content repurposing

Unedited Transcript

Jim Rembach (00:00):

Okay, B2B DM gang. I have somebody on the show today who is going to give us some great insight from her gosh, approaching. Well, we don’t want, we don’t want to date her, but many years of experience and B to B marketing, and we’re going to focus in on some digital aspects that are gonna really make a difference for you and give you a different perspective. Now, Chloe Thomas is also a bestselling author. She’s a speaker and a podcaster, and she’s actually getting ready to launch another podcast here, coming up shortly. And we may talk about that at the second. Um, but her book, her most recent book that is most apropos for you is the B2B eCommerce master plan, which is an Amazon bestseller that you can actually pick up a on your Kindle version as well as audio book, as well as, um, you know, just that the solid copy that you want to keep as a desk reference. So, Chloe, thanks for joining us on the B2B DM show. Tell us a little bit about your background and experience in this area and in how it actually can benefit our listeners today.

Chloë Thomas (00:58):

So thanks for that lovely intro, Jim, and you’re more than welcome to date me. Um, uh, in terms of age, uh, we’re far too much ocean in the way it’s date me any other way. I think it’d be 40 difficult distance relationship and in these circumstances over the sea, but it’d be, yes, I’ve been in the world of marketing for over 15 years and I probably it’d be more accurate to say nearly 20 years. Um, I started off on purely on the consumer side. So businesses selling to consumers. I worked for Barclay’s bank, one of the biggest banks here in the UK. Then I worked for a high street retailer doing a mix of digital and offline marketing. And then I set up a marketing agency and that was, that was my first experience of the world of B to B marketing and B2B digital marketing ran that for 10 years, uh, tried all sorts of things.

Chloë Thomas (01:46):

We ran our own events, we spoken about it. So we took stands at events, email, social media. You know, you think about how much happened. I think that was 2007 to 2017, how much development there was in the space. We tried all of it. Um, whilst running Google ads and email marketing and Facebook ads and LinkedIn advertising for businesses, both on the BTC and the B to B side of things. Then before selling that, um, I started the business. I now run, which is called eCommerce master plan, which is all about helping eCommerce business owners improve their businesses. So whilst I spend my life talking about e-commerce and selling to consumers, mostly apart from the book, you mentioned B to B eCommerce plan where that’s helping businesses sell to other businesses via the web. Most of what I do day to day is actually B to B marketing, you know, trying to get other business people, to listen to my podcast, to buy my courses, um, occasionally also to, to, um, you know, to buy my services, although these days I don’t do a lot of that.

Chloë Thomas (02:53):

Um, and then on the other side, I suppose the thing which I do, and I did quite a lot of work for other businesses selling to eCommerce businesses. I know it’s a complex world. I inhabit, I mean, you know, so the likes of the big email, SAS providers and other website providers and the big SAS businesses and helping them to sell to other businesses by speaking at their events, um, taking their sponsorship money and various things like that. So over the last 15 years, I’ve experienced B2B marketing from multiple different angles. And I suspect in this chat, we’re going to hit on quite a few of them and hopefully quite a few bits of pieces of that will be helpful to your audience.

Jim Rembach (03:33):

Well, and I think what you just mentioned is so important is that diversity of background and that what a lot of people may not see from a perspective is that while you’re focusing on one particular niche from a, your solutions that you’re offering perspective, you’re still doing a lot of the work that a lot of our listeners are really interested in is how, how do I attract, how do I build brand? How do I build relationship? You know, how do I convert? I mean, all those things that are important for that longer sales cycle, that most of our listeners are, are having to get over the hump on a, so when I talk about, you know, the passion that you have in this particular space, knowing, you know, who our audience is and what we focus in on, give us a little bit of insight into that.

Chloë Thomas (04:16):

Yeah, this is essentially cause my, my passions tend to change almost from day to day. Um, but I suppose the thing which, you know, in these, in these times where here in the UK, every conference has been canceled for this year and for my own sales process, when I’m, you know, a really important part of my business is selling to those SAS companies who sell to other, other businesses to sponsor the podcast, to sponsor my books, to pay me, to speak at events and webinars. And usually the me, the, um, the relationship with those begins at our biggie commerce, expos, you know, those big shows where I will very respectfully trawl my way around the stands going, Hey, do you need someone to speak at your event? Have you seen my book? Would you like some copies? Do you know what a podcast is that person wants to buy from you?

Chloë Thomas (05:06):

Stop talking to me, you know, very, very respectfully. Um, and the, uh, you know, I, it’s a really big experiment for me. Can I, this year will probably be okay, but will next year be all right if I haven’t got those face to face opportunities to make that first point of contact with people. And that’s, that’s something which I’ve really been mulling over this year and trying to, well, not this year in the last couple of months and trying to work out how I’m, how I’m going to fix it. And it’s what I’m, what I’m finding so far is that LinkedIn is doing great things. I don’t know if they’ve changed the algorithm or something, but there’s some really good engagement going on on LinkedIn. And then the other side of it is attending the big virtual conferences that are happening the big virtual summits, which in my industry, everyone’s a virtual summit now, you know, we seem to move past webinars to virtual summits. And within those, there’s some quite interesting networking going on. Some which I think is working in some, which just seems a bit blast everyone. You can find on the attendee list, but I’m currently trying to work out how those work. So I guess those would be my passions at the moment.

Jim Rembach (06:16):

Well, and I think you bring up some really interesting points in that a lot of organizations are taking what they’ve traditionally been doing and just trying to just force it up into the internet or into the cloud or whatever you want to refer to it as. And that has not worked for a lot of organizations. I mean, I’ve heard more horror stories and scenarios where people said, Oh, that was just a bad experience. Um, because it’s not the same thing. I mean, I did a virtual virtual summit, you know, a year and a half ago. Right. Um, before all of this stuff started happening and even then I know the whole user experience became a vital importance for me. You know, part of that is my background being in customer experience and contact centers and all that. But, um, I, you know, I see that the user experience is yet going to cause a whole lot of dropout in a lot of these companies or even trying to do some of the virtual things.

Chloë Thomas (07:07):

Yeah. And what we’re seeing from some of them that have happened in our industry so far is, um, there’s a few businesses who are trying to create a virtual summit and because they’ve never done one before and like you I’ve done a couple of my own in the past. And there are very different beasts to the offline event. And they’re trying to mirror the offline event, which leads to some quite impressive complexity. I spoke at one the other day and we had to log into one thing to move our slide deck. Another thing to meet up with people before we went live, another thing to be live. And there was like, it was just like, wow, this is quite common. I mean, it created a really pretty video screen for the person watching, but I’m not sure it was worth it for that amount of complexity and that amount of stress for quite frankly, everybody involved.

Chloë Thomas (07:55):

And I think the other side of it is how, you know, these big events, even when they’re virtual, they still take a lot of effort to put on. There’s still a lot of cost involved. You’ve still got people who want to sponsor, you want people to sponsor it. And the people who want to sponsor want people to come to their virtual booth. And you know, we, I’m speaking to one person who’s done one of these recently and they were doing a competition. If you come to our booth, you could win some crazy, really nice prize. And they got five people out of a conference that had 10, a thousand signed up and they were, they were hammering that during the day, you know, it was hard to avoid that message and still people weren’t going there, whether they couldn’t find it on the user experience wise on the screen or not. I don’t know, but it’s, it’s difficult. It’s, it’s a much, you’ve really got to change your head space and you can’t just copy and paste it on and offline cause it’s a very different beast. Yeah.

Jim Rembach (08:48):

Okay. So that brings up a really interesting point when you start talking about incentivization and incentivizing and a lot of people think, Hey, you give them a bigger prize and you know that we’re going to show up, but then again, who are the ones showing up for the prize? I mean, are they really prospects and easy to say, Hey, just incentivize. I mean, I was having the same issue and you and I, you know, talk about, you know, podcasting and podcast launches and how, um, you know, there’s some things that are important in regards to, you know, getting noticed as far as your podcast is concerned and there’s tactics and strategies and things like that. And you start asking yourself the question of incentivizing it’s like, Hmm. And the fact is, is that’s a very, very slippery slope, which could have a, you know, a negative boomerang.

Chloë Thomas (09:35):

Yeah. It’s something that we talk about in the eCommerce space a lot as well. It’s like, Oh yeah, you come on a competition to get email signups so you can give away, I don’t know, a big gift box to some big gift hamper or something. But when you, what you actually sell is I dunno, a water bottles. It’s not a very relevant prize. Whereas if you’re giving away a water bottle, then you know, the people are signing up at interested in water bottles. And that doesn’t necessarily correlate in the SAS space. If you’re selling email software, you’ve probably already got a free sign up running. So what’s the competition for, um, maybe it should be for, you know, six months free usage of the platform or something, or, or free consulting when you sign up. But it it’s difficult because I mean, you, I guess quite possibly like you, you like me and like many of our listeners, you go to a conference and you find out which piece of tech is invoked because every stand is giving away an iPad. And then they were all giving away an Amazon Alexa and it’s, you know, then it was an Apple watch came after that. And it’s like, Oh really? What? I’m interested in your software, but I don’t want to, when the Apple watch, it’s all a bit, gets a bit too generic.

Jim Rembach (10:42):

Yeah. It’s funny to even say that, um, I went to a large conference several years back and at the time I was, um, you know, um, a provider of services as well, uh, that happened to be there. And I happened to sit in on this short demo for this one, uh, organization, you know, that their did their little, you know, five, 10 minute, you know, here’s our solution, new updates, that kind of thing. And so I was curious, so I sat down, I listened and they did a drawing for the 15 people that were sitting there and I won a a hundred dollars gift card. Um, and I gave it back to him. I said, actually, I’m a solution provider too. He goes, are you, he didn’t, he almost didn’t want to take it back. And I’m like I said, give it to one of your people who are, you know, that are sitting here. That could be a potential customer. I said, because it’s not me. Um, but so I actually gave back money,

Chloë Thomas (11:28):

But it’s, it’s strange how, um, you know, one of the things which I learned early on in my kind of sales and marketing career was that, uh, no is as useful as a yes. Cause you can take that person off. You can stop wasting time and energy on them. Um, and you can just get on with it with other things. And at the moment, I’m fine. I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. I’m quite visible. And because I have the word e-commerce in my, in my piece, I get a lot of communications that should for retailers. And a lot of people are bulk mailing, massive amount of bolt mailing on LinkedIn at the moment, you know, they’ll connect and then they sale and they sell it. They sell so, but I get some really good connections through LinkedIn as well. So I try and keep that inbox clear by going back to them, going look happy to be connected, but I am not your target customer.

Chloë Thomas (12:12):

So there’s no point in selling to me and you’ll be amazed. People who come back going, are you sure you’re not my target customer? And I’m like, wait, right. One, you were a bad marketer in the first place because you hadn’t looked at my profile yet. Cause I’m looking and I’m going well, you’d be a perfect sponsor for my podcast, but I’m not joining the dots for you. You can join the dots because you know, you clearly don’t know who I am. Um, cause you haven’t looked at my profile page and you kinda like, right. So I’ve gone back and I said, I’m not a good connection. You know, why not? You know, you can see certain amount on LinkedIn mail that this is, you know, podcast host, probably not a retailer. And then, you know, you’re like, all right, I’ve gone back and told you, I’m not a prospect. Why don’t you take a look at my site and go, Oh, hold on. You know? And they might go, Oh, maybe you’ve got clients. Maybe we could do something on the podcast. If they come back with a reason, you know, something that shows they’ve actually put some effort in that I’m all up for it. But yeah, it amazes me. How many salespeople, when you say, look, there’s no point in trying to sell to me, just hold on for grip grim. This is not good marketing. Good.

Jim Rembach (13:12):

Well, I think what you’re just stating right. There is an issue with a lot of B2B digital marketers right now is what do I do? You know, how do I spammy? How do I not, you know, create a situation where I get turned off, but I guess I do have to say this, you know, it also, it also not a situation where it’s, um, you know, if you miss once you’re dead, because there are so many things that are coming up people and, and the, the recall and memory, I mean, you know, I don’t think we can remember, you know, who tried to do something like that, you know, two months ago. So have a little bit of pause there.

Chloë Thomas (13:51):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s a, I think that, I think actually the recall of people for me, I find is less when I’m not meeting them in the physical space. Somehow I remember people less when I’m only ever meeting them on line when I’m only ever meeting them via LinkedIn or email or something. So I have to really consciously try and work a bit harder at remembering the important people and forgetting the ones who keep trying to sell me things I’m never going to buy.

Jim Rembach (14:19):

So with that being said, I mean, we’re chasing a lot of different things, right. And you even talked about going to a show and it’s like, Hey, you know, it’s the brand new, you know, Apple something or the brand new, whatever, Alexa something. I mean, so when you start talking about, you know, B2B, digital marketing, what do you think right now is overrated?

Chloë Thomas (14:39):

Oh, that’s a tricky question. Cause at the moment there’s, um, there’s so many things which everyone’s getting used to and making better, you know, um, people, there’s a lot of webinars that are terrible. There’s a lot of, um, uh, virtual summits that are terrible at the moment as well. But I don’t think that necessarily means that overrated, I think, Oh shit, Oh, such a tricky question. This is the one that on which, which, which I find the most difficult, I suppose, I suppose actually for me in my, the worst thing I’ve done in the last 12 months is run one of those LinkedIn, each outreach campaigns that promises the earth and I can see it would work in some spaces, but if you cannot target your target customer with keywords that they might’ve put in their LinkedIn profile, it’s almost certainly going to fail for you. So I think that’s one of the, for me, that’s the worst one I’ve done in the last 12 months.

Jim Rembach (15:37):

Well, and a lot of people talk about the whole expense with LinkedIn and LinkedIn marketing and, but we’re, and then we’re also on the flip side here and a lot of backlash, for example, on Facebook and Facebook ads and, you know, companies pull in big dollars and, and, and, you know, you look at just some of the spend that is currently taking place and how it’s prioritized and things like that. I mean, you know, w what should a, B to B digital marketer do? I mean, so if I start talking about, I want to be someone who stands out, I want to do something different. I want to be the one that they are paying attention to when they have 10 other things that could potentially capture their attention. So how do I become that disruptor?

Chloë Thomas (16:16):

I’m not sure there’s a marketing method that would make you the disruptor. I think it has to be the quality of the content. Um, whether that’s the quality of a tweet, the quality of a Facebook ad, the quality of a podcast or a book or a report. If it’s something that’s high quality, then I think you’re going to get the results from it. And I think we’re entering a space where less is more so it’s no longer a case of, we need to release a report every month, this year in order to get our leads up and all the rest of it. It’s a case of we should release one report per quarter or one report every six months and really work at, you know, work on making sure it’s high quality and then work on making sure we’re promoting it in the right places. So as people hear about it, and they hear the stories that’s going on, podcasts going on, YouTube channels, doing interviews, getting into the press, but having real value to it and then getting it out in front of people. And I think that’s, that’s, what’s going to disrupt is taking a step back and slowing down the content churn. So you could actually make each piece pay and be worth creating in the first place.

Jim Rembach (17:24):

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I’ve seen, um, sometimes the whole, um, as they say, hamster wheel starts rolling. When you start talking about content then, and I, I mean, for me, I see all the time, you know, with clients and non-clients, uh, with my agency is that, um, they’ll create something and just deposit it and leave it behind. And I’m like, well, Whoa, wait a minute. Fantastic. Now let’s talk about repurposing. Let’s talk about, you know, actually leveraging this. And in other ways, um, you know, besides just the whole content, you know, repurposing, I mean, there’s so many different things that could happen, um, that I don’t think people just really look at it cause they’re too busy. Hey, I gotta go move on to the next thing. So I think that’s a really valid and important point. So when you start talking about that and that issue where some of the key opportunities that exist. So if I created something, what should I be looking at doing?

Chloë Thomas (18:19):

I think that the repurposing thing, just to add something in that, which, which comes from my, my second ever job, where I was doing catalog mailings. And if you’ve, if anyone who’s ever been a catalog, mailer will know that you release the catalog and then a month later you put a different cover on it and you send the customers exactly the same catalog and you get more sales from the same people because they think it’s new. And 99% of it was exactly the same. It’s really, really cost effective, very, very powerful. And the same thing happens with white papers and reports. Um, I wrote one, a couple of years ago for Trustpilot the reviews company. It was a thing of beauty. It was like 20 different ways to use your reviews. I was really proud of it, and it was based on all their case studies and they were giving it away at one of the big events in the UK.

Chloë Thomas (19:09):

And I, you know, the following year, when do you want me to do another one that no, that’s okay. Turn up to the event. And they just put a new cover on. And I was part of me was like, that’s awesome. He was like, got it lost is they’re never going to buy another one for me. They’re just going to keep recovering it every year. But so you can recover and relaunch as well. But I suppose if you want to get the story out that I’m slightly biased, but I think podcasts are a great way to go. I think at the moment, in particular, on the webinar front in the UK, everyone is wanting to do partnership webinars. You know, I’ll come on, let’s do a webinar together. We’ll both promote it to our list. We’ll get some clients and we’ll get something and we’ll talk about something interesting and we’ll do it with you, you and you, because that’s better.

Chloë Thomas (19:52):

And that’s what everyone’s up to because they are desperate for interesting content. And the clients are getting bored of having to go on webinars every five minutes. So to go to them and go, we’ve got this brilliant report. Can I come on your webinar and talk about it? If it’s high quality, they’ll agree because they want to put something which is targeted to, to the core audience in front of them. So I think that’s, that’s a good opportunity reaching out and asking if you can come and talk about it so people can hear about it.

Jim Rembach (20:20):

Well, and I think for some folks, uh, in the B2B space, I don’t hear it as much. I hear it, uh, definitely in the expert space where part of their core marketing activities is to get on as many podcasts as they possibly can.

Chloë Thomas (20:35):

Yeah. And it seems to be a few of the SAS people I know have started making moves in that direction. Um, a lot of, a lot of SAS business owners, according to the marketing and salespeople I talked to are very excited about podcasts, very excited about podcasts. So a lot of people are now doing it cause the boss has got excited about, which is a good thing because you know, it’s a great way to do it. So there’s there’s um, and I’m getting a lot more from SAS businesses who I, I would never kind of old world SAS businesses rather than new world SAS businesses, if that makes sense, um, who are, who’ve hired people to do the reach out and to try and get on shows. So it’s, um, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunity there, I think.

Jim Rembach (21:18):

No, most definitely. Okay. But with that being said, you know, there’s some constraints that we all have to work through. And one of the constraints is I only have a certain amount of money that I can leverage, uh, and all of our all resources in order to be able to accomplish my goal. And my goal from a B2B digital marketer perspective is to be able to present sales opportunities. So to the sales team. So if I were to say given constraints, I don’t have any more to spend. Where would you potentially look at reallocating some funds, uh, given where we are today?

Chloë Thomas (21:54):

I think, I think this is probably something I would have said before COVID-19 struck. Um, but certainly now when the big events are being canceled, which is a huge chunk of many marketers money, is those face to face events that, and that those, you get huge volume of leads, virtual events, you get much smaller volume of leads for similar amounts of effort, if not similar amounts of money. So the really crucial thing is to have great follow up in place. So I’d be investing in great email campaign sequences, potentially SMS sequences to make sure that both the new data is getting the best possible impression of the business and understanding of how they’re going to move into the sales process and want to move into the sales process. But also so that we’re, we’re, we’re picking the greatness out of the database we’ve already got, you know, it’s not about new, new news.

Chloë Thomas (22:46):

You know, we talk about the longterm sales process, certain alien e-commerce, you could have someone on your list for like two or three years before they decide it’s the right time to buy. You know, there’s only certain windows of the year when they’re going to put in place new software and there’s 20 different types of new software where they could put in place. And they can only put one in once a quarter maybe or one in once a month. So however much they like it if they like something else more. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of power in that, that kind of legacy database. So I’d be investing in the followup sequence is the work for that. I might even if the relationship with the sales team is strong enough and that’s where this one comes in, um, would you, could you then build some automations that help support the sales team, so to help their process to make sure that they’re right, they’re better equipped to convert because the marketing is really supporting them at that point. Cause that’s often a bit which, which people never quite get as far as working out because each sales person wants to do it differently and all the rest of it. So it can be, can be challenging to do that, but it can be very powerful if you, if you can make it work with your sales team.

Jim Rembach (23:52):

Yeah. I think that’s a such a vital point because much like we were talking about content that gets deposited and left behind the same thing happens with the contact or lead or a prospect. And, you know, it gets deposited and left behind all that was, that event is over. There is not a consideration of, you know, the fact that they may be a customer, you know, many, many of them months down the road. And I have to put that into my consideration set with whatever I’m doing and you’re right. I think that’s oftentimes the disconnect, you know, between the market sales activities is that there’s no continuation. It’s like, Hey, you know, um, first of all, are they quality leads? You know, that’s one thing, well, if you haven’t done any of that sequencing, if you haven’t done any of those automations, if you haven’t done any of that, how would you really ever know?

Jim Rembach (24:34):

Right. I mean, yeah, ends up happening is sales just says, Oh, you’re not giving me good stuff. Or we’re not going to sponsor that again. Or, and they just move on without actually really doing the work. So when I think about all of your background and experience, I started thinking about, you know, having fun with a lot of that and being able to leverage it. And so therefore let’s take off the blinders, let’s take off their constraints and you have unlimited budgets to do whatever you wanted. What would you love to do with that money?

Chloë Thomas (25:04):

Oh man, unlimited budget in my business. I would pay someone else to do the sales so I could spend more time on the marketing. I am, I’m a very well trained sales person, but I am not a natural salesperson. So, you know, to, to have the money, to be able to go out there and find a good sales person who fit in my business would be awesome. Cause it’s something I’ve never achieved today. So I guess that would be the first one on the list. Cause then, then you’ve got someone who can do the selling. So I can just concentrate on the marketing and generating them great leads to, well, Hey, there we go. Um, so that’s kind of the first thing I do then I would probably create some really good flows. Actually. It’s kind of like the, um, in the UK we say that the cobbler’s children’s shoes are always the worst shoes.

Chloë Thomas (25:53):

I don’t know if you have that same phrase in America. Um, so it would be a case of getting, um, getting my own email sequences up to speed and actually outsourcing that, which is something I can never justify because I should, should’ve done it well and I should have done it myself. So I think that that kind of piece I would definitely go after. And then once you’ve got that in place, it will be all about the advertising spend. Um, you mentioned Facebook ads being, um, an interesting space to be at the moment. Um, I think it’s July, everyone’s pulled back in and being very public about the fact they’re not gonna gonna use Facebook ads in July. I’m due to be launching my new podcast in July, which was about to have a huge spend on Facebook. There’s like, I’m not sure I can have brand new on a Facebook ad without potentially getting some negative repercussions.

Chloë Thomas (26:42):

So shifted that budget, um, into Twitter ads, which is something I’ve wanted to play around with for a long time. And, um, I’ve been playing around with that for about two days now and I’m seeing some quite interesting, I mean, far too early to tell really, but I’m seeing some quite interesting numbers on that. So I think, I think a lot would get spent on advertising on different platforms and working out the right thing to do on each. So if that answers your question, I’m not sure I’ve spent, spent a full million dollars, but um, yeah, that’s, that’s what I, what I do.

Jim Rembach (27:14):

Well, I would dare to say, um, some, one of the things that you’ve mentioned there that was really important and you didn’t carve it out per se, but, um, it’s testing. Yes,

Chloë Thomas (27:25):

It’s definitely. Yeah. It’s definitely not a case of here’s a load of money. Let’s spend it all this month. It would be a case of, you know, cause to go from, from a restricted budget to a massive budget is a dangerous thing. If you allocate all the money a month, one you’ve really got to go, right? We’ve got opportunities here, where would the best place be, and test and test and test and test and know. And the thing, the interesting thing is is your budget’s increasing, you start doing more than each of those things affects the other things more. So the whole, the whole, um, kind of structure changes simply because you’re doing more. So yeah. Yeah. There’d be a lot of testing involved as well.

Jim Rembach (28:01):

Well, and with that, you know, you talking about your background and experience and being so diverse in what you do for clients and what you’ve done in the past and your agency background and experience, and you know what you’re doing now and you’re speaking and I mean, you have all this, you know, diversity, which is, uh, you know, has significant amount of value in a lot of different ways. However, I think when you start looking at an individual digital marketer, you have to start saying, you know, what, what are some of the things that really they should be asking in order to be successful? So what are the, what is a question that a marketer should be asking themselves right now?

Chloë Thomas (28:35):

I think, you know, it should always be about taking a step back and seeing the wider picture, you know, right the way from where we get our leads through to retention at the other end and working at what point in that customer journey, your weakest, cause it’s really easy to go, Oh, Twitter ads. We’ll just keep working on the Twitter ads or all the events have been canceled. We need to generate leads, but actually there might be another point in the chain where you’re actually weakest, but the fact you’re able to pick up a few thousand leads at a big event. Do you spend a huge amount of money on every, every couple of months covered up the holes in the rest of the process. So just take a step back and go, where’s the weak point and then to focus in on improving that and to really focus in on improving that for a month or so before coming back up and taking it, that’s the question we should always be asking ourselves is where are we weakest?

Jim Rembach (29:29):

Yeah. And doing that throughout the year. Right? So it’s, when you start thinking about that, how often do we have to kind of do that review

Chloë Thomas (29:38):

In the old world? I would said about once every three months, I like to work on a quarterly planning process. And I find that gives you enough time to really make a difference. Cause we do it every week. Um, you know, you, you don’t make a difference. You, you know, you, you tweak something, you learn nothing and then you go and forget all about it and work on something else. Um, that’s so I’ll just say quarterly in a normal world, but because at the moment, behavior of the end consumer of whatever you’re doing, be their business will be their consumer of human beings. The way we’re living, the way where we’re adapting is changing so much, it’s gotta be a shorter time span than that. So if you’re going to do a less deep review to work out where you should focus because you can’t do, you know what you would do as a quarterly deep review every month, because you’d spent far too much time reviewing and not enough time doing, but you need to, to every month you should be asking the question is what I thought I should be working on this month, what I should be working on this month.

Chloë Thomas (30:35):

And it’s that speed of reassessment. And that speed of being able to adapt is what’s really, um, I think separating the winners from the losers at the moment.

Jim Rembach (30:45):

Most definitely Chloe I’ve had fun with you today. Um, can you please share with the B2B DM gang, how they can get in touch with you and share some information about that new podcast that you’re doing?

Chloë Thomas (30:54):

Yeah. Cool. So the, uh, the new podcast is called keep optimizing, which, because I’m British, I’m spelling with an ass, which I’m sure in a couple of years, time I would deeply regret. Um, but for now it’s spelled with an S a so keep optimizing. And that’s actually my personal mantra, which is kind of a combination of test, test, test, and a combination of where are you weakest? And it’s all about marketing. I mean, it’s coming at it from an eCommerce perspective, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there for any marketer, to be honest, because as you can tell my interest and a lot wider than just, just e-commerce and what we’re doing on that show, which is a bit different to others is each month we are focusing on a different topic. So our first month is all about email and I’ve got a different email expert every month. Second month is about SEO. And then on we go to, to pastor’s new each month, which is going to keep me interested. And I hope we’re getting the audience interested too. And you can find out everything, you know, how to get in contact with me about my podcast or my books and all the rest of it. Just go to eCommerce, master plan.com and you’ll find links to everything there.

Jim Rembach (31:56):

Chloe Thomas, thanks for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and the B2B D M gang wishes you the very best.

Chloë Thomas (32:01):

Thank you, Jim. It’s been an absolute pleasure to hang out with you too.