overnight things, they're things that take time, but they're again back to investments, important things that will be paying their dividends over time.
Speaker 1:So you get them involved with that sort of storytelling and you also have the content, the sort of process and the collective buy-in, if you will, to share that story and have people buy into that, whether it's whoever the audience is, their customers, their employees, whoever's directing or whoever that communication campaign is being directed to. And then the last one is just the idea of again using white space and nature and life as a way to both be inspired but also recognize where we as solution providers, as service leaders, as marketers, as communication leaders, can not only tap into that investment but also see how we can provide that for our clients. And that's sort of maybe creating, like nature, a very regenerative as is the hype word in the lexicon right now cycle of things.
Speaker 2:Anything that I might have missed or anything else you want to add on, no, I don't not that you missed it, but I'd say the other part of it is just to get help. The places where you're, where you know you have gaps in either knowledge or time. Uh, get an executive coach, get a marketing consultant, get a copywriting specialist. Don't be, don't have the hubris of thinking that you can or should do it all by yourself, because there's just too much to do it. I mean, I have a team of 10 and that's, that's what it takes, and I probably need three more people besides that. So be, be humble enough to get help when you need it.
Speaker 1:That's huge. Yeah, that's massive, a huge lever. Well, thank you so much, emmanuel. Emmanuel calls the beautiful West Coast of the United States his home. He lives with his partner, suzanne, and their beloved Springer Spaniel, texas. Emmanuel's passion for authentic storytelling and his dedication to helping businesses succeed in today's dynamic economy has truly shown through in our conversation. Your ability to combine both professional excellence and deep connection to nature creativity both the story side as well as the technical approach is refreshing. So thank you so much for joining us. Look forward to our next chat.
Speaker 2:All right, I love the Louise. Thank you very much.