"George B. Thomas, Content Marketing, & More:" The IMPACT Show Ep. 36 [Show Notes]

In order to be successful in your professional and personal life, having a routine is essential. Allowing you to decompress and be the best you possible.

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and our guest, George B. Thomas, discussed what their morning routines are like, what's happening in IMPACT Elite, ways to generate leads and sales with content marketing, whether or not audience expectations from events shifted, and much more.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

Like what you saw? Make sure to subscribe to email reminders and give us a review on iTunes.

Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

George's IMPACT Onboarding

• George documented his journey through Facebook Live videos.
• Merging companies can be scary. And, even a little nerve-racking.
• If you're interested in seeing the merger from the TSL perspective, check out George's daily updates on Facebook. 
  • Day 1 Recap
  • Day 2 Recap
  • Day 3 Recap
  • Day 4 Recap
  • Check out his page to see more
• What George learned last week:
  • Felt like he knew the team
  • Instantly felt like he was a part of the team

What Marketers Be Talkin' 'Bout

Where we go over what you're saying in IMPACT Elite.

IMPACT Elite is a community of passionate marketers looking to help other marketers succeed. We’d love for you to join us! Go to impactplus.com/elite or just search the IMPACT Elite Group on Facebook and request to join. 

1. Are Newsletters Dead & Measuring Productivity
   • Owen Blevins asked: Love being part of this community! :-) We're looking for recommendations if possible. A client of ours is interested in stepping up their game significantly with their current newsletter which is web-based. Is anyone in the group aware of a service or company that will design and provide a template based newsletter that resides online and/or is compatible with Drupal. Thanks in advance!
     • Historically a newsletter was something companies put out once a month to show people what you're working on and what you can purchase. 
     • If you're going to step up your newsletter game, it should be used to build relationships and help them answer their questions. 
     • Email is still the number 1 channel for reaching your audience. Need to make sure that your content is remarkable.
     • John McTigue: Drupal may be a problem for most. My guess, this is a company marketing with no strategy and no knowledge of modern digital marketing. I would intervene with a detailed conversation about that. Maybe a workshop. Newsletters by themselves accomplish nothing. Newsletters with a customer-focused strategy, backed by solid conversion and sales process, yes.
     • Stephanie Casstevens: We changed ours to a quarterly customer only update and it's more like release notes than anything. Newsletters are so typically self-serving - the answer is probably just to do a blog! It'll allow them to answer questions, it lives online, and can, of course, be emailed.
2. RightMessage
   • Chris Higgins asked: Anyone started using RightMessage yet? Just launched this week, and a HubSpot integration is coming soon. Looks pretty powerful. Lots of potential.
     • It's a website personalization tool that allows you to change your website based on what you know about your audience.
     • Can be integrated with Drip, ConvertKit, InfusionSoft, ActiveCampaign.
     • Might not be a good fit for HubSpot customers who's website is hosted on HubSpot. Personalization is already included in your pro account through smart content. 
     • Interested in knowing what the difference is between RightMessage and the smart content features in HubSpot.
     • If you have HubSpot and your website is hosted on WordPress, RightMessage might be a great tool for adding personalization to your website.

Digital Marketing News

Where George and Bob share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught their eye.

Search Engine Land: Google Questions and Answers: Everything You Need to Know

• The Questions and Answers feature was launched by Google in August of 2017
  • However, it's been underutilized by both marketers and businesses
• In this article, Joy Hawkins explains why this feature is so important and why it’s crucial that you start actively monitoring the questions you receive from the business listings you manage.
• 5 Reasons Why:
  1. Your potential customers are using this feature
  2. No notifications show up on the Google My Business dashboard
  3. Customers are prompted to respond to questions
  4. Your customers might be giving incorrect answers
  5. You can get questions that violate the guidelines removed
• Here's some research from Joy: “I looked up the top 10 ranking personal injury lawyers in a very competitive city in the USA. Out of the top 10, four of them had a total of 11 questions. All of the questions, in this case, were relevant customer/prospect inquiries. The crazy thing is that none of the 11 questions had responses from the firms. These are firms that are most likely investing thousands of dollars each month on SEO, but no one is watching or answering the questions they have coming in.”
• With all these channels for people to leave comments and reviews regarding your company, how can your company manage this?
  • At the end of the day, give good service, be helpful.
  • Holding more companies accountable to customers.
  • Build an audience of evangelists.

Forbes: Top Content Marketers Share Proven Ways for Driving Sales & Leads

• The tips:
  1. Ask questions. Identify what you're missing and how you can improve.
  2. Do the math. Take time to track and understand your numbers.
  3. Encourage your audience to take action. Don't leave them passive.
  4. Develop a habit of communication. Don't let the momentum dwindle.
  5. Strive to be relevant. Make your content share-worthy.
• To make the most the article, read the second paragraph after each point.
• They also talk about 5 buckets of share-worthy content:
  1. Inspirational
  2. Useful
  3. Celebrate their life
  4. Topical
  5. Change the world

IMPACT Updates

• Upcoming Webinar
  • Next Tuesday, January 30th, at 11:00 AM EST, join us and Todd Hockenberry for a webinar on "How to Use Inbound Principle Across Your Business to Deliver Extraordinary Results."
  • Reserve your spot here.
  • What you'll learn:
    • Why inbound ideas and creating a remarkable customer experience need to start with your decision-makers
    • The foundation of inbound principles and why they apply to everyone in your organization
    • How to put inbound ideas into practice across your business today (not just in marketing and sales)
    • How organizations successfully apply the principles of inbound with everyone in the business
• IMPACT Live
  • Join over 500 members of the IMPACT Elite community in person for our very special 2-day event. Speakers include Dharmesh Shah, Ann Handley, David Meerman Scott, Marcus Sheridan, and more still to be announced.
  • Event Date: August 7th and 8th
  • Click here to register or learn more 

... let's move on to our next topic, but before we do...

Start thinking about how the things we’re talking apply to your company. If you have any challenges or questions that you want us to address, leave a comment or send us an email to show@impactplus.com.

We’ll get to as many as we can either at the end of the show or during next week’s episode.

Shift in Value from Events?

• Bob recently joined the board of a local organization, they’ve been around for a very long time.
• Every year, they’ve had an annual meeting… they give updates on the org, hand out awards, scholarships, showcase some of their work. They ask for members to pay between $100 and $200 for dinner. Has anyone ever been to one of these?
• Attendance has declined, it’s getting harder and harder to sell tickets.
• Used to be a money maker. 
• There needs to be a shift in mindset. That makes this event something that's so valuable for businesses.

Our Morning Routines / Motivation

• Trying to set up a morning routine, that allows us to breathe and motivate.
• Since we're in a community where if we want to be the best of the best, it's important to create time to breathe in the morning, time to have gratitude, time to motivate and fill your tank, so for the rest of the day you can do what you have to do to the best of your ability.

Next Steps:

We would love your comments! Feel free to send us an email or comment on the Facebook thread. 

If you really liked it, please give us a 5-star review on iTunes. 

We're going to IMPACT Elite to ask what you want us to talk about, so jump in on the post there.

Join Us Next Week! 

We'll be back again next Thursday, February 1st at 1:00 PM ET.

Until next time... get out there and make it happen.