Category: Blog

Welcome to a special episode of the Content Machine podcast, recorded live at Pretzel Day, our annual Customer and Friend Appreciation Day. We asked some of our guests to tell us what their top marketing tips are, and here’s what they had to say.

I’d say my best marketing tip is always be on the lookout for new relationships. Relationship-based marketing is far more than social media. It is really getting to know people who can make an impact with and for your business.

So, my best marketing advice really centers less about marketing and more about relationships, because I think everything we do is about relationships. If you want to have somebody remember you, you need to remember them. When you leave a meeting from them, go into your Outlook contacts and write something special about them. They love Valls’s football. Their daughter’s a ballerina, they have a German shorthair pointer dog, something that lets them know the next time you connect with them that you remembered them and you make it personal and they’ll want to do business with you.

I think my best marketing tip has got to be to provide such a high-quality service or product that you’re able to turn your customers into advocates and evangelists. And so word of mouth always is really strong.

My top marketing tip is absolutely hire the right people. If you don’t know what you’re doing, go get a good team like Adelsberger. And also be authentically yourself. Stay on your own brand. I don’t know. You can tell when things are cheesy. So I don’t know. Be authentic.

What is your top marketing tip? Be yourself. Don’t try to mimic someone else. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. Be yourself and allow all that comes with that to just be out there and either embraced or…

I’m looking that way?

Just look at the camera. Recording. Tell us your best marketing tip.

Use AI for everything.

My marketing tip would be to make sure you’re on Kevin’s focus status.

Okay, so My best marketing tip is definitely to be intentional in everything you do, whether it’s your marketing, your communications, or anything of that nature. Always make sure you’re making intentional, thoughtful decisions on the end product with the end user in mind.

I was going to say, I guess my top marketing tip would be to know your audience.

My top marketing tip would be to not sleep on LinkedIn. There’s a lot of good stuff going on on LinkedIn.

Don’t sleep on the LinkedIn and know your audience.

Top marketing tip. My top marketing tip would be to call Adelsberger Marketing. Pretty simple. Now, I’d say marketing is obviously to be known, to be liked, and to be trusted with any industry, with any person, with any sales your job with any political campaign. Your job is to convince people to know your product, whether it’s a person or a product, to trust your product and to like your product. Those are three things you have to elicit action on.

Okay. My marketing tip for you is to call Adelsberger Marketing because they are the best. They are incredible to work with, the smartest folks I’ve ever seen at work in my whole life.

All right. When I think about marketing and for anyone that might be interested, I’d say consistency is the biggest thing. Just post content. Whether you think it’s high quality or not, post the content, be consistent with it, and you’ll increase brand awareness.

My top marketing tip is to make a bunch of great friends.

Kevin
Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. I’m Kevin Adelsberger. This week, we are joined by our summer intern, Cadence Walsham. Thanks for joining us, Kadence

Kadence

Of course.

Kevin
So, Kadence, we have started a tradition around here where we have the interns come at the end of their session with us, the end of their semester with us, and we love to hear about your summer. So why don’t you give us an overview of being an intern at Adelsberger Marketing?

Kadence
This internship has been really good for I think one of the main reasons is because I classify myself as being an advertising and PR major. But being in this internship, I’ve seen that I’m not only just an advertising and PR major, but I actually can branch out into other areas in marketing. I got to see some website building. I got to see Katie work in graphic design, and I actually got to go on a few video and photo shoots as well.
Kevin
That’s great. You got to experience a lot of different things. How do you think that is helping you prepare for your future? Because tell us about what you’re wanting to do after you go, because you go back to school in a few weeks. Yes. But what’s the future hold for you, Hope?

Kadence

I graduate school in December, a year and a half early. Kind of crazy. But I want to be a communications pastor at a church. Not sure where. We’re going to see where the Lord takes me. But I’ve got to work on aprojects here during my internship, and one of them was actually through a church, which is really cool since that’s what I want to go into. I was able to see the livestream and post it on the website and on their socials. I thought it was really cool because on Monday mornings, when I would post a livestream, I could see how many viewers had been watched, and I would see 60 to 70. I was like, wow, by 15 to 20 minutes of work I would put in for this church is making an impact for 60 to 70 people to hear the word of God, which is really cool.

Kevin
Will you tell us about a different project that you worked on this summer?
Kadence
Yeah. So one of the really cool things I got to experience this summer was seeing a project start from the beginning to the end. And when I started in May, you actually created an outline for the CMO service, our Chief Marketing Officer Service, which is actually live now, which is really cool to see. But I got to actually work with a bunch of team members, and we all had a part in this. So it began with an outline, and we got to see it through with the finished product that’s now live, which is really cool to see that I was actually a part of something pretty big, and that’s actually going to stay on past my internship as well.
Kevin
Yeah, we were glad to have you there. As you look back on your summer, was there any takeaways or that you had from the summer?

Kadence
I think one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had this summer is that I usually only see the end product, especially from what I’ve worked with at school and stuff. So actually, being behind the scenes more instead of in front of a camera or editing post, I actually got to see more graphic design take place and more website building and then more social. There’s so much I didn’t even know that took place in a marketing business that I got to see firsthand, which is very cool.

Kevin
That’s really good. Kadence, there could be future interns watching this. If they’re watching this, you’re talking to them, what would you tell them to help them to be successful as an intern at Adelsberger Marketing?

Kadence
I think I would just say yes. Whatever is being asked of you, just say yes. It may actually help your way, way down the road that you don’t even know of right now, but at least you’re learning, and you don’t know where that’s going to take you. I would just say yes. Don’t push no on the Google calendar. Push yes and have fun while you’re doing it, too, because it’s not going to be forever. It’s just a short amount of time. Have fun while you’re doing it.

Kevin
Well, Kadence, thank you for joining us for this semester and joining us for this podcast. Cadence is heading back to Evangel University in just a few weeks, so we were glad to have you this summer. If you’re interested in an internship at Adelsberger Marketing, visit our website at adelsburgermarketing. Com. If you are a company that works with us or someone that we know that you want some tips on implementing an internship, we love internships at Adelsberger Marketing. We’d be happy to talk to you about how to do that. Thank you for watching the Content Machine. We’ll be back with a normal episode next week.

Welcome to the third part in our series about Marketing Fundamentals, a marketing 101 with the Content Machine podcast. We’ve talked about some of the fundamentals of marketing. Let’s talk about paid media. A couple of versions of paid media. First thing we’ll talk about is sponsorship. Community involvement is great, but is at our target audience. You can think about things of who is attending the events or who’s also supporting this nonprofit that we’re supporting. It’s a great way to build relationships in the community. But we also should ask the question, what are we saying to the community by sponsoring this? And how can we make the most of this sponsorship? First thing, be present at the event. It’s embarrassing for people to have a table at an event and then nobody be sitting at it. Now, let’s think about traditional advertising, newspapers, radio, TV. The first question you should ask is, does the cost justify the attention that you’re getting? Are the people that we want to talk to consuming this product? And what stats are we relying on to know if this is reaching a good amount of people? I’m cautious about stats for radio and TV in local markets because a lot of times they are based on Nielsen ratings, or some markets don’t have Nielsen ratings and rely on people voluntarily telling you what they’re watching and listening to.

People are incredibly unreliable on that thing. But then the bigger The question is, are the people we’re trying to talk to, listening to, watching or reading this material? That’s something you have to think about for yourself. With digital marketing, it’s a similar set of questions. Does the cost justify the attention? Typically, On most digital marketing platforms, it is cheaper per thousand people reached than traditional media. But if you go to something like influencers, the cost may go up significantly. So do we have the content to here as well. When you start doing things like YouTube ads or TikTok ads, you have to have video to go with those things. Do you have good enough video to go with those products to help sell yourself? And the big question is, is our target market actually looking here? Are the people we’re trying to talk to on this platform and spending time here? I will also say that not all digital ads are created equal. Banner ads versus content ads are very different things. A banner ad on a random app that you install, like a weather app, for example, does not have the same ROI as a good video ad on YouTube.

So be thinking about the placement of those ads and who’s going to be seeing them. You should also think about getting out and networking. Can you network with your target audience? Chambers of commerce, realtor groups, trade groups? Maybe you can create a group, like a networking group on Facebook or a LinkedIn, or is there some regional group that you can be a part of? Getting out and meeting people is still a great way to develop business. And then finally, a big concept that you should think about is the splinterization of our media lives. Media attention is splintered. If you interviewed a room of 20 random people, they probably listened to 20 different things on the radio or through music, through speakers on the way into the office that day. The media attention is no longer focused in a couple of different spots. It’s spread all over the place. And so you need to be able to think about that not everybody is How are we going to be reading the thing or listening to or watching to the thing that you’re running ads on. How do we increase our touch points and touch more people with our marketing message?

You have to be able to spread out your balance of your marketing budget But focus on the areas that are the most beneficial through tracking over the long term. A good concept to keep in mind throughout the marketing process is developing know, like, and trust with customers. So know is creating the outbound awareness of your business. Do people know that you exist and that you sell the product that you do? Have they heard your name before? Do they know some friends that have worked with you or hired you or bought your products? This is where outbound marketing comes in, where we’ve got the audience that we want to talk to, We’ve spent money and we’ve done something that’s good for our brand image. It creates awareness of our business so that we’ve hit that first contact. You hear that old saying, people have to hear your name seven times before they do business with you. That initial interaction Introducing them to know that you exist, that’s in the no category. The second category is, do they like you? Communicating who you are and who you work for is a key part to know if they like you or not.

This is also a good time to introduce social proof. Can you show testimonials of people that have worked with you or finished projects that you’ve done that they may have seen or can appreciate what you’re doing so that they can understand that you’re worth doing business with? If you can humanize the business, this is a great time to do that as well. Will you introduce that the people behind the business is not just this nameless faces Corporation. It’s a group of people doing a thing. And then finally, if you have any affinities that you want to signal that you might share with people, so maybe you’re super patriotic, or maybe you’re super involved in your local school system, or maybe you have a certain nonprofit that you’re very much attached to. Here’s a great place that as you share that information, you could be helping build a relationship with people that you don’t even know that you’re talking to yet. Now, I will say there’s some affinities that can turn people off as much as they turn someone into a friend of your customers. So just keep that in mind depending on what you’re leaning into.

And then finally, we want to build the trust. So know trust. So trust, can we show our experiences? General, we’ve done business for 40 years, and specific where, Hey, we’ve worked with banks under this dollar amount doing this service for the last 15 years. That trust can show the success, but also shows that you know what you’re talking about. And additional trust symbols could be chamber memberships, better business, bureau memberships, Google reviews, clutch reviews, things that help show that you have a track record of being a trustworthy business to do work with. Sharing a clear path to success, the different steps it takes, removes some of the mystery of what it means to do business with you and how to get to the place where they want to be. And then also, I would say being real, not using stock photos, not hiding leadership on the site or in public, and not being fake. These are all things that help build trust, which will help you close your deal. Now, at Adelsberger Marketing, we have three main pillars of marketing that we’ve tried to do over the last 10 years to help us be successful.

The first one is building stark raving fans. We want everyone who does business with us to tell all their friends that they had a great experience working with Adelsberger Marketing. We do that by doing the best we can to deliver on the projects that we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do them as much as it’s in our control. And we always take the hit for people. An example I always give is I had a customer who ordered business cards, and he sent me the information. I made the business cards. I approved them. He proofed them, sent them to order. He got them, called me, and said, Hey, the phone number’s wrong on these cards. Some businesses would say, Hey, you approved them, you’re out the money. I went ahead and fixed them because I knew that if I took care of him, he would be a fan. And for many years after that, he would tell anybody he that they should do business with us, and was a great supporter of my business. We also believe in being part of the community. We invest in nonprofits in our community.

We invest in community activities. We want to make our area a better place to live because a rising tide floats all boats. It’s also a great place to get to know people and start relationships that will lead to new business in the future. And finally, we want to educate as much as we can. So what reason we do this podcast or we go do talks at different chambers? We want to be seen as experts in marketing, and we do that by teaching other people about marketing. You may have some questions about marketing. I’d encourage you to come to office hours with me. If you go to the Co’s website, you can find an opportunity to get a free 30-minute call with me to ask me whatever questions you might have about marketing. But here’s a couple of books that I’d recommend in the meantime as well. Story Brand by Donald Miller is a great way to think about messaging and developing a one-liner for your business. Juicing the Orange by Fallon is a book that does a great job of a company showing how they built several campaigns over the last couple of decades and the thought processes that they took into creative that was motivating to customers.

Jab, jab, jab, right hook, or really Anything by Gary Vandertruck is a really excellent resource to think about how marketing works in our current era. Anything by Seth Godin is worth your time to read. A really interesting book about the way our attention works is Attention Merchants by Tim Wu. I recommend that book to help you think about how to capture people’s attention and, frankly, how to protect your own. Culture Built My Brand by Miller is a great book that helps you think about how to build a company that is acting in a way that customers want to work with and do better. So that is the end of our three-part series on How to Do Marketing 101. If you have any additional questions about marketing, please send me an email at kevin@adelsburgermarketing. Com, or sign up for an office hour’s visit at The Co and get 30 minutes of free marketing consultation from me. Thank you joining us for this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We hope to see you in future episodes.

Welcome back to the content machine podcast. We are in the second episode of our series on fundamentals in marketing. Last time we talked about understanding who you are as a company before you get into marketing. Now let’s talk about who your customers are and understanding them.

So do you know who your customers are? And no, everyone is not your customer. We talk to businesses all the time that want to say that everybody is their customer and they fail to focus in on one set of people, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage for going to the marketplace because it’s difficult to communicate everybody’s need to everyone. We like to encourage businesses to focus in on one particular group of people. Now that could be everybody in your geographic vicinity, sure, but maybe it’s a certain age, demographic, or a gender or stage of life or a level of education.

The big thing is, what is the problem that you’re trying to solve? Not everybody has the same set of problems. Problems. So why would they care that your business exists? What problem are you solving for them?

And then why do they pick you? Is it because of convenience that you’re the closest one or the fastest one to deliver that service? Is it location? They know that you’re in their area and that you can you support their community? Is it part of their mission for like, Tom’s shoes?

Everybody was crazy about Tom’s shoes for a while because they would donate a pair of shoes for everyone that someone bought. Like that mission motivated people to do business with them. Is there a relationship involved? Do they have a parasocial relationship with the company or do they actually know the people that they’re buying from? And then are you simply the best option for this person?

Tell you about our customers. We have small businesses that have less than 50 people and no marketing leadership on staff. We provide a certain set of services for that size of company and then you go up to like medium small businesses, 50 to 500, with maybe marketing leadership that maybe need additional service that they don’t have in house or some guidance. And then we have big businesses that maybe need one specific service from us, that they have marketing leadership. They’ve got other marketing things, but they need maybe just like a video for like Kellogg’s here in Jackson.

So we think about those customer segments and then design our offerings around what would help them the most. The next thing to think about is inbound versus outbound. We talked about this on a previous episode, definitionally. But what does that mean in practicality? Inbound marketing is what I call being ready to be found.

Are you in a position to be found by potential customers. And when they do find you, are you set up in a way that makes them aware that you are the company they want to do business with? Do you have the appropriate marketing materials and information to help convert a lead into a customer? You really need to have inbound marketing, correct? Before you start doing outbound marketing or you’re wasting money because outbound marketing is paid marketing to help you draw attention to your business.

 

If your business is not ready to have attention drawn to it, spending money to do so is a bad idea. Billboards, social ads, sponsorships, anything you do in a paid way to get attention turned your way. Now, a couple other things we’re gonna do kind of a lightning round here and talk about some fundamentals of marketing for business. Your visual brand, your logo, the look and feel of your business. It should be consistent in all the places that it’s used.

Your website, social media, business cards, print, all those things. You should also have a few different variations of the logo. An all white and all black, a full color, a one color version. You should have all those as part of any professional marketing package. And you should use those ones appropriately so that they look good and are legible on the platform that they’re being used.

Every business should have a one liner. Part of the messaging, branding that helps convey who has the problem that you’re solving. How do you solve their problem? We wrote a one liner for a business that we’re friends with. That’s they’re an HR staffing company and we phrased the problem that they were solving as we turn human resources into human capital.

Nobody likes human resources, not that I’ve ever met. But human capital has a much nicer ring to it and helps paint a picture of the problem that we’re solving for companies. For us, we say we lead businesses to conquer digital marketing. We work with businesses. A lot of times we hear from people that marketing is confusing.

They don’t know where to start. Digital marketing is vast and they’re not sure where to start. And so we lead them to conquer that and also goes with our branding of that fierce sort of wording story. Brand is a great book that has some great information on one liners. The next thing, websites, your website, you need to think about who is it for?

Is it for you or is it for your customer? So think about it from the eyes of your customer. What information are they looking for? Are you answering their questions or just talking about what you want to talk about? Think about what your customer needs to find out.

When they come to your website. Is your website easily navigable? Can you find what you need quickly? You know, I think it’s crazy that we visit a church website and you can’t find the times of the service or where it’s at quickly. That should be the first.

One of the first things that you see is leadership information on the website. Can you figure out who’s in charge of the place or who do you need to get started with? If you’re trying to buy something, hiding those things I think is a bad move. Is your visual branding being used well on the website and then avoid stock photos. Stock photos, especially in a local business, hurt the trust you’re trying to develop with customers.

Additionally, you should be active on social media. It crosses between inbound and outbound, but you should be careful on which ones you’re active on. Some of them are not worth your time. So where are your customers attention? Are you doing business to business?

Are you business to consumer? How often should you post? Well, as much as you can make interesting content. Just posting to post is not a good idea. But posting interesting content is a great way.

Gary Vaynerchuk phrased it this way. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook. You provide value. You provide value and provide value.

And then you hit them with the sales message. Giving behind the scenes is really helpful. Giving something interesting. Helping people see the value in what you’re talking about is really helpful. And then finally, the last kind of lightning round we’ll hit here is Google my business.

Are you business to consumer? How often should you post? Well, as much as you can make interesting content. Just posting to post is not a good idea. But posting interesting content is a great way.

Gary Vaynerchuk phrased it this way. Jab, jab, jab. Right hook. You provide value. You provide value and provide value.

And then you hit them with the sales message. Giving behind the scenes is really helpful. Giving something interesting. Helping people see the value in what you’re talking about is really helpful. And then finally, the last kind of lightning round we’ll hit here is Google my business.

 

Welcome back to the Content Machine podcast. Over the next couple of episodes, we’re going to look at some really fundamental pieces of marketing, a marketing 101. Turn up the volume, get set, and let’s dive in here. What is marketing? My definition of marketing is getting people’s attention and motivating them to action. Because sometimes people get confused between what is marketing and what is sales. Well, Marketing is getting the attention and motivating them to get to the sales point. So sales is the transactional work of making the sale, which can also include relationship management over time. The line between the two can be really blurry, but marketing, in general, is setting up for the sale. Now, in small organizations, there’s not a real hard line between the two. I do marketing and sales for my company. But the larger the organization, there’s usually a clear divide between the two. And marketing should always be setting up sales, and they should be working together in that end. A couple of other big pieces of terminology that I want you to think about when you think about marketing is, one, inbound versus outbound. Inbound is marketing that we’re dealing with people who are coming to find you and providing resources to make them want to do business with you.

Outbound is marketing activity that reaches out to people, usually through paid media. And then I’m going to nerd out on branding for just a moment. We classify branding in four There are different categories. There’s the identity, which is the mission, vision, and core values of a business. There’s positioning, which is what we bring to the market and how we bring it to the market. There’s messaging, how we communicate who we are and what we are. And then finally, there’s the visual branding, which is what people sometimes confuse for branding, which is logos, colors, and look and feel. So when you are starting with your marketing and you have a base understanding, you want to have a really good understanding understanding of who you are as a company. What is it that you bring to market? Is it a product or is it a service? Or isbv it a product that is sold as a service? Or is it a service that’s sold as a product? What are people really buying from you? We call this positioning. So are they buying convenience from you or are they buying that item? It’s sometimes a little bit more complicated than what it looks like on paper.

The next thing is, how do you bring it to market? Now, for some companies, this is hugely important. You might be selling oil changes, but the difference is it becomes a mobile oil change and you go to someone’s house. That takes what you bring to market and how you bring to market into a really clear view. You are doing mobile oil change. It’s a service rather than just a product. And how you go to market with things can, almost in our era, be more important than what you were bringing to market. The next thing you should think about is what are your competitive advantages? What makes you distinct? Things like service and trust are hard to sell because they’re not quantifiable. Anybody can say that they sell service and trust. They might not be able to prove it over time, but on the initial customer intake, anybody can say that. Local can be an advantage, but it’s also not as important to many people as it should be. Sometimes you can be the fastest or the only provider. Understanding what your distinct advantage in the marketplace is or working to refine define and create that distinct marketplace advantage is a key part to being successful in marketing.

It’s important to think about who else is bringing this to market. So keeping an eye on competitors and thinking broadly about who competitors may be So for example, we were consulting with a nonprofit once who didn’t have anybody else in the immediate region that provided the same set of services that they do. Well, yeah, they don’t have a direct competitor, but every The other nonprofit is competing for the charitable dollars of that community. And so think broadly about who the competitors might be. Is there anybody else fulfilling the need that you’re fulfilling, even if it is not directly fulfilling that need in the same way that you are? Then once you’ve got what makes you just distinct and competitive, and you think about who else is in the market providing those things, think about how you can do it differently or better. Ace Hardware and Lowe’s provide the same general things. Lowe’s has a lot more opportunities for those. They’ve got more SKUs to sell. Ace Hardware, smaller SKUs, smaller store, but has that reputation for the helpful hardware folks. It’s got people in the store that are knowledgeable and experienced, and that’s where they’ve built their brand so that if you’re not sure what you need, you might go to Ace Hardware.

If you know exactly what you need, you might go to Lowe’s. So Ace Hardware and Lowe’s have different competitive advantages they bring to the market. Same thing with a state farm agent and a non-captive agent. State Farm has this big marketing budget, and they can take care of a lot of things, and they have some technology that they can use. But if you’re a non-captive agent, so a local insurance agency that represents lots of companies, You have the advantage of being able to look at different marketplaces to get the best rate. And so being able to determine what your advantages are against someone else in your space is super important. What is ours? Well, we think about things like local as one. People like to be able to talk to us and see us in person. Holistic. We like to approach projects from a big picture with our marketing projects with people. We like to talk about these questions that we’re talking about on this podcast. But thinking holistically about an individual marketing project so that we’re not just providing a video, but we’re fixing a problem. And we also call that working with strategy first as well.

So can you define your competitive advantage? If you don’t have one, what can you do to create one? Could you add a new service line? Could you make it easier for your customers to do business with you? Can you have something unique that you can plant your flag on that’s a good reason for people to do business with you? That’s episode one of the Fundamental Series. We’ll be back with more episodes in the future on this topic.

This is the second episode as we talk about the origins of Adelsberger marketing, for those of you that are interested. Not long after I started the business, I ended up having the opportunity to go through Leadership Jackson. Leadership Jackson is an area-wide leadership development program and networking opportunity. And in 2015, when I went through the program, I had no business going through the program. I had barely started my business. I was not very successful at that point, and I didn’t have a lot of connections. But someone in the program felt it was a good idea to bring me in and allow me to go through the program and give me a scholarship to help pay for my class tuition. That was a huge pivotal moment for our business, where we started to be more and more legitimate and make more and more connections around the community. That’s also when Alexis Long started bringing us in to do work for the chamber doing videos. It It turns out, looking back, that there was a niche in the market for affordable videography that was not being served by, really, by anybody in a meaningful way. And so I was able to fill that for places like the chamber and chandelier in a way that other people weren’t able to.

Not too long after that, Renee quit her full-time job and joined us part-time, and has helped ever since then with books and things. But then things started to really ramp up when I I brought on Ricky Santos from part-time, he was an intern at the co, and I stole him, and he came and worked part-time with me doing graphics and things. Ten years later, one of the first projects that he did was a brochure for Gibson County Tourism. It’s still in rotation. So Ricky’s been doing good work for a very long time. And then when he was getting ready to graduate, I took, which seems crazy now, but I took the huge risk of saying, I think I can employ you full-time. Would you like to work full-time? And so I’m thankful that Ricky said yes. And I’ve said it multiple times, and I’ll say it till the day I die, I could not have asked for a better first hire than Ricky Santos. Not too long after Ricky came on, we had some increased growth, and We brought Brittany Crockett on part-time to take over social media in a lot of writing. And she has been a huge godsend to our team and to me personally.

And she is the best second hire I could have ever asked for. Around 2019, Alex Alexander Thompson and Arnold at the time, their name is now just ATA, Alexander Thompson and Arnold reached out to me about doing some projects and potentially joining their family of firms, to which I promptly said no. I was not interested in selling any part of my business. It didn’t make any sense to me why I would do that. And fortunately, to their credit, Steven and the team here said, Hey, we’re not in a rush. We just want to see if it works for everybody. And if it does, we’d like to go forward with that. And I had some stuff personally going on at the time. We had just adopted some children. And so my The entire life was crazy at that time, and I didn’t have the mental space to consider it. But sure enough, when my life got a little bit more simple, and I had a friend who also sold part of his business to the ATA family of firms, I came around to the idea to consider it again. And I thought, there are three reasons why I could do this.

One is get some cash. Two is to insulate us from economic instability. And three would be a client referral basis. Well, that was December of 2019 when we they sold the business, or sold part of the business to ATA. Renee and I still maintain a majority of ownership, but we have been in a great partnership with ATA since then. Now, one of the reasons was to insulate us from economic instability. So three months later, the pandemic hits. And for some people, that was the end of their business when the pandemic hit. It turns out, it was one of the best things that’s ever happened in my business, which is hard for me to deal with because it was such a hard time for so many people. But for our business, it was a game changer. Initially, it was slow. During that time, I took the time to write a book. But then also, when the federal aid packages started coming down, we got more opportunities to help businesses communicate. And one of those things was the Move to Jackson campaign. We were hired to do a big video campaign and design campaign for the Tourism Bureau and the chamber here.

And during that time, we brought on Alex Russell. And Alex has gone on to continue to grow with us and gone on to be our lead videographer. And then also during that time, we met Roshni Patel, who has joined our company as well. Not too long after that, we had our first intern. His name was Kendall. Kendall is doing photography work in another country right now, so that’s fun. And so over time, we became an overnight success years and years later. But I would say in spring of ’22, things really started to pop off for us. First of all, we hired our first Hall of Fame intern, whose name is Eric, who’s right behind the camera here, because we had the pleasure of getting to hire him after he graduated. But then also, I attended West Star and Leadership, Tennessee, next And we worked on AJ Massey’s campaign all at the same time. And so we went from just a little standard business to something that was doing something that everybody saw throughout the entire community. And that has helped us fuel some growth as we continue to grow. And since then, we’ve been able to welcome on Tammara Waller, and Krista Hale, and Katie Howerton, and like I mentioned, Eric Archer on full-time.

We are now looking at how do we build infrastructure structure, and how do we build the company in a way that allows us to meet the vision of the company, which is to be the best place to work for creatives in West Tennessee. And so I’ve implemented things called EOS, which is the entrepreneurial operating system, which allows us to work on things above the working day, improvements to the business increasing capacity. I’m working on building my job into the most valuable version of it so that I can help the company grow and not hinder it, because sometimes I’m the bottleneck in the company. We’re adding new service lines that will be announced later this year. And I think the future is bright. But the only reason the future is bright is, well, there’s two reasons. One, I’ve got an amazing team that has allowed us to be successful up to this point. We really believe that if you want to run fast, you run alone. But if you want to run further, you run together. And that’s what we do at our company. It’s a team effort, everything that we do. And the community. I’m not from here.

I’m from Illinois. I’m a transplant here. But the community has been so welcoming and encouraging to us. Our customers have been so kind and gracious and expanding us, our reach to other people and introducing us people, is one of the major reasons that we’ve been successful. And so if you’ve managed to listen to all of this, I want to say thank you for that support that you’ve shown. And a big thank you to our customers and our team for allowing this to become what it is. I’m very excited about the days to come because I think we have a bright future ahead of us. Thank you for listening to the Content Machine podcast. If you want to tag along to see more of that future, and as it gets brighter, go ahead and subscribe. And if you have any questions about marketing, feel free to visit our website at Adelsberger

marketing.

Kevin

Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. I’m Kevin Adelsberger, and this week we’re joined by Krista Hale. Krista is our project manager at Adelsberger Marketing, and I like to say she helps all the trains run on time. Krista, thank you for joining us today. I know that I forced you into this, so please forgive me later. All right. Krista, you wanted to talk about the onboarding process, and that’s something that I know that you’ve been working a lot on it for the agency, and we’ve made it a point to make it a better process since you’ve come on board. So what was the reason we started working on the onboarding process?

 

Krista

So one thing we noticed last year was that there was instances where we were either having to do rework or unexpected delays from the client. And so we decided that we needed something to change. And so I believe at the beginning of this year, we started reading Project Management for Humans by Brett Harned, just to help myself become better in my job. And so in Chapter 4, it talked about emphasizing getting to know the client. And so we do a really good job of doing that with our strategy sessions, getting to know the client as a business as a whole, getting to know their goals, and then seeing the opportunities that we can help them with. But we are missing the step in between the strategy session and getting the project started and just setting expectations from the very beginning to know how we work and to help them understand all those things. So then it just helped us be super clear on how we work with people so that they know what to expect from us.

 

Kevin

Yeah, absolutely. And so can you give us a brief overview of the onboarding process?

 

Krista

Yeah. So first off, I just start off with housekeeping things, questions of who’s the main point of contact. Probably my most important question that I ask just because it helps me know who I need to be always in touch with. And it’s helpful that there’s just one, because if there’s multiple points of contacts, then it can slow down the process and then not everyone responds or slow in responding. And so if there’s one person, it helps that just move along quicker. And then we just have other questions like, is there someone who’s going to be the final sign off for the project so that if not everyone’s deciding or coming to the same decision, that that person is just going to make the decision to go forward, basically. Then we ask about out of date, like out of office dates, whether or not they’re… So that we know, Okay, how do we plan, make sure that we get you the product or the projects beforehand, or how do we work that into our timeline? And then after we get through the housekeeping questions, then we talk about expectations for communication, what that looks like for me and our team, and then also what is expected from them.And then after we talk about communication, then we go through what their process is going to look like, how we handle our process, but then also what their specific project is going to look like. Every project is different, and so we try to make sure that we talk about their specific projects to give them an understanding of the big picture so that they know what to expect from us.

 

Kevin

Yeah. And I think that’s been really good, as we’ve seen. We’ve been testing that out over the last couple of months with new clients. So how important is the onboarding process in setting the tone for the client relationship?

 

Krista

Yeah. So the tone, I think a lot of it is it ensures that we’re both on the same page just to have a good outcome. But it also just strengthens our relationship with the client. A lot of times people know you, but they don’t necessarily know me. And with me being the main point of contact for most of the projects, you’re still involved. But it also helps me build that relationship with them so that we’re not just two people behind an email, we’re actual people. And so it just helps create that personal relationship. And then it just helps clarify expectations and just helps us know who the both points of contacts are. And it just helps us show them that they are committed to have an easy process for them.

 

Kevin

So everybody has to onboard a client one way or another? Yeah. So how do you feel like we’ve made this process feel like Adelsberger marketing?

 

Krista

So we wanted to make a slideshow just to help them visualize everything when I talk with them about it. One of our core values is fun professionalism. We wanted it to be something where, yes, you get the point across, but also it’s just visually fun. Katie Howardon on our team illustrated a lot of the fun elements and graphics for the slideshow video. I think it really added something to show just how much our team is not just this is the way it is, but we have fun while we do it.

 

Kevin

How do you communicate that process and set those expectations?

 

Krista

So we really just want to emphasize that each project is different. And so we go through each of their projects and we go by step by step so they understand the big picture. Obviously, it’s not going to be perfect. Every project has little different things happen. But we want to make sure that they have a big understanding and so that they’re not surprised on how the process is going to work. So I do that towards the end of the call. And then before that, we talk about the waterfall process, and that’s how we get everything approved. So the reason why we do that is so that after each step, we get the buy-in from the client so that it’s not just at the end of the project, oh, this is it. And they had no idea that that’s what it was going to be. And so for example, with our websites, we start out with just a black and white sketch of the home page, and we get that approved. And then work on the content, and we get that approved. So after each step, the client knows what to expect so that later at the end, they’re not surprised.

 

Krista

And so it also helps us know that we’re on the right track for them and that we’re doing the work that they like, because ultimately we want client satisfaction, but we’re also wanting to make sure that they like it.

 

Kevin

So are there any strategies to help maybe others can see that helps us be implemented effectively?

 

Krista

So with Adelsberger Marketing, we have a policy that we call Texas Size 10.4, which you created from a TV show that I’m supposed to not watch. But we do this. It helps alleviate any concern for message, that it’s been delivered or that you’ve seen it, because we’re messaging through Slack, and so we’re not in person. And so that’s the same thing with the clients where we’re emailing. Majority of the time, sometimes we have Zoom calls or whatever in-person meetings. But what this looks like in application is I’ll send an email to a client, and we’re not necessarily We’re not necessarily looking for an answer for the question or whatever that I’m asking for, but we’re looking for, Hey, I’ve received this. I’m working on it. I’ll get it back to you in so many times. Some sign-up life.

 

Kevin

Some sign-up life, yeah.

 

Krista

Yeah. And so we want to help the client, but we need help from them in the sense of we need to know that they’re there and that they’re working on it so that I don’t have to constantly email you every week and get tired of me. So that’s something that we’ve implemented with the client just to help communication.

 

Kevin

What are some of the best practices that you believe are essential for a smooth and effective onboarding process?

 

Krista

I definitely think setting clear expectations, and that’s what we’re doing with the onboarding process. But being as super clear as we can and talking to them about it and making sure that they are in agreement.

 

Kevin

And we’re talking about things like how we communicate and timeline and the approval process, making sure that they’re 100 % understanding. If they don’t agree to these things, then we’ve got a problem with how this is going to work.

 

Krista

Exactly. And I think sometimes not all the time is it going to be exactly how… Sometimes we need to adjust, like with the client. Sometimes it can’t just be one point of contact because there’s multiple buy-ins and they need to all be involved. And so then the process helps us see, okay, how do we need to adjust for the client to make sure that it still works smoothly? And so we’re always trying to make it as easy as possible for the client, but also keep the project moving. And then I think it’s also like going along that line of listening and understanding what the client needs. So if they need to adjust in some way, we can try to accommodate as best as we can to help them feel like we are listening to them, but also that we’re wanting a good product at the end of the day.

 

Kevin

Well, Krista, thank you so much for the work you do at Adelsberger Marketing. You’re doing great as our operations manager. And thank you for joining us today on the episode. If you have any questions about project management, email Krista. Don’t email me. Email Krista. But we would recommend the book, Project Management for Humans by Brett Harn. It was a good conversation starter for us over the last couple of months as we worked on improving these processes. So we’ll stay tuned for future episodes of the Content Machine podcast. And once again, Krista, thank you for joining us. Thanks.

On this episode of the Content Machine podcast, we’re going to look at the five things you should update on your website right now. There might be more stuff you need to update, but these five things would be a great starting place to make sure you’re looking good online. Number one, dates and times. Do you have any dates and times on your website? Open hours, closed for the holidays. You might want to set a reminder to check these annually. And even if you don’t have any date or times on your website, is the copyright year in your footer up to date? Sometimes these are easy to forget about and are not updated. The second thing you should look at is meta tags. Are your meta tags up to date? If they are, are they still relevant for the terms for your business? Does it have the key terms that your business is trying to promote and potentially the location that you’re trying to promote in? And do you have meta tags on all the key pages of your website? When’s the last time you looked at your meta tags and made sure that they were relevant for your business? The third thing is if you have a lead generator on your website, and I think you should, which is some sort of a free download tool that will help people build trust with you because you’re providing free value through this content. When is the last time you updated it? Probably not since you launched this current iteration of your website. So take a look at it. Is it still relevant to your customers? Is it still a good representation of your business? Would a design–refresh make it feel more modern, or does it need to be torn down and built from the ground up? Use this as an opportunity to check out that resource. Number four, is the main message of your site targeting your current customers’ wants and needs, or is it out of date? We look at lots of websites for customers and their competitors, and sometimes people fail to update this messaging over time as their business evolves. When’s the last time you considered if your marketing messaging on your website is accurate? Number five, is your website using too many stock photos or using bad stock photography? Stock photography can hurt customer trust and distract from the point that you’re trying to make of who you are as a company. If you asked a couple random customers, would they think that your use of stock photos helps or hurts your website’s communications? Maybe try to look at your website with the eyes of an outsider and see if some new local real photography could help your customers appreciate your brand more. Now, here’s one as a bonus. Number six. And this one is probably the most widespread that we see. Are your staff up to date on your website? Are Are bios current? Are there photos within the last decade? All of these things change for people: how they look, what their qualifications are, who’s working somewhere. It’s really easy for people to forget about updating these or neglecting these over time. So maybe annually, if you haven’t recently checked, make a reminder to make sure that the biographies and the photos are relevant for the staff on your website. These are just a couple of things that we see on a regular basis that people need to update on their websites. If you need help updating your website or maybe creating new photography to go on there or dialing in your messaging to speak to your customers, we would love to help you. So feel free to reach out to me at kevin@adelsburgermarketing.com and see some examples of our work at adelsburgermarketing.com. 

 

In April, I had the opportunity to attend the Agency Builders Retreat in Florida. This is the second year that I’ve been able to attend this conference, and it’s targeted towards agency owners and agency leadership. It’s a small group of 50 to 80 people, and most of us have some shared values around a common good besides our own agency. Being a part of this group last year and being involved with the Slack group over the last year has allowed me to build relationships that made this year’s conference even more meaningful. I want to share a few of the takeaways from the conference that I think are relevant, even if you don’t own a marketing agency. Number one, community is important. When you have an opportunity to spend time with peers in your industry or people who have similar experiences as you, there can be tremendous value in that time. The interesting thing about everybody in that room at the conference is that we all had similar problems and that some of us had solutions to some of those problems. Also, Also, we all carried the shared burden of leading our companies. Business leadership can be lonely, and being able to be with people who are like-minded and aiming towards the same goals helps you feel more confident in what you’re doing and helps you see solutions to problems that you might have that you haven’t thought about yet.

The second big takeaway is that AI is going to continue to change our world. Ai is already deeply affecting the marketing industry, and it will eventually affect all industries. Hearing from other agencies how they’re being proactive active about implementing it was really interesting. It’s given us a few tools to explore and some guidance on how to try to pivot to use those tools. We want AI to not replace the creativity or the work that our team does, but to make our team more efficient within their creativity. The third thing that I wanted to highlight is that sales is the lifeblood of any business. And so we spent some time thinking about how we can be excellent at the sales process. The speaker compared sales to sports. It’s as close as many of us will get to being paid to be in sports because what it has in common with sports is that it’s live, you don’t get a second chance, and you are dealing with a lot of competitive elements that you’re not necessarily aware of. And so we talked about how to have a really good sales process. I haven’t been able to get through my entire to-do list from the conference, but one of them is to build a sales playbook and increase my ability to close the leads that come into the company.

I know that revenue allows for good things to happen in the company, and if we make good business deals, we’ll have more revenue and more profit, which allows us to care for our people better and build a better product for our customers. Building an entire sales playbook is something that I plan to drill deeper into. Clarity is something that we have focused on before at Adelsberger Marketing. But it hit home at this conference that clarity not only brings power, but it is also kind. Having transparency allows everyone to be on the same page. It builds trust and allows for action and gives people a pathway to success. Forcing you to be clear on what the situation is and what the problems may be or what the solutions may be can really cut to the meat of the issue and move you to action. It’s really kind for someone to know where they stand in an organization and what they need to do to be successful. Another thing is, delegation should make things better for everyone. For me to delegate properly, I have to communicate what I need done. But, delegation also creates several side effects for the organization and the people that are being delegated to.

For example, it gives someone the freedom to focus on that thing. Any given day, I’m pulled in many different directions. If I’m able to delegate a task to someone that that becomes their focus for that period of time, it’s a win. It also gives someone an opportunity to grow, not only in that skill set, but in their effectiveness in the company. And then it gives me more time back to work on the things that are my highest value tasks and that I have to do to help lead the company. And finally, accountability is key. If you really want to grow, accountability is the thing you need. You may say you have a goal to run a half marathon, for example. But when the race deadline is coming up, it really does focus you on achieving that goal. You’re going to run a lot more the weeks before the marathon than you may have if you didn’t have that goal set. Having a weekly meeting where you go over the products that you’re working on or talking about what you’re supposed to be doing in front of the company forces you to be more honest and get more stuff done because you don’t want to report nothing in front of everybody else.

And we’ve seen that accountability helpful in our company when we’ve talked about our quarterly goals. But it’s been interesting to see how other companies have used that similar mindset to stimulate growth. I am thankful for groups like the Agency builders that give me a community to be a part of, where it is more about collaboration instead of competition, and being able to be friendly with people who do the same things that our company does, but just not in our local area or that we’re in competition with. And so it gives me a lot of insight in how to do my job better. I look forward to attending next year, and if you’re in the agency world, you should think about it, too. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with more episodes, so be sure to subscribe and check us out on YouTube.