#95 - The We'll be Right Back After This Word with Jason Falls on Influencers, Podcasts and Bourbon Episode

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Jason Falls  0:03  
You're saying your famous rock star cmo guy?

Ian Truscott  0:17  
Hello and welcome to episode 95 of Rockstar cmo F. M. M is a marketing and the F. It's early you decide it's you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast?

Ian Truscott  0:31  
I'm your host Ian Truscott and this weekly podcast as it's my excuse to chat with marketing friends, old and new that I've met through my career from techie to cmo and trusted advisor. I hopefully share with you some marketing street noise that my guests and I have picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ian Truscott  0:50  
I'm recording this on Saturday, the first of January Happy New Year. And I hope you're well safe and stay as sane as you feel you need to be as I mentioned last week, something a bit different again this week Robert and Jeff are both off. There are some small exciting changes the podcast 2022 that I'll talk about in a moment and our chat with digital marketing thought leader influencer author, speaker and podcast host Jason falls about influence bourbon podcast. Right. Let's get started, shall we? Firstly, if you allow me a little home to rather wonderful Drew nizer, who you may remember was a guest a few weeks back has written some kind words about this podcast. I've obviously plastered them all over our website and social feeds if you're interested in reading them. Thank you drew for that. Back to this week. I had planned a retrospective and some Best Bits round off the year. But I have some news to share. I'm delighted to announce that we've got invited to join the Marketing Podcast Network, which is thanks to you guys for listening and sharing. And of course, to all our fabulous guests, it has meant some changes to the plumbing that must have worked if you're hearing this, and you'll hear some ads, which is quite exciting, not just because they'll contribute a bit towards the costs. But as a marketer, I think it's a cool thing to play with. And as a next step for our little show. If you hate them, please let me know. But to be honest, the biggest benefit is we join a community which is cool for me as I get to chat with other creators and gives our guest contributors and friends the show the bigger audience that I think they deserve. Anyway, Jason Falls is the man behind this marketing podcast supergroup and we'll hear more about it when I chat to him in a bit as he was kind enough to give me some time this week for an extended interview. So before we hear from Jason, let's give this ad thing a go shall we? And this 1986 Tune by stoneskin mass media we'll be right back has been playing in my head since we got this ad opportunity be right back there we go some ads. This marketing thing just might catch on. Onto our guest Jason Falls is a leading digital strategist, author, speaker and thinker in the digital and social media marketing industry. He is an innovator in the conversation reach segment of social analytics, having published the first ever conversation report in 2012. And award winning strategist and widely read industry pundit Falls has been noted as a top influencer in the social technology and marketing space by Forbes entrepreneur, Advertising Age and others, a 2014 Forbes article named him one of the top 10 business leaders all entrepreneurs should follow on Twitter alongside Richard Branson, Mark Cuban Tom Peters. And Tony Shea is the author of three books influence reframing influencer marketing to ignite your brand, no bullshit social media that all business no hype guide to social media marketing, and the rebels guide to email marketing falls. It's also noted for founding social media explorer.com Once recognised as the top marketing blog in the world according to Ad Age, power 150. If that's not enough, he just founded the marketing podcast hoping. Jason, welcome to Rockstar cm FM how are you?

Jason Falls  4:09  
Oh, I'm so glad to be here and love what you do. And I've listened to your show for quite a while now. So kind of fun to be a guest. Finally,

Ian Truscott  4:17  
spend it. I mean, I've known you for years through social media, but it's only recently that we've chatted so and your book has just arrived. But I'm gonna ask you about in a moment. But for the readers that haven't followed you, so the listeners that haven't followed you for years, like I have. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Jason?

Jason Falls  4:36  
Well, sure. So I'm a PR guy by trade. And in I live in Kentucky in the United States. And for the first 15 years of my professional career. I was a PR guy in college university athletics. So I basically hosted the press conferences after football, basketball, baseball games, things like that. And when my son was born 16 years ago I decided I didn't want to travel as much because I was travelling basically three days a week, nine months out of the year. And so I landed at an advertising agency in Louisville, Kentucky, called Joe Anderson. And they were the agency of record for Maker's Mark bourbon. And I had been playing on the internet's with all of my sports, br, playing on MySpace and blogs and social networks and forums and message boards and things like that. And doe Anderson's clients were like, We want to know more about using the internet. And I just happened to be there and kind of latched on to that and ran with it. And I like to say I was in the right place at the right time. I didn't screw it up.

Ian Truscott  5:43  
And, I mean, I was wondering where to start your career and what was going to ask you about what you're going to get what got you into marketing, and maybe we'll come to that in a minute. But we should really start with Oh, tell us a bit about your existing agency. Who you with right now? Yeah,

Jason Falls  5:55  
I'm with cornet. Now I'm in there for a little over four years and coronets, a full service ad agency based in Lexington, Kentucky, but I like to tell people that we're a we're an agency in Lexington, not a Lexington agency, right? Because our clients are, you know, all over the place. They're typically either national or even some global brands as well. We work with Kemper, Seeley and NW restaurants in the states and we've worked with, you know, some of the largest bourbons in the world and continue to work in that in the spirits category. So, we're a full service ad agency and then I've received the what I would call the earned and owned content. So PR social media, influencer marketing, a little bit of organic SEO work, that's kind of my purview within the agency.

Ian Truscott  6:41  
I love it. And when I was doing the research, I look at your agency website, I love the about us page where it's just it's not got pictures of you guys, it's just got pictures of the things that indicate what you're interested in, which is a difference. Yeah, it's another other agency website.

Jason Falls  6:56  
It is really cool. They they they they concept that years ago before I got there, but essentially when you when you when you are hired at cornet you are challenged with, okay, you need to come up with you know, 10 or 1520 items that sort of tell people who you are. And then they lay them out on a on a on the floor, basically take an aerial top down photo of these things laid out on a white square and that's your about photo and so I have a couple of bottles of bourbon and pictures of my kids and some books by Christopher Moore because he's my favourite author. And then I've got some CDs of my favourite music artists and some some soccer or in your country football scarves and whatnot. And yeah, that's me.

Ian Truscott  7:37  
I loved it. I loved it when I saw that. And that was a bit of an aside that I didn't ask you that question. Um, but as I mentioned, just now your books just arrived, which is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. So let's say we start there with your book and your podcast and your book is called influence and social podcast and what is wind fluence.

Jason Falls  7:56  
So when influence is my clever little, you know, word to describe basically using influencer marketing strategically. And and that kind of goes into a typically a question that comes after that because went the concept of influence to me is using the word influence without the R, as opposed to the one with the AR. And and the concept behind that is when you think of influencers today, and this is because the mainstream media when they talk about influencers and influencer marketing, they typically look at the you know, the rubbernecking, the train wrecks, the bad thing is that this person faked this or this person pose this or this person bought followers, that kind of thing. So we've been led to believe at least the people out there who aren't in the weeds of marketing, like we are every day have been led to believe that influencers are superficial and they're not effective, and you shouldn't use them, etc. Because the mainstream has painted them into into a corner. Yeah. But if you think about what you're trying to do, what's the verb? What's the goal you're trying to influence? You're not trying to influence her, you're trying to influence Yeah, and if you look at what your strategic goal is, through that lens, I am practising influence marketing. Now all of a sudden, the blinders come off, and you're not thinking about Instagramers and YouTubers, and superficial and you're not thinking about that corner, you're thinking about this wider perspective of who is going to influence the audience that I'm working with, to take action. So that's kind of what wind fluence is doing. It's using influencer marketing in a much more strategic way.

Ian Truscott  9:36  
Yeah, I love it. And I heard you talking on Douglas, but it's marketing book podcast, which is one of my favourite podcasts and I constantly and we're going to talk about podcasts in a bit and I know you're a big podcast guy, and it's like, I don't know if it's the right thing to do. I'm always suggesting podcasts to people on my own podcast, the competition right here. And I really love this podcast and you were talking about So you talked about a distinction between influence and influence her, but also I love this phrase the piece saying that face influences but you but um for us I mean I work in b2b and for us in b2b it does is influencer marketing relevant but I really like the point you in making about b2b. So tell us about that what how does influencer marketing work in b2b?

Jason Falls  10:23  
Well, I personally think that b2b businesses and brands have been doing influencer marketing really, really well for a long time. Because if you think about how do software as a service companies, how do agencies How do other business to business service providers and product companies market themselves? Well, they typically have thought leaders in the industry doing webinars that they that you sign up for, and that's a lead generation mechanism. And those thought leaders are influencers in that industry. Or they have someone you know, write guest articles on their website, or they quote, industry experts and influential people in the field in their industry reports that they put together. All of these are marketing mechanisms, and they're using influential people in that space. Again, we in the b2b world, we don't typically think of the term influencer, because we've been led to believe that's an Instagram or or a tick tock or YouTube. But an influencer or someone who is influential in the b2b space could be an academic, it could be, you know, someone who is high up at another company in the industry that's, you know, related. Or it could be a blogger who blogs about that particular topic a lot, right? Absolutely. And so I think, really, if you think back about webinars and seminars and white papers, and speaking at conferences and things like that b2b businesses have been doing influence marketing really, really well for a long time,

Ian Truscott  11:51  
right? Yeah, I'm gonna have to drop the hour off of my influencer marketing. So if I ever say influencer marketing during this conversation, you must fill me up. But I've always included that within analyst relations and PR as well. And I think that, traditionally, in b2b, we've always thought of analysts as those influences. But I think that you made a great point that influential bloggers, podcast hosts, folks like that. And now the new analysts and our kind of influencers aren't made. And that's what you're getting off they are.

Jason Falls  12:23  
And if you think about it, I mean, you know, I said at the top of the show, I'm a PR guy by trade. And so to me, influence marketing is really just public relations with a wider lens or media relations with a wider lens you're trying to find, who's that third party person who has trust in the audience, the audience that I'm trying to reach trusts them, and that I can work with to say, Hey, will you tell your audience about x? Yeah, and it might be your product, it might be your company, it might be a perspective on a topic of the day, it could be a lot of different things. But it's really just finding that person who has an impact on the audience you're trying to reach.

Ian Truscott  13:03  
Right? And from your perspective, it's not it's not product placement, then it's about ideas as much as anything else when you're talking with your influence.

Jason Falls  13:11  
Yeah. And I think we're gonna start to see one of the trends that I think we're starting to see now, and we'll continue to see in the broader context, b2b and b2c of influence marketing is that the product placement, you know, let's the sponsored post, I think is going to kind of fade away. There are some verticals where it works really well, if you have a beauty or a fashion influencer, that has hundreds of 1000s of followers and they wear some clothing item, or they hold a purse or something like that, then that sells a bunch of products. So there's going to be verticals where they still are relevant. But more and more, you're starting to see that that consumers respond better to an influential person in their relationship with a brand over time. So when there's this constant reinforcement, they add frequency to go along with the reach to use the old advertising term, right? So instead of one off sponsored posts, it's like how can I partner with this influential person over time, so that they consistently reinforce my product message to their audience?

Ian Truscott  14:15  
Right. Right. So it's a pro, it's a it's it's a thoughtful strategy that you need to go with these influencers then. So as part of that, as well, and I've heard you talk about this, too, is that when you're choosing influencers, it isn't just about followers. Is it all about how many people are on Twitter or anything?

Jason Falls  14:33  
Not at all. In fact, I think that's another you know, in the last year, 18 months or so, we've seen people brands even turn away from that it's not the number of followers that you're really worried about. It's how persuasive and impactful are you with the followers you have? And if you think about it this way, the if for those in the b2c world who think about influencer marketing, they typically think about number of followers and engagement rate. Well, if you think about the math of that, if I And I'm terrible at math. So I'm going to make some numbers, checks the math here, I'll probably wrong. If I have 100,000 followers, and I have a 1% engagement rate, then that means I'm going to engage 1000 people. If I have 10,000 followers, and I have a 25% engagement rate, that means I'm influencing I'm going to engage two and a half times as many people, right? Yeah. So it's really kind of doing the math to understand, okay, this person has accumulated a lot of followers. But how many of them are actually paying attention? Yeah, and if you can triangulate that, now, you all sudden see that that 10,000 follower person is way more valuable than the 100 pounds.

Ian Truscott  15:42  
Yeah, absolutely. How do you me? The other thing is, is that the people they influence as well, isn't it? It's making sure they're influencing the right audience for you. But how do you discern that? I mean, I've had, I've been very, I've been running the get the podcast, this will be the 95th episode. And I've had a guest on most episodes, new guests, most episodes. And I found it really interesting about the different guests about how, how many people have engaged with that podcast episode that have come via the guest, and some of the guests have huge number of followers and large numbers. I've never interviewed anybody huge numbers, probably but larger numbers of followers, you think, Oh, this will be a hit. And and some people have very high numbers of followers, but very little engagement? And is how do you figure that out? When you're choosing your influence?

Jason Falls  16:27  
Well, in the especially in the b2b space, it's a little bit more difficult than B to C and B to C, you know, you can you can use a lot of the the influence marketing software tools out there. And so there's lots of good ones, I have a relationship with tagger, which is one that I use. And basically those go out and either, you know, collect via signups or collect via just scraping public data to say, oh, who are all the people on Instagram that talk about this topic and how many followers they have. And they're in a database, and you can type in a couple keywords and figure out okay, for, for the audience that I'm trying to reach? Here's 100 influencers I can choose from, and then you can prioritise them however you like. Yeah, I always recommend that everyone go a step or two further, get in there analyse their content, you're trying to really understand who those influencers are, and what they say, and how engaging are they with their audience so that you can prioritise better. So it's not just lists, but also investigating, but in the b2b space. A lot of times, like, for instance, if I'm in the construction equipment world, right, and I'm trying to market construction equipment, well, I can use a couple of those databases, I can look at, you know, top construction influencers as a Google search term. And I can find, here's a bunch of people who blog about construction. And here's experts in the field. And here's the people who are quoted in the trade journals by the media. So that gives me a clue to, but I've got to triangulate a bunch of different information to know, all right, these five people are the most quoted, they seem to be the most trusted. They seem to be the ones who are constantly interviewed about this topic. So those are my five priorities. Yeah, and sometimes it takes unfortunately, you know, there's no easy button in this, sometimes you gotta roll up your sleeves and do the work. And, and that's how you got.

Ian Truscott  18:11  
Yeah, I mean, that's what I've always done in b2b or worked with people that do the very same thing. You start off with some stuff that you can scrape using tools, and then you've got to dig into it, because, but the nice thing is for us, I mean, unlike b2c, the numbers are much smaller, right? You just, I mean, we don't need to do so many deals, we don't need to sell so much product, therefore, you know, we can if you can find 1015 Great influences for a reasonable sized software company as I'm used to, you're gonna make some impact with with that if you get the right people, right.

Jason Falls  18:40  
That's very true. And I think to your point on podcast guests, what's really interesting about that is because I do the same thing on my Influencer Marketing Podcast is I'll have, you know, people who are experts about influencer marketing who work at agencies, and they're not necessarily out there blogging and podcasting themselves, they practice the craft, so I'll have them on. And they'll tell everybody in the agency that they're on this podcast, and they'll tell their clients are on this podcast, and all of a sudden, I've got, you know, 40 or 50, people sharing, commenting on it. And then I'll go out and I'll find a, you know, a talking head in the industry, who's a marketing expert who's written a couple books, and they, and they'll tweet it maybe, and I get like, one person who cares. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of times it's and that's the difference sometimes between people who are influencers and people who are influential. And so sometimes the those two, those two worlds cross pollinate, you have an influencer, that does have a big impact. But it's really interesting on the podcast thing, and that's another thing. blogging and podcasting are two tools and channels for influencers, that the software companies don't measure. They don't they don't really include them. And so if I'm looking, all things being equal, I'm looking at an Instagramer And I've done this recently for a client. So I'm looking at an Instagramer, who also does YouTube videos, who has, you know, 250,000 followers. And then I've got another Instagrammer, who does YouTube videos in this category, and they have 50,000 followers, but they have a podcast and a blog. Now I'm going to go research the blog in the podcast, see how much website traffic do they get? And how many people listen to that podcast? Because they may be a lot more impactful than the fact they probably are. Because they're providing more longer form content?

Ian Truscott  20:31  
Mm hmm. Yeah, no, great. And the podcasting is isn't I mean, luckily, I do this for the conversation rather than the fame. So

Jason Falls  20:40  
your fame, your famous rock star cmo guy.

Ian Truscott  20:46  
Thank you very much. And back to your process. And also back to talking about other people's podcasts, the marketing book podcast you shared. And this was an exclusive for Douglas. He was very proud of this. That you don't describe this in the book, apparently. And I haven't read it yet. I'll be completely honest. Because when you arrived this morning, but you described your process with an acronym of pave, which made which made me laugh, because then you're like, paving the way. And even you laugh, because what does type stand for? What is your approach? So

Jason Falls  21:15  
yeah, I don't I don't actually call out the the acronym in the book. But the last piece of the book is talking about the purposes, the intentions that you'll use, influence marketing for. And it's really trying to make sure that people who are still unclear on what influence marketing can be or is trying to align it with things that we know. Right? So you, the P and pave is to persuade, right you can use influence marketing, to persuade, which I align in the book with advertising. So yes, you can use influencers and influential people on the interweb or not on the internet. Even offline, folks, which we can talk about a little bit more in a minute. But you can use them to persuade your audience to take action, which is a lot like advertising, right? You're using advertise to persuade people to do something, the aim is to associate so it's not necessarily selling a product or pushing, you know, something, trying to persuade, but it's aligning and associating yourself. And that's really much more in line with public relations. So a good example of that is, is I want my brand to be aligned with and associated with someone like Matthew McConaughey. Or maybe I want to align myself with someone who is out in front of a cause, or I want to align myself with someone who is an influencer. Like, for instance, in one of the bourbon brands we've worked with in the past, we partnered with a gentleman by the name of Derek wolf at over the fire cooking. So his his channels are all about how to grill out outdoors, delicious food and whatnot. And we we thought, you know what his audience looks a lot like the audience we're trying to reach. So we partnered with him to align the brand with him. It wasn't necessarily we didn't want him to say, hey, go buy this bourbon. We, we just wanted him to say and when I get done grilling my steak, I'm going to have a sip of bourbon. And here it is, right. So it's alignment. It's not necessarily pushing or persuading. So association is the A V is to validate. And that's where I think there's so much opportunity that is not being taken advantage of by brands. Validation is kind of the ratings and reviews, right, you can engage influencers, to rate and review you on various sites. Now, I stipulate that with the fact that the Amazons of the world do have terms of service that you don't want to violate, you're not supposed to pay somebody to go review your stuff on Amazon, or a bunch of other sites. But there are sites out there where you can do that. And so you want to leverage those, but there's also your website. So why not have you know, if you've got a ratings and review section, why not have some influential people not only come and rate and review you, but call those ratings and reviews out and use them as endorsers on your website, right. So that validation has a lot to do with it. And then the the last one is to enthuse to build enthusiasm around your brand. And I align that to word of mouth marketing. So no, ceding some information out there through influential people that get people excited about your brand, the events that you're involved with the sponsorships that you have, et cetera. So P AV, there you go.

Ian Truscott  24:31  
I love it. But the other thing is, I mean, I'm listening to that with my b2b head on and I think it's exactly the same I think that and I think sometimes in b2b with with too hard to sell, you know, we're too quick to the sell. And I think some of those things where you're saying about Association, which is a little bit more gentle. It's much better and I've also use content marketing to do a similar thing. So I've created off brand web publications, where you invite the influencers in to speak they there Happy to write for something that's off brand, but they probably wouldn't for your own blog. They don't want to be seen as a shill for your products and your company. So I think that there, those two things seem to go hand in hand influence marketing. But I need to pick up on a point you said we're going to talk about later. So I've made a mental note about offline influences. And so little conversation happens on this podcast, I'll be honest with you about offline and word of mouth stuff. So tell us a bit about that.

Jason Falls  25:25  
Yeah, so I guess the best way to describe this we did a we have a case study at cornet we did a few years ago with the University of Kentucky, which is obviously a college university in Lexington, Kentucky, where we're located. And we did it with their health care system. So their hospital, their medical school, that that system of medical care, is a big health care provider in central Kentucky. And we were launching a new advertising campaign, basically. And the way that we decided we were going to launch this campaign was with this sort of, if cinematic graphic is a word that it was highly cinematic graphic. It was, you know, it was a two minute movie, and it was very well produced, well done. And the five storylines in the little movie followed the the areas of care that university Kentucky healthcare specialises in, right, so we had that to launch this campaign, and we wanted to inspire the audience to share their own university Kentucky healthcare story. But then we got to thinking who wants to watch two minute movie about a hospital, right? Not a lot of people get excited about that, even though the film was very well done very good if I didn't have anything to do with the film part of it, but my team did a great job with it. So we said, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna leverage influencers, online and offline, to get people to watch this film. And we're going to try to game the Facebook algorithm. So what we did was we were going to launch this film at 11am. On a Tuesday, I think it was, and we engaged some local and regional relevant online influencers, to go to the video within the first two hours of it publishing. like it, comment on it, tell their UK HealthCare story in the comment and share it. But we didn't stop with those those influencers. We also went to the influential people. So we got the mayor involved, we got the president of the Urban League, which is a social civic organisation, we got a local dentist, the local real estate agent, the music director at the local Presbyterian Church, who was active in the arts community. And the reason we did that is because we knew once people got to the comment section and saw everybody telling their stories, and they saw the influencers, which is great. But then they also saw, that's my dentist, I know that yes. And that real estate agent lives down the street for me. Now all of a sudden, they started to see this as a big thing. And I'm going to progress. So within the first, I think it was within the first 24 hours, we had, I want to say 40,000 views of the video. Within the first 30 days, we had 800,000 views. And Lexington Kentucky only has 320,000 people. We almost 3x the population and views of a Facebook video. And it was because again, we combine that yes concepts of influencers and people with MPs and put them together.

Ian Truscott  28:27  
Nice, nice. And one of the other things you talk about I'm sure you talked about in the book that I've heard you talk about on various podcasts during my research is about going into these things and knowing the purpose of why you're going to do it. I thought that was a really interesting point that you're making it that so much of what we do in marketing. It's like a tick box. Oh, we've got to do you know, there's like a list of things. If you're a b2b marketer, here's the things you need to do. If you're a b2c, I'm sure it's the same. And it's Oh, we must do influencer marketing. It's the big thing, right? And what's your what's your advice around that stuff? How do we, what should we do it? And what?

Jason Falls  29:03  
Right, I'm glad you asked that question. Because I mean, I've been doing this, at least on the agency side and the services side now for almost 20 years. And even back in the very nascent days of social media, which is kind of where I came into the business. From that point forward, I still have to remind clients and people that I talked to, you don't do it to do it, you do it to accomplish a business objective. And so whatever you're doing, if you do not start with your goal, what is the goal? Why are we doing this? Why are we using this channel? What are we trying to accomplish? What's the benchmark that we're trying to reach? If you don't do that, then you are not planning to measure? Yeah, and measurement is one of those things that everybody says I have a hard time measuring the ROI of this, that or the other. Well, it's probably because you didn't plan to measure by setting your goal and making sure here's what I'm trying to accomplish. If you don't plan to measure what you're doing, start with your goal. I liken it in the book to getting to the end of the driveway, with your family packed into your, your van, and you're ready to go on vacation. And then you get to the end of the driveway and say, Okay, where are we going? Yeah, bought tickets you haven't, you know, arrange for somebody to feed the cats you haven't had, you know, you haven't packed your suitcases, you're just, you're just kind of wandering until you find something. And if you don't plan to measure, if you don't start with your goals and objectives in what you're doing, then you're just meandering around doing things for no reason. Right? Right, great thing about planning to measure is saying, Okay, here's what we want to try to accomplish. It's going to support this business objective. Yeah. So now all of a sudden, you've got buy in from above, because you can connect the dots to what you're doing and the budget and need for it. And then you can say AM, AM, we think we're going to accomplish this, or based on our previous work, we know we can accomplish x. And so you have a benchmark to get to, and or a goal to exceed. And then what you do in all that is say, let's say our goal is to drive more foot traffic, and we're going to use influencers to do that, okay? Well, that might sound really complicated to people, but it didn't have to be, what we're going to do is we're going to the five influencers we're going to work with or 50, or how many ever, we're going to ask them to tell people to go to our store and mention this or use this coupon code or download this thing to show on their phone. So that we can say definitively with these influencers. They told their people to go do this. And this many people went and did this. Yeah. And if you plan to measure, then you can set little data traps along the way to make sure that your KPIs are coming in. And then ultimately, your PII your performance indicator that you're there. I'm sorry, I got it backwards. The P eyes are coming in the performance indicators. And your KPI, the one you care about, yeah, is actually being accounted for so that you can know how you're doing and how you're progressing, and then ultimately be able to report back how you did.

Ian Truscott  32:04  
Yeah, no, I like that. And I always talk about mounting. And I like that connection with the seats, we always talk about the fact that marketing is you may disagree with this is about doing three things, awareness, revenue, and trust. And that's because I like my own acronyms, right, and then make that means that marketing creates art. And that you have to as a marketer, connect whatever you're doing to one of those metrics, and then demonstrate to the C suite that you're doing those things. And the one they care about most, obviously, is revenue. So, you know, you've got to get that connected, but also quite like about the fact that if you're planning and is this, okay, if you're planning, and you notice that you can't attribute but you go ahead anyway. That's okay. At least you know that you're consciously going and going, I'm not really sure. I can't actually this. So that. I don't know whether you agree this, but when somebody along the line comes along, says, what's the ROI on that? You can say, Look, we planned this, and we knew we knew full well, this was going to be a bit of a pattern, we're going to see it down the line, we may see an uptick. What's your

Jason Falls  33:03  
Yeah, I mean, and honestly, I think that's what most people do, I think it's not, it's not perfect, you would rather have a plan and know what you're measuring, and have a plan to measure and all that good stuff. But a lot of times marketing these days, you know, especially if you you know, subscribe to lean methodology and whatnot. And sometimes you got to throw it out there and test things. And you're not going to know what the ROI is going to be. And by the way, ROI is a financial metric. So if your goal was awareness, you cannot measure ROI, because it doesn't equate to money, right, it equates to how many more people know about you than they did before? So I always like to tell people, first of all, if you're going to do it that way, and you don't necessarily understand or have a mechanism to capture some return on investment, the money equation, then let's let's recontextualize how you report things, let's say our our return on this was not an it's not an ROI. It's just our overall return. What did we get from this? And what we got from this was a lot more followers on this social network. What we got from this is an opportunity to talk to these people by getting in their inbox, what we got from this is we move the needle on public opinion of this particular issue, because we invested in informing the public better about it, right. And that ultimately is going to have a trickle down effect at some point to your revenue, probably. But tying all those things together over the course of several years is very difficult.

Ian Truscott  34:32  
Yeah. And again, apply my b2b lens is, you know, if you look at some successful software companies like drift, for example, they created a category of conversation, marketing and conversation sales. And they could only do that by influencers picking up on that term. Now, they wouldn't have been able to measure that, aside from you know, they wouldn't have been able to measure that from a financial perspective as you say. They would have been going well how many people are now talking about this new category that we've just invented, and I don't know Whether it's true that they invent the category, but I became aware of it with those guys, but anyway, I just to turn that's great. I mean about influencer marketing, and I could talk to you about that all afternoon, but, or your afternoon or my. But if we switch gears a little bit, I also learned in my research that you like bourbon, you've mentioned it a couple of times. I think it's fantastic. So and I normally and Robert Rose isn't going to be on the show this week, who is our mutual friend, and he usually gives me a drink recommendation every week. What's your favourite bourbon? How do you like to drink it? And which, what should we be looking out for?

Jason Falls  35:36  
So I am one of those people who really truly believes that the right way to drink bourbon is the way that's right for you. And the reason I say that is because I drink bourbon differently in different contexts. So like, if I'm going to a football match, and I'm going to tailgate with friends, I'm going to put a cheap bourbon in a stadium cup and then top it off with soda or something so that I can sip on it all day, and it's a mixed drink. Yeah, some bourbon aficionados would frown on that, but I think they're all stodgy and the hell with him. But typically, I am a bourbon connoisseur in that I like to try new bourbons. And I like to discover, you know, new ones that might, you know, be worthy of buying a bottle and taking home put it on my shelf. And so the way that I typically drink a bourbon is a two ounce pour with at least a cube of ice or a splash of water to just loosen it up a little bit. Let allow it to breathe. And then I always tell people, if you're going to taste a bourbon, do not judge the bourbon on your first taste because your taste buds aren't used to it yet. Like get that first drink in there, slosh that around in your mouth, let your head let your tongue burn a bit and get used to the taste. I usually wait until the third step is to really go okay, what does this taste like to me. And that's when I can judge whether or not I like bourbon or not. Now, I don't have a sophisticated palate really. I can tell you whether it's soft, or whether it's harsh or whether it's rye based or wheat based because wheat bourbons are sweeter a little softer i out rye basses are harsher. So I'm not going to be able to go oh, there's cinnamon and nutmeg. I can't do all that. That's not me. But what I typically do is I say, Okay, this one has a sweet taste. It has a, you know, I usually say it burns going down if it's called hot if it really burns in your throat. And if it's not, I really I call it smooth. So it's either hot or it's smooth. And there's some degree in there in between sauces. This one's a little hot, but it's actually not too bad. Or this one's really smooth. I like the smooth is really good for me because I don't like the burn that much. But I will tell people in my opinion, you know, this is, you know, a pretty smooth bourbon. It's got a nice kick. And it's got a little it's got a little belly bake. At a couple minutes after you've had a sip or two of your bellies kind of warm, you're like, oh, that's either I have an ulcer or that's that's doing something on that whatsoever.

Ian Truscott  38:07  
But you're learning I love it.

Jason Falls  38:10  
But I just I just I like experiment with a lot of my favourite bourbon is Elijah Craig. Right. And that is because it's not necessarily because of the bourbon, although it's very good bourbon. But that's my dad's bourbon. And so when I started drinking whiskey, and reconnecting with my dad, who wasn't around when I was growing up, he drank Elijah Craig. So I drank a lot of Craig. And so it's kind of an emotional kind of connection. And I think a lot of people's bourbon stories are going to be stories that involve friends or family. And that's really why they love the bourbon. It's not necessarily this tastes better than that. Because, frankly, you have to have an incredibly sophisticated palate to tell the difference from one bourbon to another in most cases. Yes, there's going to be subtle nuances. Yes, here and there. Yeah. And there's going to be extremes, like Maker's Mark is a very good weeded bourbon. It's, it's lower proof than than some higher than others. But it's a it's a sweet bourbon. It's a good cocktail, mixing bourbons very smooth. And if you put maker's mark up against something, like let's say, I don't know Knob Creek, which is actually made by the same company, but it's a much higher proof and it's much more Scotch like in that it's got a lot more grain to it, and a lot more thickness to it. And it's rye based. Those are two different extremes, almost like so there are differences but at the same time bourbons bourbon especially if you mix it it does doesn't matter. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  39:41  
I'm uh, yeah, I my am bourbon story is through old fashions, and particularly inspired by Mad Men. To be honest, and say I'm gonna have to look beyond my normal woodfords. Then to to try some of these other other benefits

Jason Falls  40:01  
well, with the Woodford, you're great. Woodford Reserve double O is delicious. I love that way. But yeah, if you're going to do old fashions, the the really good mixing bourbons are going to be mid 90 proof and down to 8080 to 95 around in there. Unless you just really like them hot. If you like them hot and with a lot of burn, then you can use the higher proof ones. But Elijah Craig's gonna be good for that. Buffalo Trace is going to be good for that. Maker's Mark is going to be good for that. There's some really good bourbons out there, for sure.

Ian Truscott  40:36  
Nice. Well, I mean, the regular listeners are going to be surprised. I mean, having an in depth conversation or anything that is in gin, because I have a gin and tonic and every episode, but yeah, that's really. So I've learned a lot about bourbon and But back to the topic of podcasts and get us bit back to business. And particularly, we were talking about Douglass's podcast, but um, last month, you started the Marketing Podcast Network. And in a moment of madness, you've actually invited this little podcast showing. So tell us about the marketing podcast.

Jason Falls  41:09  
Yeah, so I was on a, you know, like any other podcaster the first few years that I was doing my podcast, I wanted to figure out how to monetize it in interesting ways. And I wanted to figure out how to grow the audience. And so a couple years ago, I joined Jeffrey Hayzlett. C suite radio, which is a small portion of a larger business networking thing he's got called the C suite network. And there's a lot of value there. It's a great, you know, place to go and connect with other business minded people. But you pay, you know, pay a fee to be a part of the network and whatnot. And I was really only interested in the podcast part. And my hope was that, that I would be cross promoted all the other podcasts, and that there would be a revenue share of the ad revenue, the ads that ran on our shows. And in a couple of years, with the C suite radio, I didn't really see either of those at a significant level. And again, that's not to say that there's not value in them or in C suite network overall, because Jeffrey does a great job. But for what I wanted, it wasn't working. And so I just thought to myself, well, what can I do? can I figure out how to do this? can I figure out how to pull together a bunch of like minded podcasters into a network created a revenue share, that's equitable for everyone. So that, you know, we don't have the big people taking all the money in the little people not ever getting anything, let's figure out a way to make it more communal. Can I do this, and I started just investigating and asking a few questions and researching the topic and it failed, I figured out that I could do it pretty easily. And so I thought, well, I love doing this. So what better side hustle than something you love doing. And something that I'm not only getting up trying to do something that I ultimately might benefit from, but my friends are gonna benefit from to the fellow podcasters that are in this community with me. And so that was the core concept and the idea. And I launched it in early November, and, you know, basically emailed about 10, or 15, people that I knew, would be at least interested in the concept. And a couple of them are like I'm in. Let's I'll switch today. Let's do it. And so, fast forward to now we're about 45 days into this, now, I've got 12 shows on the network, we're probably going to hit about 12,000 or so your downloads this month, which is starting to get to the point where you can actually turn around and do direct sales on the work. But we also have it set up so that if you don't want to do ads on your podcast, you can still be in the Marketing Podcast Network, you don't have to do the ads, you pay a small fee so that it offsets your hosting costs. But the big benefit of the marketing podcast network is we actually automatically cross promote one another and have every podcaster record a little 32nd promo for their show. And then your promo gets played to all the other podcast audiences. So we're supporting each other, we're gonna do monthly calls to do mind share and, and brainstorm ideas to grow and all that good stuff. And so building a little community of marketing podcasters here so that we can turn around an audience to advertisers, that makes more sense. And therefore we can charge a higher CPM rate too.

Ian Truscott  44:22  
So, I mean, that sounds fantastic. So what are the other put, I mean, I don't know if you can name all 12. But what who are the, I guess you should who the other foot tells you?

Jason Falls  44:31  
Well, sure. Well, we're we're led off by the Rockstar cmo FM podcast, which you may have heard of. So yeah, I have two shows on the network. We influence the influence Marketing Podcast is kind of my primary podcast, but I also host a podcast it's an interview show for cornet called digging deeper, which I do weekly as a live stream and then we pull the audio off as a podcast and it's more of a marketing strategy, creative strategy. conversation. So there's that. We also have Matt Bailey's endless coffee cup. He's kind of a, you know, a business entrepreneur marketing guy runs an agency that's kind of baked into the SEO world. But he does a discussion conversation show called endless coffee cup. We also have Seth Goldstein, my buddy out of Philadelphia, has a great show on entrepreneurship called entrepreneurs enigma. And then he also has a digital marketing dive podcast. And so both of those, he's got two shows on the network. And both of those are really good shows to listen to. Hanson and hunt is one of our newest addition, people in the PR space, the comms space probably know, Eric Hanson and Kevin hunt. Kevin is an executive at General Mills. And and Eric is owns an independent agency in Minneapolis. And they do a monthly conversation about kind of the world of PR and comms in mostly in the United States. But really smart guys, really good podcast, we've got one called Copy arena, which is Tanya daucus. She's a copywriter and she basically teaches small businesses, mostly how to write emotional copy that persuades people and so very niche but but incredibly useful to people who want to know more copywriting.

Ian Truscott  46:22  
I think that niche thing you just mentioned, I mean, that's, I mean, hopefully, we'll get you back on the show, we can talk about podcasting, but finding your niche is an important part of it, isn't it?

Jason Falls  46:31  
Absolutely. And, and that's where Tanya has done. I mean, she is just a dyed in the wool copywriter. And that's all she ever really talks about. And so, again, one of the inspirations for Marketing Podcast Network was, well, she's got this marketing podcast, it's so narrowly focused, yeah, she's never gonna have 1000s of downloads, to be able to monetize that with any sort of ad revenue. But if we all collectively get together, then yeah, it's gonna balance out, we can probably do that. So that's kind of one of the things about real quickly the other ones. One of your fellow United Kingdom folks or Gordon glennister is he's the influence global podcast. So he's another influencer marketing guy. Dave Delaney does a great show called The nice podcast. And Dave shows kind of an internal comms internal motivation guy for businesses and brands. And so he basically teaches companies how to be nice to their employees. His podcast is all focused on that. And then Nick Westergaard has a great brand branding podcast called on brand. And he's been around for quite some time and is is probably pretty well known in the podcasting released in the States. Got some really great books so that I think that rounds it out. There might be one more in there that I'm forgetting, but I think that's it.

Ian Truscott  47:50  
I hope no, and the hope they're not listening, and they hear you this.

Jason Falls  47:55  
By the time this thing airs, I'm hoping we get two or three more that I didn't mention growing every day.

Ian Truscott  48:00  
Yeah. And well, and I know that I'm going to ask you about your links in a moment. But where can people find Marketing

Jason Falls  48:06  
podcast? So the website is marketing podcasts.net. And then we are also on LinkedIn, the Marketing Podcast Network is on LinkedIn. So you can just search for us there.

Ian Truscott  48:16  
And splendid. Right, so on to my last couple of questions. The first one is we have a regular feature the Rockstar CMOS swim pool, our portal to help all the snake oil, Bs and overhyped trends that plague this marketing class we love what would you throw in the Rockstar Sumo? So

Jason Falls  48:31  
in terms of the overhyped stuff, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw this one out there with an asterisk because I'm a little bit of a contrarian and a sceptic. And I think that all this talk about the metaverse in right now, for now, is a lot of hype. And when I see these virtual worlds, and the Oculus experiences that people are talking about, yeah, everything leads right back to second life for me. Yeah, you know, in 2006, Second Life was interesting for, you know, the 1% of the 1%, the people who could afford the right technology to be able to experience it the way it should be experienced, and be who were, you know, tech savvy enough to do it. And I think certainly technology has caught up with us in a lot of ways most people have, you know, faster connectivity. You can experience a lot of this on your phone and phones, smartphones are pretty ubiquitous now. But I still think there's we're building a virtual world for the 1% of the 1%. I don't think this is going to be a mainstream thing for a while. And so however, I do think that creates an opportunity for brands to create to fill the gap, because you're going to have the tech nerds and the wealthy who can afford Oculus headsets and can afford to spend time in these worlds. They're gonna be there and then you're gonna have all these other people down here at the bottom who either can't afford it or don't have the access to it. Yeah, accessibility gap, brands might be able to fill that gap. And the way that I sort of equated that in one analogy I've used before is if I never I don't drink coffee. So I don't go to Starbucks. It's not an experience. Not a brand that I use. Nothing against them. Just don't don't go there because I don't drink coffee. Yeah. Yeah. If, however, Starbucks all of a sudden started offering web 3.0 or Metaverse experiences with some sort of virtual cafe where I could go in and actually, I didn't have to buy an Oculus headset, and I can experience something cool there or conduct a business hang in this virtual world there. Okay, maybe I go to Starbucks more than never. Yeah, that might be an entry point. And maybe it's not Starbucks, maybe it's some other brand. And but I feel like brands have an opportunity to bridge that gap. But I also think we're a good decade away from this Bing. Yeah. And I don't even really know what it looks like, to be honest. Yeah. But I think we're good decade away from this being more than just

Ian Truscott  51:04  
Yeah, I like that analogy. I like that still, because it's that, you know, it's like the early days of the web, right when people couldn't afford to get high speed internet connection. So that so web cafes existed, they don't exist anymore, but I'm not in certainly not in my town. I mean, I'm sure they do in in areas where there isn't good connectivity in other parts of the world. But and, and you know, now, only now that things like zoom and video chat have become mainstream, right? Because they've been forced because the pandemics anyway, we can talk to our families. It you're right, though. It's gonna take a while before you know, my mother and dad are gonna be wandering around the metaverse. Hopefully. So yeah, that's, I like that point. Oh, like you say, the people that can't afford the equipment and stuff. So that's a good point. So we'll chuck the metaverse into the Rockstar CMS input, which is a good start to the year I think. So my final and bonus question, really, normally I play a track every week on what's RCMA while I play at least a small part of the track enough not to get sued. I hope so. Check gets your Monday morning Mark thing. Okay, well,

Jason Falls  52:07  
you know, I'm on I'm on a Beatles kick right now because of the the GET BACK documentary on Netflix, which I've watched twice already. I think it's fantastic. And that let it be album. For me. There's so many good songs on there. But I've got a feeling is the one that is my current year worm. And I can't I can't let it go. I just keep you I got a feeling I just keep singing it. So

Ian Truscott  52:30  
yeah, I love it. I love it. I got a feeling by the Beatles. Splendid. So I'll be playing out with that. And when the listeners spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're going to find you

Jason Falls  52:39  
Jason falls everywhere. It's all the social networks, Jason falls.com, certainly marketing podcasts.net as well. And you can find links to the podcasts that I do on both of those sites. And then certainly coronets links are there too. And then then and just to point out Jason Falls is not a very common name. But there is a local politician in Cleveland County, North Carolina who hates me, because he cannot get on the search results. That's what you get for not being on the internet sooner.

Ian Truscott  53:16  
Yeah, when I compete in the UK with a high pay level charge at QC, on the on the first page of Google I normally beaten him, but he's my he's my he's my Google first page nemesis.

Jason Falls  53:31  
For the longest time there was a YouTube video of former bassist from Metallica Jason Newstead falling on stage. And so the the title is Jason falls on stage. So I knocked that thing off the front page of Google after a few years. I think it's still out there. But other than that, the first few pages of Google are on me.

Ian Truscott  53:53  
Alright, well, thanks so much, Jason. I'm looking forward to talking to you very often as we now collaborating on the Marketing Podcast Network. And thank you very much for the invite and for me joining and I hope the listeners enjoy the ads and this new experience that we have together. So and I look forward speak to say cheers to you

Jason Falls  54:11  
do it thanks.

Ian Truscott  54:51  
And that was I got Feeling by the Beatles from 1969 Thank you Jason. I really enjoyed that conversation and maybe I'll be switching to Bourbon

Ian Truscott  55:17  
so that's a wrap on episode 95 of the Rockstar cmo effing Marty podcast. Thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and driving along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jason for sharing his insight. And please follow him say hello, check out the Marketing Podcast Network. And I'll put links to all the things we discussed in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app or at Rockstar cmo.fm. We can also find all our previous episodes. So does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? Let us know we are Rockstar cmo on LinkedIn and Twitter. And why not be like Drew and drop a nice rating or review in your favourite podcast app or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week, I'll be chatting with Stan Barnard about his book brands don't win Robert. We'll be back in Rockstar cmo virtual bar and I may track down Jeff after his travels. I tell them I've been your host Ian Truscott. Hope you join us again next week here at Rockstar cmo F

Transcribed by https://otter.ai