Category: Blog

– Kevin

Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. I’m Kevin Adelsberger. This week, I’m joined by our two interns for the spring semester 2024. If you’d like to introduce yourselves.

– Noel

I’m Noel Moore.

– Leah

I’m Leah Steed.

– Kevin

And they are nearing the end of their time of their spring internship with us. We’re trying a new thing this year where we bring them on the podcast to talk about their internship experience. Leah, will you start with what are some of the projects you’ve been working on?

– Leah

Yeah, I think there are two projects I think of when I remember my last couple of months. One of them is the Mailer, which wasn’t always super fun because it went through so many revisions. But I feel like I learned a lot through that process about how graphic design relates to marketing and how you need to think differently about that, as opposed to when you make logos or something. And it’s like, Oh, we just want to make it look pretty or whatever. It’s like, no, marketing is a different strategy than design. And so that was a really good project to learn that. And then one of the more recent fun projects that we’ve worked on is branding. I have enjoyed the process through that to see how you guys handle working with clients and how you have a structured step-by-step method. It’s just been good to see how you guys handle clients.

– Kevin

Very cool. Noel, what have you been working on?

– Noel

One of the things is the podcast, so it’s kind of fun. I feel like I’m a celebrity being on here on the other side of it. Getting to pick out little quotes to display on social medias and coming up with like, captions that are more PR-y has been something that I’m glad I’ve been able to workshop a little bit because I was not really well-versed in that before. Then something else that I really enjoyed was writing copy for different websites. I got to do that for the Care Center website. That was really fun to get to read through all of it and not only get to learn about this really cool company and the things that they’re doing, but go through and edit certain things just to make it more readable or a little bit more public relations-focused or different things like that. I enjoyed doing.

– Kevin

Very good. Noel, What would be one thing that you think you’ve learned from your time here at Adelsberger Marketing?

– Noel

Like I mentioned, I think that writing more PR-focused things has been something that I’m glad that I’ve been able to grow in a lot.

– Kevin

As opposed to the journalism bent that you had making it more copy-driven and salesy, maybe.

– Noel

Exactly, yes. Because I’m a journalism major, so I’m used to just writing off the dome, off the cuff, different things. But this is obviously a skill that a lot of companies need and that is very necessary in this day and age in this workforce. I’m glad I’ve been able to do that. I’ve realized it’s difficult because you want to make it effective and you want to drive your point across and you want to make it readable and not some AI mumbo jumbo that means nothing. But you also don’t want it to be word salad. And so figuring that out and being able to do that has been really helpful for me.

– Kevin

Okay, very good. Leah, what’s something you’ve learned during your internship?

– Leah

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I’ve been learning has to do with communication. So with homework, you have a lot of things going on at once. But if it’s due on Tuesday, you can work on it the night before and get it done on your timeline. But with this internship, I’ve had to learn how to figure out other people’s schedules and know they end work at a certain time and they’re busy the next day. And so if it’s due on Friday, I have to get it to them by Wednesday. And how to juggle five projects at once and getting projects to different people and communicating with different people online, especially as a remote internship. That’s been important.

– Kevin

Yeah, very good. Very good. Yeah. Both of those are good skillsets to take into the marketplace. So if you were to summarize your time at Adelsberger Marketing, how would you summarize that?

– Leah

I think it’s been really informative, but also it’s just been really fun. I’ve learned a lot, and I feel like I’ve gotten to be a part of a lot of different projects and design aspects that I haven’t been able to before. But also, it’s just been really fun. I feel like going into this, I was worried about it being a remote internship and not actually seeing these people and working with these people. But it’s been a really cool community and a great way to learn. People are really invested in teaching you, which has been really good, and being patient with you and showing you how to do things. It’s been fun, and meetings have been fun. It’s been good just to be a part of the team as well.

– Kevin

Very cool. Noel, how would you summarize?

– Noel

I mean, similarly, I I think mine would be eye-opening, but also very refreshing in that I didn’t really have much of an idea of what maybe a communications career would be in an industry like this. I think this was really cool for me to get to see a bunch of different parts of like, oh, I’m writing case studies for our website. Oh, but I’m also picking out different clips from the podcast, but I’m also editing copies. I’m taking these different strengths and skill sets that I’ve gotten from my major, but I’m implementing them in different ways that I hadn’t before. That was really cool. Then refreshing in that I think being a part of this team and getting to see and work with people who love their work and they love the people that they work with and the people that they’re meeting has been really refreshing because I’ve been a part of an internship before where everyone was just doing things just to do it, and there was no joy in it, and there was no joy in the community. And so literally, just as soon as we got here for onboarding training, seeing the difference, and even though it is remote, still having people reach out and want to talk to you and want to get to know you has been really cool and made me excited for post-grad life and actually getting to be a part of a team that loves each other and loves their work.

– Kevin

Yeah. Alright. Well, speaking of what’s next for you, so you’re a junior, so you’re going to be going back to school, right?

– Noel

Yes.

– Kevin

But you have an exciting internship this summer, filing paperwork, right?

– Noel

Yeah.

– Kevin

And Leah, how about you?

– Leah

Yeah. I’m going to graduate in May, so trying to figure all that out. I have an internship for the summer in publishing and graphic design. So that’s the next step. I’m excited to learn those skills as opposed to this marketing internship. And then we’ll see what’s next after that.

– Kevin

Well, thank you both for your time with us this semester. We’ve enjoyed having you guys. And for those of you at home, we are going to be taking interns every semester. So feel free to go to our website to find out how to apply. So thank you for watching the Content Machine podcast. We’ll be back with our regular scheduled content next week.

Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. We are about to start episode 2 of our interview with Amy Garner from West Tennessee Health care. So that being said, besides surviving and managing and doing well for your job during a global pandemic, what are some other things that you are proud of and accomplishments in your role as compliance and communications officer?

Well, I mentioned my team earlier. I have an incredible team of graphic designers, videographers, web people. Lori Smith is my director of marketing, and I definitely could not do my job without her because I love the public relations side of things. I love dealing with the media, as strange as that may sound to some people. But Lori is a true expert when it comes to marketing and strategy. And so I just rely on her every day to do that. And so she works with one of our agencies, our external marketing agency, and they’ve been able to… You may have seen some of our commercials, Emmy Award-winning commercials that we’ve had over the past few years. And so that’s been since I’ve taken on this role. Of course, I have nothing to do with any of that, so I can’t take any credit, but my team just does an incredible job, and they are so so talented and so gifted. And so I have to give all the credit to them. I’m very proud of all the work they’ve done over the last few years. It’s hard when you’re trying to market for a system as large as ours because we have over 90 locations.

I can’t even tell you how many service lines we have. And so there’s just not enough marketing dollars to go around. And it’s incumbent upon us to try to prioritize those things that we need to get out in the public, but also stick with a budget, because we are the largest nonprofit healthcare organization in the region, the largest nonprofit organization in the region. And so marketing dollars are important, but we don’t have all the money in the world to spend on that. So they do a great job balancing all of that.

Yeah. So when you are approaching that, how do you end up prioritizing and come up with a plan for such a big organization?

Well, lots of feedback from our service line leaders, from our executive team, the board. We meet with the board on a regular basis and have a meeting to talk about what our marketing activities are, what they think will be important in the next few months or year. We know sometimes when things are coming up, but then sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have to just pivot on the fly, and we might have a new provider that comes to the community, for example, that specializes in something new that we haven’t done before. And so we have to be able to pivot really quickly and try to figure out how to get that word out. So it’s lots of conversations with our executive team, with service line leaders. Lori meets with a lot of our larger service lines on a regular basis to talk about what’s coming up, what’s a priority for them, any new technologies that we might be using in the near future. We also have a monthly strategy meeting with our Director of Business Development, with our Vice President, and she keeps us on task as far as what she knows might be coming up strategically that we need to be planning ahead for. So that’s helpful.

Yeah, that’s a lot to manage. Now, in the communications of a medical environment, what are specific challenges that bring that to the table? There’s probably some regulatory stuff, maybe some compliance stuff that is a little bit different than a lot of organizations have to deal with.

That’s probably true. And when I took this role, at first I thought, I’m going to have some conflict between being the compliance officer and the communications officer. But actually, it served us pretty well because, for example, there are specific rules about financial benefit that we can provide to a physician. I can’t just go out there and market for a physician who is not part of our organization. And so those questions have come up in the past as far as what those rules are. Also, when it comes to privacy, that’s an area where my compliance team is really involved with dealing with making sure all of those policies and procedures are in place, and we deal with complaints from time to time. But we can’t just go out there and get a patient and say, Hey, would you film a testimonial for us? I mean, we’ve got to have forms signed, and we’ve got to make sure they know where this information is going. We can’t just talk about Kevin Adelsberger’s care at West Tennessee HealthCare without you being involved in that. Those things have been… It’s been an advantage for me to be in both roles.

Maybe speeds up the process a little bit. Because we’ve worked with some groups where they have compliance departments, and it just slows the process down. Because it’s a third party, because they’re not involved in the process. But I guess having you involved with the process probably gets answers faster, I would bet.

Yeah, it’s worked really well for us. When I’m dealing with media relations, too, if the local media ask me a question, well, I’m familiar with the Sunshine Laws and Open Records Act, and the privacy rules, and all of those things. And so it’s easy for me to make a decision about whether I can talk about a specific topic or how they can request information from us to comply with all of that. So it’s worked really well. I haven’t had any conflict, and we’ve talked multiple multiple times about how beneficial it’s been for me to be in both roles. So for us, it works. I’m not sure that it could work for every health care organization. Sure. But for us, it seems to work well, in my opinion.

And then for you, Particularly, what are some challenges that you faced, and then how have you worked to overcome those? Is it adding skills or dealing with people or having to learn a whole new field? What have been some issues that you’ve had to deal with?

Well, I think an advantage for me is that I’ve been in the organization for so long, and I’ve been a part of operations. And so I understand the terminology a lot better than you could if you were strictly a marketing professional that didn’t work with health care clients. Some of the terminology… We use a lot of acronyms. Some of the terminology is not intuitive. Some of the technology that we use or some of the procedure names, for example, can be a little confusing if you don’t live in that world. But I’m thankful that I had a lot of that knowledge. When I do have a problem, the people around me are very happy to help educate me. My husband says that I’m pseudo-clinical.

Because your husband works in the medical side of right.

He does. He’s a clinician with an X-ray radiology background. We joke that I’m pseudo clinical because I can speak the language, but I can’t do any of that work.

You’re not putting gloves on.

That’s exactly right. You do not want me taking care of patients, ever.

So you’ve been in this role for seven years now. How have you seen communications changing since you started, and how do you see that continuing to evolve?

Well, I think social media, for sure, has really changed our world. When I first got into this role, we barely had any followers on Facebook. I don’t think that we even had a Twitter account or Instagram or any of that. We didn’t have our podcast then, and now here I am on your podcast, and we have our own podcast. So we’ve done a lot of things in the last seven years that the market was just driving us to do, right? So I think that making sure that we are keeping up with all of that technology and all of these platforms is really important. And I wish that I could foresee what coming in the future, but it changes so quickly. And digital marketing for us was something that we really did not do as much as we do now. Traditional marketing, billboards and television and radio and print, were pretty much all we did before. But now, probably more than half of our marketing budget is focused on digital marketing and social media boosting and search engine optimization and all of those things, which I knew absolutely nothing about before. But I can see that all of that is just going to continue to be more important as we go forward.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. If someone wants to stay up to date with you or with West Tennessee Health care, where would you direct them to go check that out?

Absolutely. Check out our website at www.wth.org, or you can go to any of those social media platforms that I mentioned, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. We’re out there.

Okay. Well, thank you so much, Amy.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you for listening to our interview with Amy Garner from West Tennessee Health care. If you find this episode interesting, please share it with a friend. We’ll see you on future episodes of the Content Machine podcast.

As we bring our know like trust series to a conclusion, we end on trust. Once we have introduced someone to our company and we’ve gotten them to like us, now we need to close the deal by building trust. Today, we’ll talk through some of the things that we can do to increase trust with prospective customers. The first thing is sharing our experience. One of the key things that can help close new business is to share with them the experience that you have, specifically if it’s in the field that they’re looking for. For example, you might say, “We have 10 years of experience in marketing,” or even better, say your customer is a roofing company saying, “We’ve been working in residential roofing marketing for over 15 years.” That’s a hard offer for someone to turn down. A second component of showing experience is showing customer testimonials. The richer these can be with real names, pictures, and details, the better they will be at building trust with potential customers. Second question, does your customer have a good experience when they come to look at your experience? When they interact with your brand, your website, your social media, is it clear who you are?

Are all the detailed points of your brand and your website contributing to that trust over time? Or is it ruining that trust by not being clear and not being effective? The third thing is, are you able to showcase any trust signals for your brand? The Better Business Bureau used to be the clear sign of a trustworthy business, but I think they’ve lost some of the shine off their endorsement over time. Things like reviews from Google, local chamber memberships, or membership in a governing body for your industry can show legitimacy and help to seal the deal. Another thing that’s important is a clear path forward. Do clients know who to go to to start business with you or how to go about getting into business with you? Is it a call? Is it an email? Is it set pricing? Making the process clear can help build trust with the customer. And the last thing I want to say is if you can find a way to share your expertise with your potential clients, whether that be through white papers or videos or events or podcasts, it can help build trust through expertise. The more you have to share, the deeper that trust will be.

Now, what are some things that hurt our efforts to build trust? One, stock photos. Almost everyone can spot a stock photo when it is used anymore. And stock photos can trigger quality concerns for potential customers. You may have inconsistent branding, visual or otherwise. And so what I mean by that is if your visual branding, meaning your logo, has multiple versions that aren’t the same logo kit over different places, it might be a mark of concern for potential customers as they seek to build mental recognition of who your company is. Additionally, if your messaging communications vary wildly in tone from one place to another, it can be off-putting and show a lack of professionalism, which can be a concern for potential customers. Number three, if your website obscures who owns or leads the company, it can cause potential customers to wonder why that information is being hidden. If your company has great leadership, you should flaunt it. And then finally, you may have reviews, but the more generic a review is from a customer, the more fake it will seem. And you don’t want fake or seemingly fake quotes out there or testimonials out there.

It would be better to have no review than a fake testimonial or a testimonial so devoid of specific information that it could seem fake. Keep track of your best reviews, ones that show passion for the service you provided and include details about what made that service great. So are you ready to utilize the know-like-trust funnel in your business? Hopefully, this podcast mini-series has given you a leg up to getting started. If you’re implementing the funnel within your business or you’re looking for a little help getting started, we’d love to hear from you. You can shoot me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com.

As a business owner and the leader of a company, you would think it would be easy to know what success looks like. If you’re a business leader, the clear question to ask yourself might be, How much money can I make? Now, I would hope most people think that that’s not the only gauge of success, but profit is a pretty clear metric to track. Now, I am also a Christian who owns a business, and so how does my faith affect my understanding of success? Last year at the Agency Builders Conference, I got to hear from Brandon West, who owns FOS Creative in Florida. I immediately appreciated Brandon for his conviction and how his business should affect the world. The purpose over at FOS is to reach and restore the lives of women and children who have been impacted by extreme poverty and sex trafficking. So just to reiterate, Brandon’s business, a digital marketing agency similar to mine, has the mission to serve women and children who’ve been impacted by extreme poverty and sex trafficking. Brandon is wired differently, and I love it. When I heard Brandon was releasing a book, I knew it was going to be great, and that it would almost certainly end up on an episode of this podcast.

Brandon’s first book is called “It’s Not Your Business to Succeed,” which from off the jump is a little startling for someone like me. I build my day around trying to succeed. From what time I wake up to the way my phone is set up to the people I work with, the time I go to bed at night. Every bit of it is geared towards me having the opportunity to be successful. Brandon challenges this notion at its core. Therefore, Brandon’s thesis is that that is outcome-based thinking or judging everything by the bottom line, and that that can be dangerous because it’s built around the wrong things. Because ultimately, the important thing is being faithful in our everyday tasks, whether that be leading in a boardroom, parenting, or marriage, being faithful in our actions in those areas, regardless of the outcome, because the choice to make a faithful action is more important than the result. In other words, the means are more important than the ends. Why? This is what God asks of us. Brandon points to the scripture throughout the book to show that God is concerned with our faithfulness, not our success. Brandon also covers this with our need to be faithful stewards of what we have.

As a Christian, I believe my business is not my own, but I am a steward of it for God. Sometimes I need a reminder of that. But as the steward, I also need to make wise decisions with what I am entrusted. So while outcomes-based thinking is not the key, that does not mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were. We still have a responsibility over the company and to lead it well. A few years ago, we were working on a political campaign. The candidate and I knew there was a significant chance the opposing side would start campaigning in an ugly manner. We had committed to each other before the race began that we were going to run a clean campaign. When the opponent and his friends went dirty, we maintained that commitment. We pursued the faithful option. We were committed to running it the right way, regardless of the outcome, regardless of any of the negative effects the opponent’s mudslinging might have had on us. It is easy to play the game of comparison in business. This company has more staff or this company has more revenue. But maybe the question should be, are you making faithful choices day in and day out? Not if you have made more revenue than the other company.

So ask yourself this, how do you measure success? Are you judging it by the right metrics? Thank you for listening to this episode of the Content Machine podcast. If you end up reading Brandon’s book, “It’s Not Your Job to Succeed,” I’d love to hear your thoughts. Shoot me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing. Com, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Content Machine podcast.

Kevin

Welcome to the Content Machine podcast. I’m Kevin Adelsberger, and this week, I’m joined by Amy Garner, who is the Chief Compliance and Communications Officer at West Tennessee HealthCare. Thank you for joining me, Amy.

Amy

Thank you for having me.

Kevin

Amy, you have a really unique journey in your career, and I’d love for just the audience to hear starting about that. If you want to tell us a little bit about how you got to the position you’re in now.

Amy

Okay. Well, it’s probably going to be surprising to a lot of your listeners because I actually do not have a communications background. I actually have an accounting background. My undergraduate degree is in accounting. I have a master’s in business. I also have a law degree with an emphasis in health law. And then a few years ago, after I got the communications gig, I decided, well, I need to probably get some formal training in communications or public relations. I do have a certificate in public relations now. But my first love was math and accounting, of all things.

Kevin

Wow. Okay. So the first two make sense. The law degree is a little bit of an oddball there. How did you end up with a law degree?

Amy

So I was working in health care already, back in the late ’90s, and I knew that I wanted to further my education. I knew that I wanted to get a doctorate, but I didn’t want to get a PhD. So I wanted to do something with an advanced degree that would be useful at work. And obviously, I couldn’t just go back to medical school. So I decided that maybe health law might be of interest because of what I was doing at work already, because that was when the HIPAA privacy rules had just come out, and it was very useful to what I was doing. And so I thought, Well, that might be a good route for me to take. And so I ended up getting my law degree in health law.

Kevin

How about that. Did you spend any time as an accountant then?

Amy

Very briefly. I was in accounting for about four years after I joined West Tennessee HealthCare. And before that, I had actually worked in banking for a little while. But after I was in the role of the controller at one of our small hospitals, I decided that I really loved operations. I really did not want to sit in the office behind the computer and just deal with numbers all day. I really enjoyed getting out and learning from the different departments. And I was in such a small hospital, and they all just took me under their wings and taught me what they knew and what they thought I should know. And so I was able to learn all sorts of things from what happens in radiology to what happens in billing, to what happens in medical records on the nursing floor. So it was a great learning experience for me because I was so young and I just wanted to soak up everything. And so I think that that’s what led me into being the candidate for the compliance officer’s job, because you have to know a little bit about privacy. You had to know a little bit about the rules that the emergency department has.

Amy

You have to know about billing and Medicare. And so I think that that’s what led me to the place where somebody said, Hey, she might be a good compliance officer.

Kevin

So a lot of times when people hear the words Compliance Officer, nothing fun comes to mind. And all of my interactions with you, you don’t come off as a Compliance Officer to me. You have a little bit more fun than that. So what do you do as a Compliance Officer?

Amy

Well, I have to say that I’ve heard that before. It is not the most popular position to be in. And for a long time, I thought, this is the most thankless job because nobody wants to see you coming, right? Sure. And nobody wants to come to your office to tell on themselves or ride anybody else out. But I try not to be scary, and I’ve done this for so long now that I really think being in communications has helped me because people know who I am, and they know that I’m not necessarily the police. And so I think that from that perspective, you’re probably right. I am probably not the typical compliance officer, but I want to be a resource for people. And I was just sharing with somebody earlier this morning that my favorite part of my job is answering questions. As strange as that sounds, I love being able to answer people’s questions or to help them figure out where to go to get the answers that they need. And so I think that from that perspective, I try to be a resource rather than just, Oh, hey, I got you. You’re not following this policy. And sometimes I have to do that, but I try not to be awful about it.

Kevin

So you worked your way up in the business side of things, which naturally progressed into the compliance thing with the law degree and stuff.

Amy

That’s right.

Kevin

Where does communications come into that, then?

Amy

So I joke all the time that the reason that I was asked to be in communications is because I like to talk too much. So there’s probably some truth to that. Sure. J.R, my CEO, as you know, J.R, he’s the type of guy that if he ask you to do him a favor, you cannot tell him no. You’re going to say, Sure. What do you need? And that’s exactly what happened. He asked me to temporarily work with the communications and marketing team seven years ago. And at the time, I said, J.R, I don’t know anything about marketing, communications. I’d had some limited experience when I was working on my master’s degree in marketing and communications, but nothing formal. And so I was really out of my element, but I was not going to tell J.R. no. Actually, after a few months of working with the phenomenal team that I have, I said, J.R, I love it. Please let me keep it. I love it so much. And it was, I guess, part of it was that it was not so rigid, like the compliance role, and I could have some fun with writing or with doing things like this that you can’t really do as a Chief Compliance Officer.

Amy

Sure. Yeah, yeah. So I loved it. And then who knew that there was going to be a global pandemic, and so at some point, I probably should have said, No, I’m not the one. But I just felt like when all my colleagues were struggling to take care of patients and doing all that they could do, I felt like, Well, this is one way that I can help them for sure, because I’m not a clinical person, and I didn’t really know what else I could do to help them during the pandemic. So I did what I was asked to do. Actually, when I was looking back at my Facebook memories today, this is my fourth anniversary of the night that J.R called me and said, I need for you to put together a press conference for tomorrow. I need the mayors to be there. I need Kim Tedford from the Department to be there. You all are going to coordinate this. And it was like 10 or 11 o’clock at night when he called. And I was freaking out because unbeknownst to him, I had never coordinated a press conference before. I had never been a part of one, and I was clueless.

Amy

But he didn’t know that, and I didn’t tell him that at the time because I knew that no was not the right answer. And we pulled it off, and that was the beginning of all-

Kevin

Of a nightmare.

Amy

Yeah, it was the beginning of all of those media interviews and press conferences and all of those things that I did with Kim at the Health Department.

Kevin

Yeah. So you said seven years ago, you became communications. So that’s It’s March 11th, ’24, when we were recording this. So that would have been ’17, right?

Amy

That would have been 2020.

Kevin

It was four years ago. It was four years ago.

Amy

Yeah, ’17 is when I took on the role.

Kevin

So you had three years in the role before COVID struck and changed everything. So talk to us about how do you deal with communication when you’re newer into communication and you have a global pandemic ravaging your city?

Amy

I don’t know. I don’t really know that I have any great advice. I will tell you that the three years prior to the pandemic, one of the things on my to-do list was to develop a crisis communications plan, and I never put that down as a priority, and then I was living it. And so for me, it was just day to day, who do I need to communicate with? What are the messages that I need to get out there from my team? I was also having to learn all about operations and surge capacity and what it meant for us to have those portable HVAC units that were turning our units into… So that we had negative pressure rooms on those COVID floors. I mean, I was having to learn a lot, but my colleagues were great because when I asked questions, they were more than happy to share with me the information that I needed to get out there. And so in the morning, I would get up and I would follow social media to see if there was anything that I needed to address during the day, if there were any questions I needed to answer.

Amy

Then I would get on multiple calls with our incident command team, which is our emergency response teams, if you will. And I would learn what we were facing for the next 24 hours or 48 hours, what we had faced for the last 24 hours, what our COVID census was. Is there any specific information I need to get out to the public today? And then I would go through that process of whether it was a media interview, whether it was a press conference, whether it was a radio interview, whatever it was. I would try to get that information out. And then the rest of the day, I would pretty much monitor local news, social media, respond to questions. It was just a constant cycle. And I call it on the job training because I really did not know what I needed to be doing that I wasn’t doing. I just tried to keep up with everything and tried to figure out how to get information out to everybody, not just Madison County, but I had people contacting us from Haywood County or Chester County or Gibson County saying, Hey, what about us? What are you seeing in our counties?

Amy

What can we do? Can you come over here and talk with our mayor? And so there was a lot of that, too. So it was just… I just was doing whatever I could to get information out there. Yeah.

Kevin

Well, and I’d say as a citizen, I felt like it was really organized and went from my perspective, you guys were proactive and communicated well in a really stressful time period.. Thank you for tuning in to episode one of two with Amy Garner from West Tennessee HealthCare. Join us back in a couple of weeks when we release episode two of the interview.

When you say you like a company’s brand, what do you mean? Most people, when they say brand, they mean the logo of a company. Don’t get me wrong, a logo is an important part of a company’s brand, but a brand is so much more. We believe brand encompasses four key areas. Each of these areas is sizable and has lots of opportunities for subsets of information. But today, we’re going to look at things from a bird’s-eye view. We believe a brand encompasses the business’s identity, the business’s positioning, the business’s messaging, and the business’s visual identity. Let’s take a look at each of these elements. Number one, the business’s identity. The first part of any brand is who the business is. What is the business’s mission and core values? What is the business trying to achieve? The mission talks to the bigger picture that the company is trying to solve and what they value. The core values gives the team guidance on what behavior is valued in the organization. It will direct how components of the business interact with customers, how the business interacts with the team. It will set the tone for what the culture in the organization is.

Business identity is a key component of what makes the brand of an organization and gains importance as the business puts value on the identity, making it part of the culture and potentially part of the marketing. The second part of the brand is the positioning of the business. Positioning talks about what a business brings to market and how it goes to market. Or to put another way, what differentiates it from other businesses. When we think about what a business brings to market, what we mean is, how do we make something not a commodity? What makes our product special versus our competition? How we bring it to market might also be our differentiation. Are you the only car wash in town that comes to people’s workplaces? Are you an insurance agency that has the most available markets? Are you the largest organic and natural food provider in the area? How you bring something to market and the positioning that you use are key parts of the identity. The third part of the branding is messaging. This could be viewed as the verbal identity of the business. How do we describe the organizations? Do we have specific words that we use?

What is our marketing one-liner to quickly share who we are? This also works into the tone of how we write copy for the business. The fourth part, and the one that people think the most about when they talk about branding is the visual identity. The logo is the most important part of the visual identity of the business, but there are also several other components to visual identity. One of the biggest things is what we call look and feel. Look and feel for a brand is the visual style for graphics and things like websites. They give us a uniformed visual appearance across all interaction points for a customer. A social media graphic should be able to be visually related to the website, which should be visually related to the business card. This unified visual identity is usually tied together by specific colors, typefaces, textures, or graphical elements like certain shapes or icons. A proper visual branding contains these components and a guide with all the rules on how use the visual branding. Is your business using all the elements of a brand, or do you just have a logo? Today is a great day to start developing the other elements of your brand.

A great thing is to look at companies that do branding well and start to look for all of those components and how they use them. When you start looking for them, you’re going to notice them. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Content Machine podcast. If you need help developing a brand or rebranding your company, please reach out to me at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com.

When thinking about the customer acquisition journey, it can sometimes be a mystery how people decided to do business with you. Sometimes people describe it as a funnel. The more people hear about you, the more it’ll filter down to the people who turn into customers. And that’s a pretty good model. But a slightly different take on that, and a bit more of a relational take, is the know, like, and trust model. The know in the know, like, trust model means for someone to do business with you, they have to know who you are, they have to decide that they like you, and ultimately, they have to decide to trust you. Once they’ve decided they trust you, they will be willing to sign on the dotted line. This week we’re going to talk about the know, and then in future weeks, we’ll talk about like and trust. In the know like trust model, what does it mean to know? Very simply, it’s I know who you are or that you exist. So how do we become known? Two big thoughts, inbound and outbound marketing. Let’s start with outbound. Outbound marketing is anything that you are doing to actively get your name out there.

That might be sponsoring a local event, buying digital ads, or having a logo on the side of your truck. Outbound marketing is great for introducing yourself to people that might not know who you are or bringing you back to the top of people’s minds. Inbound marketing is when people come looking for you. It’s the experience they have on your website. It’s the content they see on your Facebook page when they come and look for you. I call inbound marketing being ready to be found. The biggest way inbound works into the no category is through things like social media and having good search engine results. We’ll talk more about inbound marketing when we talk about getting someone to like and trust you. But for now, know that if you invest in outbound marketing but do not have inbound ready to go, you are wasting your money. You have to be ready to be found, which is where steps between know and like start to bleed over. So what should we think about for outbound? One, audience, two, cost, three, brand image. When we think about audiences, we need to consider, are these the people we want to talk to?

So who do you want to talk to? Are they potential customers or are they referrers of potential customers? Are they just general potential customers? Or are they the target market that you really want to develop? Cost. Can you afford to do this? What do you think the ROI will be? Is it a one-time expense or an ongoing expense? Spending $1,000 to talk to 10 of the right people might make a ton of sense for your business. Spending the money to wrap your van might make sense, too. The cost varies by the audience and your business goals. And then finally, does this opportunity fit your brand? Even if an opportunity is with potential customers and affordable, does it make sense to align yourselves with that opportunity? This question could mean a variety of things for your brand, but things like the type of the event, the cause of the organization, or the message that the platform carries could have an effect. An example of this would be Adelsberger Marketing advertising in a traditional print newspaper. It would be an odd place to see us for a number of reasons, and it wouldn’t be a good fit.

We’ll talk more about know, like and trust in upcoming weeks. And so you need to ask yourself, are you ready to be found? Are you ready to start that relationship with a new customer? If not, send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com and subscribe for future episodes of the Content Machine podcast.

Kevin

Welcome back to the Content Machine podcast. This week, we are joined by Roshni Patel. Roshni is the digital ad specialist here at Adelsberger Marketing, and hopefully, she will be helping us learn a few things about digital advertising that will help you in your business. Roshni, thanks for joining us.

Roshni

Thanks for having me.

Kevin

So a commonly asked question we get, Roshni is, is it better to put ads on every platform or just a few?

Roshni

Just a few. Knowing where your audience is coming from is really important, so you’re not just spending money unnecessarily. Helping determine that means you might put your ad out on fewer platforms, but you’re getting a better cost per click result.

Kevin

All right. So using this, using any of these digital advertising platforms, are there ways to filter down to that audience to see, to the people you want to see to show your ads to?

Roshni

Yes. So most platforms allow you to choose an age demographic as as well as geographical demographic. So you can narrow down who’s seeing your ads. But a lot of platforms, such as Facebook, will allow you to target ads to people who have similar interests of your business or have liked your page or interacted with your page. Therefore, you’re being more cost-effective when showing your ad.

Kevin

Okay, very good. Yeah. And a lot of that starts with understanding who your customer is, right? Yes. So that’s a key part to when we start an ad project, we want to make sure we understand who that company’s customers are.

Roshni

Exactly.

Kevin

And then we can target ads to them. There might be a a few options of platforms that target customer that we were just talking about. Is there any ad format on those platforms that you think should be utilized more?

Roshni

Yes. So in recent years, video ads have become very popular. They’re very cost-effective, but they also keep the audience engaged. So short 15 to 30 second videos are really effective. So you can create short copy for them, but really, you just want to get your main points across in that short video.

Kevin

And should you always use video or can you use graphics as well? And if you can use graphics, do you have any tips on that?

Roshni

Yes. Graphic ads are also very effective, and especially depending on who you’re trying to engage as your audience. Platforms like Facebook, it’s really smart to use very clear and concise graphics and have more information in your copy. So you want to make sure the picture is engaging but easy to read. Also creating multiple variations of that copy with the graphic is really helpful because that way the platform can see which works best against each other. So what copy is doing best out in the field as opposed to just having the one ad.

Kevin

Okay. Yeah. So when we come to the table, frequently we bring multiple versions of a graphic so that we can make sure that we’re getting the best return on the customer’s ad spend. Yeah. And then a common question we get is about how much should we spend on digital advertising, or why is my cost so click so high? And what has been your experience with that?

Roshni

So cost per click can vary depending on the customer and where they’re located as well as what their competition is. So a big factor is competition in your area. If you are a local business, for example, like a plumbing and HVAC company, you might have more competition. Therefore, your cost per click will be higher because you’re fighting to appear in those ads, in the ad space. Another really important role is your ranking. And so ranking is determined in large part by your SEO. So that’s search engine optimization. Having a high SEO ranking will help you appear faster when you’re bidding for those ads. You can also, when doing Google Ads, for example, you can put a bidding increment in there, which means that’s how much you’re willing to spend when you’re trying to appear in those ads. It doesn’t mean Google will use all that money, but it just shows how far you’re willing to go to appear, which is really helpful.

Kevin

Yeah. So you might be able to say up to a dollar per click. And if the bid goes up to 65 cents, that’s what you’ll get charged. Yes, exactly. But you’re willing to maybe spend more than the other competitors. More, if maybe. That’s right. Now, sometimes when you’re looking at Google Pay Per Click or other types of pay-per-click advertising, keywords are important. Can you tell us about what keywords are and how do they work?

Roshni

So keywords are basically phrases or words that describe your business. They’re really important because keywords help determine where your ad appears. So for example, in a search ad, if someone’s searching plumber near me, having the keyword plumber in your ad, or in your keywords, excuse me, will help your ad appear. And it also helps narrow what is shown. So if someone’s searching for a painter, a plumber won’t appear. So you’re not wasting money. Keywords should be a shorter list and more detailed rather than a longer list of just a bunch of words, because you really want to narrow what your company does and what you’re hoping to promote or sell.

Kevin

And a lot of times with keywords, one thing that we’ve seen a lot is that sometimes the meaning that you think you have for the keyword is not the meaning that the searchers are having for the keyword.

Roshni

Yes, sometimes those words are a little skewed. Yeah.

Kevin

So you got to be careful to think about ulterior meanings or if the meaning of the niche of that word may not be what you’re trying to sell is another factor to consider. Well, Roshni, thank you for your time in joining us on the episode today. If you need help with digital advertising, please get in touch with us. Send me an email at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com, and then hit subscribe on this episode so that you can get notified of future episodes that are coming out. And we’ll see you on the next episode of The Content Machine podcast.

The biggest SEO tip we have for local businesses, make sure your Google business profile is ready to go. So what is a Google business profile and how do we optimize it? Let’s talk about it. You may have heard it called a Google My Business Profile, which is its previous name. In a nutshell, a Google business profile is one of the listings people find on Google when they look for your business. When you Google a local business on the Google Results page, you will likely see three things. One, potentially ads running for that business or for a competitor. Two, search results that hopefully show that local business, and a Google Business Profile. That Google Business Profile is Google’s effort to make sure that the business is listed correctly on Google. When people talk about search engine optimization or SEO, they are mostly meaning on Google and not necessarily other channels like Bing or Yahoo. This means that when we think about SEO, we need to think about what does Google care about. Well, using the tools that Google develops is a great way to do the things that Google cares about. All of this is why if you are a local business and you have not secured or updated your Google business profile, you are making a huge mistake.

Let’s talk about how to claim it, and if you’ve already claimed it, some things you can do to optimize your profile. To claim your profile, search for your local business on Google. You might very well see a Google business listing for your business already locatable through a Google search, and you can go through the process of claiming that listing so that you can take control of the information. That will likely involve a phone call or a piece of mail coming to your business from Google. Google has been working to make the verification process harder, however, to keep businesses legit on Google business listings. So this may take a little bit longer than you might expect it would. It can also get way more complicated if you do not have a traditional business address. If you work under an assumed business name or you don’t receive mail at your address, it becomes more difficult to get verified. Google has been then implementing things like video references to help make sure that your entity is legit. Once you have claimed your business profile, be sure to take the time to fill out all of the relevant items recommended by Google.

The business category, contact information, and things like websites should be no brainers to fill out. The first thing you want to be careful about is selecting the right category of business, whether that be a physical business or a service area business. Physical location businesses are for businesses that serve clients at their location. Service areas are for businesses that go to customers’ homes or businesses to provide that service. It’s like the difference between a traditional dry cleaner and an HVAC repair shop. Traditional dry cleaners, you must drop off your clothing, so it’s a physical location. HVAC repair companies, they come to your home or they come to your business, which makes it a service area business. But to take it to the next level and improve your listing and your visibility in the Google ecosystem, add pictures to your profile, add videos, add updates, seek out customer reviews, and then fill out any additional categories that the Google business profile has options for that fits your business. We also offer this word of warning. Google business profiles can be very touchy. Google has a propensity to suspend accounts if they think for some reason the account is being spammed or being manipulated in a way that’s spammy.

To protect yourself from this, make changes slowly. Too many changes too quickly or significant changes like name or address can flag your account for review or even get it suspended. Even things that you might not think of can get you in trouble, like be careful of how many accounts you have attached to your profile. Less is better. Also, customer reviews are great, but don’t get fake reviews. Google is not very communicative about why it might suspend your profile. From our personal experience, a client’s profile was once suspended, and the best answer we got after talking with Google was that one of the client’s emails attached to the account was flagged as suspicious. Of course, there was no reason for this, but we are at the mercy of Google like we are most of the time. Fake reviews can come through incentivizing people with money or paying for bots or offering a trade for reviews. If Google becomes aware of any of these, they can and will suspend your profile or remove it altogether. Losing a Google business profile can be a significant damage to your business. Over time, the value of your profile grows as you gain more views and relevance in search engines.

Imagine the damage to your business if suddenly no one could find you on Google at all. A final note, we suggest making a task or at least an annual calendar reminder for maintenance on your Google business profile. At least once a year, you should revisit the profile to make sure that your hours are up to date and that you’ve interacted with reviews and that nothing significant has changed on the profile, and add some new photos. This will help keep the profile relevant and make Google happy. Aren’t we all just trying to make Google happy? And one more thing about hours. Recently, a Google search business conducted a study and found that open hours for certain businesses did affect their search engine results during their closed hours. Why is that? Well, likely because Google is looking to constantly improve the way their results are shown. If you’re looking for a pizza place at 10:00 PM on a Friday, why would you want to see listings for ones that close at 8:00? The world of Google is always changing. Are you paying attention? Or do you have a partner who is? If you don’t have a Google business profile set up, you might need to talk with a marketing agency.

We’d love to chat with you. Please reach out to me at kevin@adelsbergermarketing.com to get a conversation started today.

Kevin

We’re back with the Content Machine podcast. We’re joined again by Greg Hammonds, who’s the Chief of Public Information for the Jackson Madison County School System. Greg, thank you for joining us again.

Greg

Thanks for having me.

Kevin

Tell us about what it’s like doing communications for the school system.

Greg

Some days, I feel like Tom Brady working for Bill Belichick in the heyday of the Patriots.

Kevin

Some days.

Greg

Yeah. Then some days you feel like the West 10 Diamond Jacks. It runs the gamut sometimes. But I’ll quote Dr. Catlett. He loved to say, Our worst day is still better than most people’s best day. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It is a lot of fun. We mentioned in the first episode, Dr. King coming in, having already worked in two school systems. When you sit down at the table, he’s providing you with some context you hadn’t thought about, whether it’s from the school board level in governance, whether it’s from a personnel standpoint, working with educators, or even a marketing standpoint. I get to learn a lot, and I get to do a lot. That’s what it feels like.

Kevin

Yeah. What have been some of your challenges in this role?

Greg

Yeah. I think the challenges that come to mind… I I think a lot of folks want us to operate like it’s 1990, and it’s not.

Kevin

Internal or external folks?

Greg

External. We can no longer operate like we’re the only show in education in town.

Kevin

Okay. We can’t operate. There’s competition. Right.

Greg

So when you see our billboard downtown, that’s a good thing. We want people to know public education is a viable option in Jackson, Madison County.

Kevin

But a lot of people think there’s not competition. You don’t have to market yourself.

Greg

That’s just not true.

Kevin

Why are they spending money like this?

Greg

Yeah. So on the ride down here, down the bypass here, you pass a billboard and there’s advertising for a local independent or a private school. Parents have choices. Choice is fine. We just want to make sure people know that Jackson, Madison County Schools is a great option, and they should choose us, particularly when you think about… When you think about return on investment, I think the public school system gives the highest return, particularly when you think about in the middle, in high school areas, career and technical education, where you have students earning certificates earning, obviously, diplomas, but credentials to be able to go out. If they choose to not, let’s say they don’t want to go to Jackson State, let’s say they don’t want to go to college. Well, if you’re in the culinary program at Liberty Technology High School and you get your OSHA certification in food service, now you could go to Old Country store or a restaurant and ask for more than the minimum wage because you have training, you have experience. If you’re going to go work at one of the local garages, and you’ve come out of North Side High School or South Side High School, and you have an ASC certification, you can now ask for above minimum wage because you’re in there with experience, with a credential that’s recognized in the industry.

Greg

That’s without any type of post-secondary experience. Right off the bat, there’s their value. Let’s take it up a notch. Let’s say you are very much focused on getting a college degree. Well, you have choices. You could go to JC, Marley College High and finish your associate’s degree before you graduate high school. Literally, those students, after four years, will graduate from Jackson State Community College on a Saturday, and the next week, graduate with their high school diploma. You talk about the financial value and the time savings there, particularly if you already know college is something that you want to shoot for. But then let’s say you want the traditional option. It’s funny. My son, we attend so many games and so many events. Usually, he says, I want to go to South Side because they knew I worked at South Side, I went to school at South Side. They’ve seen my picture on the wall. My daughter, one day she’ll say this school, the next day she’ll say that school. They’re all Jackson, Madison County schools. So knowing the value at all these schools, it’s really interesting. Of course, Madison’s the cream of the crop, public or private, when you think about preparing students for college, particularly at institutions that are specifically known for academic rigor.

Greg

Madison academics are at the top. But many of our traditional options, I’ve heard of students going to a North Side or South Side, and they’ll take CLEP classes and through high school, work on different credits for college. I say that to say, if you play your cards right, JCM, Early College isn’t the only option-For college, yeah. To get those early college opportunities. And of course, Jackson Academic Esteem Academy, our virtual school, has a partnership with Union University. So the students in JASA who are juniors and seniors, they’re already working on work toward a college degree with Union University.

Kevin

So when we were talking about challenges, so you’re talking about return on investment, which is when we went into the schools. But you were talking a little bit like there’s some negative perception. What’s your strategy for overcoming that negative perception?

Greg

Truth. Tell a good story. Provide them with truth and tell a good story. And that’s not just external. We also have to remind our employees about what the school system offers. We also have to remind the employees how important they are. Today is a snow day. The roads are still severe, and so students are at home. But many, many of our teachers since last week, since last week’s snow days, have sent gentle reminders. Hey, guys. Hey, remember, read 20 minutes a day. Hey, jump on Class Dojo. Complete this assignment, read this passage, answer these questions. Hey, guys, let’s make sure we’re staying academically strong. Many, many, many of our teachers do that throughout these snow days. They say, if you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready. A lot of our teachers, Kevin, are staying ready. I know it because my own kids are in the system. But then a lot of my neighbors are teachers, too. I know the different platforms they’re using to communicate with their families. But just sharing a good message, reminding people about the benefits of public education, the fact that when our public school system is strong, our local industry is strong, our community is stronger.

Kevin

All right, so we’ve talked about some of the challenges, but let’s talk about the successes. How are things going? How do you feel like you’re doing? And I think you’ve won some hardware.

Greg

Yeah, I think you think about the best possible way to end 2023 and enter 2024. The Tennessee School Boards Association honored our school board with School Board of the Year recognition. And so that’s just a testament to the advocacy, the training, the board governance that our board’s doing. You know, it’s one thing, Kevin, to be passionate about an issue and running for a position for that issue. Yeah. Okay, but you still have to govern a school system in a number of different areas. And so what our school board members have done a great job of, getting training. The Tennessee School Boards Association offers training, in-service opportunities, and our school board members have taken advantage of this to educate themselves. You talk about lifelong learners. It’s most important in positions of leadership. Our school board has done that. And I think if you’re out in the community at all, the school board chair, Pete Johnson, unless you knew where Pete was from, you wouldn’t know where he’s from. Because Pete Johnson is throughout the school system in the schools, letting our administrators know they’re appreciated. You see them at different, whether it’s a Fine Arts event or athletic events, the school board chairman is out there.

Greg

And when the leader of your school board is doing that, you know you’re in a good situation. You have people in leadership who actually care about the product that they’re governing. When I see that, it makes me excited. I mean, it’s really cool to see because I think for so long, we didn’t have that. But to have leaders invested in the school system. Our superintendent’s son is a student in the school system. And so you just have people who have really bought in. And it’s been exciting to see. So, yeah, School Board of the Year recognition for our school board. So kudos to them. They don’t always agree, but more times than not, they come out unified. They don’t always agree, but they’re going to move forward together. And so I think as a citizen, to sit back and watch that, it’s encouraging because for the most part, they don’t let politics get in the way. And for the Tennessee School Boards Association to recognize that, that’s been really good. Of course, many, many, many of our schools have received individual awards or recognizes. By May, in May, the total number of students at JCM early College High that have graduated with an associate’s degree since 2019 will be 179.

Greg

So 179 students in Jackson, Madison County since 2019 have graduated from high school with that associate’s degree in hand. That’s just a great testament. And again, you know there are certain people you see in front of the cameras, but there are a lot of people back at the central office doing the heavy lifting and the planning to get things going. And in a few days, you’re going to hear an announcement, a major, major, major investment. You guys know about the Melissa STEM Innovation Center? A major, major investment from a private donor for Melissa’s Innovation Center. That’s coming up. I can’t spill the beans now. I’d like to. I probably can’t. I’ll just tease it and tell you that. But when you see outside entities-Investing in the public school system. Investing in the public school system. Say, Wait, wait, wait. We heard about this innovative platform you guys have for middle school students to get them experience. We know exposure is so important. Exposure in these pre-engineering in science. You think about mechatronics, you think about cybersecurity, robotics, And so the Melissa Stem Innovation Center is going to offer that for middle school students. The reason I’m excited, I fully realize not all those kids are going to go into engineering, but they’re going to matriculate to a high school with higher capacity for work in the lab, a higher capacity to complete into a study technology.

Greg

So that’s going to be a better biostem student at North Side. That’s going to be a better construction core student at South Side, a better automotive student, a better bechotronic student at JCM early College High. Those innovative programs at the middle school level is just going to make our high school programs better, and then it’s going to make our graduates that much stronger. So a ton of stuff going on. Those are two that stick out. You think about it at JCM High School this year, this school year, they started a program with Lane College. Of course, on the campus of Lane College is the CVS Innovation Workforce Center. It’s essentially Lane College working with CVS to raise up and train that next generation of pharmacists, of pharmacy techs, of health care professionals, where there are students at JCM High School that get to go to Lane College to take training in pharmacy tech. And so once those students complete that course, when they graduate from high school, they’re also going to have in their hand or certificate a credential that will allow them, allow them right out of high school to be able to work as a pharmacy tech.

Greg

When you talk about options and opportunities, Kevin, this is the tip of the iceberg. A lot of this stuff is located at jmcss.org. It’s really an exciting time to be in our school system, but none of this is possible without the employees who do the heavy lifting every day. We’re certainly appreciative of all of our teachers, all of our support staff. I was at the lift a few days ago.

Kevin

Brag about it.

Greg

I was at the lift a few, a few days ago. Snow day, so we’ve been eating more snacks. I’m just breaking even. But I saw my bus driver. So Frida Oakley was my bus driver when… Actually, I rode the bus kindergarten through high school, and I saw my bus driver, she was at the lift. It’s like seeing a family member. I know the way I feel about the folks who helped raise me. They’re another generation of kids in Madison County, and it takes a partnership. We need strong families. We also need a strong school system. Our support staff is added in that. When I think about what makes us special, truly, yes, the programs, but I think about the people, not just teachers, but also the support staff, because I just remember in my own context how important all those people were to me.

Kevin

Well, Greg, I want to thank you so much for your time in joining us on the Content Machine podcast. If people want to follow you online, where should they find you?

Greg

Well, they can find me on X, but I’m still going to say Twitter, Kevin, because-

Kevin

It’s Twitter.com still. Elon, figure it out.

Greg

@formersportsguy on Twitter. I’m also on Instagram, but I’m only there because I have to be.

Kevin

Twitter guy, though. Yeah. Me too. Solvably. All right. You can find more episodes of the Content Machine podcast on your favorite podcast player. You can find for the district podcast, too.

Greg

For the district podcast, jmcss.org/podcast.

Kevin

There you go. All right. Thanks, Greg.

Greg

Thanks, Kevin.