Dan MacInnis Podcast about marketing your small business. I interview business owners and marketing experts that I admire and can give great insights. Enjoy or download in itunes.
Jeanne Bliss is a guru in customer experience. Customer Bliss her website is packed full of great ideas and tools to help your business because more customer centric. Jeanne’s book I love you more than your dog identifies 5 key decisions to make your business a beloved company. You know that sort of company that you tell your friends about. (threadless, zappos, moo, zipcar, modcloth, freshbooks, netflix, lands end, aussie farmers, grill’d, lorna jane, gapingvoid, mailchimp, nudie, incase). These companies:
- Reveal who they are and aren’t and make decisions on that basis
- They decide to believe their customers and employees and trust underpins their actions
- They have clarity of purpose and know how they support customers. They deliver on that promise.
- They are real and authentic. They have a personality and the collective employees can shine through.
- They decide to be there and operationally commit to creating a reliable customer experience
- They say sorry when they get it wrong because mistakes happen
Resources
Rick Harris is the managing director of the UK based design agency CustomerFaithful. A veteran in the customer experience space Rick has assisted many organisations identify what drives the beliefs and behaviours of their customers. Rick’s Lifeline approach has been used in such industries as healthcare, transport, housing and leisure as he assists industries achieve their commerical goals while staying true to their customer needs and inspiring their employees.
Join Me as I chat with Rick.
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Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter have written a book called Humanise – How People Centric organizations succeed in a social world. Maddie is a well-known blogger and partner in a successful social media consulting firm working with associations and non-profits, SocialFish, and she spent some time with me on thispodcast. We discussed how organisations are becoming more engaged with social media and this is creating an environment of transparency. We now want understand the company from the inside out. We want to connect on a deeper and more human level. We explore this changing landscape and what it means to business and the larger community.
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Kristin Zhivago started as a teacher like me but when she finished her teaching degree there was little in the
way of positions. Lucky for us she invested her time in sales and marketing and has spent her career seeking out customer insights by interviewing customers for organisations. Kristin is the author of the RoadMap to Revenue, How to sell the way your customers want to buy. I recently interviewed Kristen about her journey and asked her about the trends she is seeing in selling, about best practice questions when interviewing, the role of persona’s and how the buyer journey has changed.
Arne van Oosterom is the founder of the Design Thinkers Group and now the Design Thinkers Academy. DesignThinkers is one of the leading ‘design driven’ Innovation Agencies helping organizations around the world making the transition from being strictly product orientated and sales driven, towards being service orientated and human centered.
I really enjoyed talking with Arne. He gave insights into how companies have a great challenge on their hands as small nible companies compete on a global stage. Arne talks about the importance of design and how it is being reintroduced into companies like SAP and how the youth of today are looking for personal development rather than a 30 year career at one company. Arne explains how we are moving from product dominant logic to service dominant logic. Design thinking is a mindset and The is Service Design a book that Arne also contributed to introduces this service design thinking which is a valuable resource for all businesses to embrace. Learn about the “airsandwich” and how if you want to change the world service design might just be your calling.
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Buyer Persona’s are an attempt to get inside the heads of our ideal customers and understand their motivations, influencers and decision making criteria. My chat with Vann Morris from MLTCreative a B2B marketing consulting agency explains how to use this app to shed some great insights into creating buyer personna’s and to create a great interview list of questions to build this view of the customer.
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Adele Revella has built the Buyer Persona Institute to revolutionise the way we use buyer persona’s in
marketing. Rather than creating a buyer persona’s to market to, Adele’s approach called the Five Rings of Insight is based on creating insight through a research so that rather than presuming what is behind our ideal buyer’s decision to buy from us or not, we know!
These steps include:
1. Priority Initiative- what problem are they trying to solve?
2. Success Factors – What outcome would be desirable in their words?
3. Pre-conceived Barriers – What is the bad news we need to hear about our solution or competitors offerings?
4. Buying Process – Who is involved and when?
5. Decision Criteria – How is the offering evaluated?
Adele shares some great insights how focusing on the buyer persona makes decisions can have a profound affect informing strategies for persuasive messaging, content marketing, product or solution launches, campaigns and sales alignment.
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Chris Risdon is a thought-leader in the customer experience and service design space.Chris has been designing digital
products and services since 1996. He specializes in user experience strategy, information architecture and communication and interaction design. I was so delighted to interview Chris after following his work at AdaptivePathwhere he is described as follows:
“Chris’s journeyman path has helped shape his belief that an interdisciplinary approach to design enables people to have compelling and useful experiences with the products and services around them.”
This methodology was so interesting to me as a customer centric marketer, that I just had to speak with Chris.
Chris’s discusses experience mapping, customer touch points and how this methodology is evolving as a way to test a companies value proposition and culture about becoming customer focused.
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Andrew Davis and Brandscaping
Andrew is such a talent. His career has taken him from local television to The Today Show. He’s worked for The Muppets in New York and marketed for tiny start-ups as well as Fortune 500 brands. For over a decade Andrew acted as the Chief Strategy Officer at Tippingpoint Labs, where he rallied his team to lead the charge to change the way publishers think and how brands market their products. Today, Andrew travels the world sharing his innovative ideas as a speaker, consultant and guest lecturer. Andrew’s concepts in his book Brandscaping help reshape the way you think, enabling you to navigate the overwhelming and sometimes confusing digital landscape. Brandscaping is about leveraging the relationships that make sense to your audience and creating content, services and products that give you partnerships to new audiences and position your brand in a way that no other marketing medium can. Andrew gives us lots of rich examples of small and large businesses that have taken on board this collaboration approach to creating a brand identity that really resonates.
Lynn Hunsaker
Lynn Hunsaker is runs a consultancy called Clearaction.biz where she helps organizations build enterprise-wide customer-centricity and ownership of customer experience innovation to live the brand promise and maximize customer profitability.
Lynn shares with us insights she has gained over the last 20 years of being an expert in customer experience and highlights some best practices of how we can develop customer centric behaviours. As a well known thought leader in the customer experience space, I felt humbled to have Lynn on the show.
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Bill Self and the Customer 3D book
Bill Self has questioned the idea of what it means to be truly customer centric over the last 20 years? He has now created a book, philosophy and a community based on of having a customer centric mindset. His approach not only encourages you to think about how make the customer the centre of your business model but why you can’t afford not to adopt this belief. Well, I for one bought into this customercentricity some time ago, but after listening to Bill hopefully you will too. Bill’s new book Customer3D gives some great examples of the evolution of customer service and how every business manager can start to join this revolution that begins and ends with customers!
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Paul Roetzer Interview on his Book the Marketing Agency Blueprint
Paul spent some time chatting with me about his new book The Marketing Agency Blueprint. Paul is one of those people you just know is going to change the agency industry, infact he already is! A visionary, passionate, innovator and super sharp. Rarely do I get the honour to meet someone that is so authentic and has a life cause that I believe in.
From identifying key attributes of marketing agencies (nimble, tech savvy, measurement geekiness, open and collaborative) to new services and packages (consulting, training, publishning and software) Paul gives us gold in this interview. For any agency, marketer or small business it is must listen content.Listen here.
Resources
Google Research – Zero moment of Truth
How to organise and Operate a small business
John English has successfully created and managed a number of small businesses of his own and has introduced entrepreneurship programs in several Australian Universities. He is the professor at the University of Tasmania, a Certified Practicing Accountant and consultant to small business and government. John’s latest book,How to Organise and Operate a Small Business in Australia gives some great insights and a systematic approach to setting your business up for success. In this interview John shares some of those insights.
Claudia Bowman has a love for all things cheese. She has taken her passion and her serious education in the skill of making cheese to create McIntosh & Bowman Cheesemonger that focuses on cheese events, education and appreciation events. Just recently Claudia launched Ask The Cheese Monger App to cater for the volume of emails she receives from people’s cheese questions. The app now has over 30,000 downloads and plans are to adapt it into a Anroid version.
Listen here as Claudia shares her small business journey so far. If Australia’s cheese trend is to follow America, Claudia is going to be even busier in the coming years.
An Interview with Michael Neaylon the author of True Brand Toolkit
It was my pleasure to interview Michael Neaylon Author of the True Brand Toolkit. This interview gives the small business owner some great insights into branding and some great resources. Listen to the podcast here.
Visit Michael’s website at: www.mcme.com.au or purchase the book here.
An Interview with me around customer centric companies
Recently I was interviewed by a journalist and I made a recording. It is all about building a customer centric company. I go through the steps to create a customer centric company.
Listen to the podcast here
An Interview with Hugh MacFarlane from Math Marketing
Hugh Macfarlane runs MathMarketing which provides sales and marketing consulting to businesses across Australia and around the world. A key note speaker and author of The Leaky Funnel, Hugh provides some great insights that small businesses can leverage.
Hugh speaks about the customer buying path. How to ask the right questions about which buyers to focus on? How to improve your sales and marketing process and some great free resources on the Math Marketing website to start you on your way. Listen to the podcast here. Read the blog article here.
Customer Touch-Points Can Make or Break Your Brand
This podcast is about my recent experience at a Honda Service Centre. It gives us all the opportunity to look at out Customer Touch Points and see how they can make or break our brand.
Here is a link to my article.
Web Review Interview with Digital Marketing Expert and Founder of Synotac, Cameron Madill.
Do you know if you have a good website? If you make a change on your website, how do you know you’ve made things better? In this show we take a real live case study of a website for a small business. Bec Hass runs a cosmetic acupuncture business in Perth. Her current site url is http://www.cosmeticacupunctureperth.com.au/ and her new business name is Chi Radiance.
Cameron Madill from Synotac has done a previous podcast that is well worth a listen as he shares his expertise around online marketing strategy.
Cam helps Bec consider the following:
Website domain name and the asset of key words and age
301 redirect – redirecting domains.
Don’t make the customer think!
Listen as Cam reveals other best practices and tips about how to improve Bec’s website which you take and apply to your own website.
Link: www.usertesting.com
Linda Hailey is a down-to-earth business consultant that really understands small businesses.
Linda is also author of two books:
- Kickstart Marketing – The no nonsense system for boosting your business
- Your Business, Your Future – How to predict and harness growth
As well as her books she is a presenter and a small business expert on Kochie’s Business Builders. Clearly Linda knows her stuff. She shares her valuable marketing and business tips on this weeks show!
Visit her website for some great downloadable tools and tips. at www.lindahailey.com.au
Links we discussed in the podcast:
Livescribe – pen that records what you write and say.
Lynda.com – great for training video tutorials online.
James Schramko is a skilled internet marketer, a really creative strategic thinker and entrepreneur.
What impresses me about James, is he is continually learning and solving customer problems and using this knowledge to creative great internet products. Couple this with his authentic and thought leading persona, and this makes a a must listen interview for your small business.
In this interview he shares with us his journey and transition into internet marketing, his product creation strategy.
Links to James
James recommends:
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt The Goal
Peter Drucker The Effective Executive
Jay Abraham – Getting everything you can out of all you’ve got
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Jason Sadler from the innovative company I wear your shirt
Jason has come up with a great way to market products using social media tools. Listen to Jason as he explains this clever concept and pricing model that has seen him give real value to businesses who have embraced the concept.
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Bloomtools Director Tracey Voyce
Get your transcription copy here.
Bloomtools is a toolbox approach to small business marketing that combines a Website Design and Development, Search Engine Optimisation, Customer Relationship Management and Database functionality. I interviewed Tracey and she shares how Bloomtools helps small businesses with their online presence.
Susan Gunelius, Marketing Author, Speaker and Expert.
Get your transcription copy here.
Susan Gunelius is a well know author with 8 marketing books to her name. She has a great track record and 20 years of Marketing experience. The CEO of keysplash Creative, Susan shares with us some great marketing tips around social media marketing, branding and online marketing for the small business owner.
Her latest books include: 30 Minute Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing for Dummies
The dynamic marketer Amanda Falconer from the Sydney Business Centre.
Get your transcription copy here.
Amanda Falconer is my guest this week and shares the insight she has on working with small businesses on their marketing.
To get some more of Amanda:
That awesome 10 minute video: http://sydneysmallbusinesscentre.com/small-business-marketing-demystified
Website: www.sydneybusinesscentre.com
Blog:http://www.thesilverbulletforsmallbusiness.com/
Guest Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing Therapist
The Marketing Therapist Lorrie Thomas joins me in this show. Lorrie uses her diagnostic techniques to help businesses make better decisions.
She takes us through how she interviews her clients to find out
- Who you are?
- What you do?
- Who do you serve?
Why are we building website? Visit my blog for the article I wrote about key take aways from the interview.www.daniellemacinnis.com
Guest Lee Hopkins Social Media Expert
My guest this week is Lee Hopkins, Australia’s social media expert. Lee,(in his charismatic engaging manner) shares with us great insights around social media, what tools to choose and how a small business can start to leverage these tools to have a conversation with their customers.
To get some more of Lee visit:
Guest Eric Tsai from Design Damage – Business Coach and Internet Marketing Strategist
This interview with Eric Tsai will give small business owners some great insights around identifying your ideal customers, how to use the internet in a strategic way and leverage all the online tools. A key take away for me was to understand the buyer psychology and reverse engineer the customer buying process.
To find Eric, visit his website at www.designdamage.com. Love some of Eric’s popular articles and his interview with Guy Kawasaki interview are must views!
Are you doing the wrong work as small business?
This show looks at the E-Myth Revisited Book as a soundboard for looking at my business and the tweaking the business model. For small businesses it is about asking yourself, “is what I working on the most important work I should be doing?”
Here is my article on the E-Myth from my blog.
An Interview with Digital Marketing Expert and Founder of Synotac, Cameron Madill
Every now and again you get the chance to meet someone really special. Cameron is one of those people. I call him a”the humble digital marketing thought leader”. Cameron shares with us some key considerations about creating an effective digital marketing strategy, and an awesome brand and team.
He generously shares his process for developing a website and his “human focused design” is truly cutting edge.
Show Notes:
Customer test for your marketing material– for a web, brochure,service page (marketing materials)
Take a – red pen and circle all the I, Me, Us, We Our, Company Name
Then take a green pen and the circle all the – You, Your. You want this to be 60% be GREEN.
How did you go? Love to know!
Tip and tools. (Synotac)
Tech Tip: Google Voice (US) Google Voice (AUS)
Visit Cameron Madill at Synotac.com
Low Cost Marketing Tools for Small Business
This is a talk I did with the Glen Eira Women Business Group around Low cost apps.
Here are the:
1. Slides
3. How too videos discussed.
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Build Your Small Business From the Inside Out
This show is about how important it is to know yourself before you build your brand or your marketing strategy. It is based around an article I had published in the Australian Businesswomen’s Network online magazine in April.
Make Them Click Interview with Mark Garner
This week I interviewed Mark Garner from MakeThemClick on to chat about websites and the marketing strategy around making them work for your small business. Mark gives some great tips to consider when designing your next website and how to improve conversion rates online.
To find out more about Mark visit his website at Makethemclick.com.au
The Simple Marketing System Interview
No secret formulas for small businesses
This show discusses the wave of “Secret Formula’s ” out there to help market your business.
Small Businesses Marketing Breakfast Seminar
In March 2011 I was a presenter at the Australian Women’s Mentoring Network breakfast. A group of 10 or so women from various businesses and I discussed some of the strategies in marketing their small businesses.
We covered such topics as:
Do you know who your ideal customers are?
Do you know how to find them?
Are you attracting people to your website by talking to them or about you?
What is a compelling call to action?
How do you give potential customers a sample or “taste of your offering” before they are ready to buy?
Man, my website sucks, help!
This podcast focuses on how to improve your website and quick marketing tips that will assist you making it a better tool in your marketing kit bag!
Here is my pdf of the top tips.
Links
Website construction: WordPress, Citymax
My webinars on google analytics.
Key words tools: Google Key Word Tool
Survey forms, Wufoo, Survey monkey
PR – PRwire
Capture screen as a video – Jing
Motivating Mum – Great Forum for Mums in Business
Reviews:
Dan knows her stuff! Great ideas! by KMarCuz
These podcasts give clear, direct and most importantly down to earth real advice for small business owners. I found them really informative and easy to follow. They have given me new insight and some great creative ideas to apply!
Marketing with Enthusiasm & Insight by LearninStill
Dan’s valuable marketing advise is great & delivered with passion. Her vast knowledge & experience as well as integrity is obvious. Much appreciated.
Contact Me for more information about Podcasting or to be interviewed.
Strategic Service Design 
