Don't Say FUNNEL

(00:00) I'm so, so sorry that I excel at everything more than you. Were just living in your mist. Your magical. I just hope that I create a wake and you can keep surfing behind it. That's what we're doing, man. We're just trying to keep up on that wakeboard of life. Musical intro Welcome to the marketing team Of one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets.

(00:40) Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Hey, Mike. What's that I see on your cheek there? Has it been raining? Yeah, on my face. On your face? Yeah. What's going on. It's, It's one of those days. Just kind of like... What the funnel! Like. Funnel... The word funnel is just... It's used so many different ways and I think if you ask a bunch of different people, they're all going to give you different answers and stuff like that.

(01:13) So we when.... Whoa, whoa, slow down. Funnel? This is something that we use to pour gasoline and or old tractor like, I don't know what you mean by funnel in a marketing sense? Oh, a marketing funnel. Yeah. Okay. And you don't like the word funnel or you just don't like the concept? I think it's gotten.

(01:37) I think the word has taken on different meanings that I think it's confusing the issue a little bit. Because it's. So I am not using that word again. You're not using the F-word. The F-word. from here on out, so I'll have to bleep it if we accidentally said, okay, yeah, we're a pretty clean show here.

(01:54) So yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm not saying the f word again because I think it's just I think I think different people have kind of taken their different understandings of what it is. And, I think it's just to add to some confusion when I'm talking to people. What what do you then use instead of the word funnel? Because that seems to be I've heard of that a lot.

(02:13) And everybody talks about customer journey and how it's, you know, you move the... the sales force is always moving people through the funnel to get to a paying customer. Right. Is that the kind of the original concept behind the F word? using the word customer journey is probably a little bit better.

(02:32) I think the funnel. Oh geez... That again ...this guy... that implies that you're forcing something from net into something smaller. Like if you're making sausage, you're actively pushing things into the funnel to get it into it. Nobody likes to see that. Nobody likes to see you making the sausage.

(02:56) I don't like the idea of the wording. We're moving people through the f*nnel, through the F word. I don't like it. I think it's better to to think of it as their the customers are on a journey and we're trying to meet them where they are in that journey with the goal of, you know, creating leads, you know, but you're meeting them where they are on a journey.

(03:25) I don't I don't want to feel like we're taking a bunch of people and, like, forcing them through this thing that's constricting thing, everything down, and then just pooping them out of the bottom. We're not going to bleep that word? I guess that's clean enough. We can leave that in there.

(03:39) Okay. But like, I just think that, the intentions are great and everything, but what I think when there's confusion with that f word between like the overarching, like basic marketing concept where and more tactics that are done like I've, I've heard, I've heard the f word used for like a very specific set of deliverables.

(04:02) it doesn't feel right to me, it doesn't ring true. our jobs as marketers, is to encourage maybe as a guide, would you say, is that maybe a better way of phrasing that? Is that more of the process? But still, I feel like when you're guiding, you're grabbing them by the hand and maybe, it seems I think you need to I think a lot of it comes back to meeting your, your customers where they are in the journey and trying to.

(04:29) So in guiding them in that you're meeting where they're at and then showing them what some next steps are. So yeah. And in that case, yes, you are guiding them. You're more and though on that level it's even just more educational is more like you can choose these many paths. Here's one, two or oh, this one's really this one's really great.

(04:53) Here. You might want to go down that one. But that's kind of a really soft sell. But I think that speaks a little bit to people's levels of disrespect for being sold to. I guess is what I'm thinking. People don't want to be sold. They don't want to be pushed. They don't want to be even take my hand and walk me through this But I would imagine as you work your way through this process.

(05:19) Like it....Thank you. I thought the idea was that, you know, the top of that was your mass, you know, just trying to gain awareness. Right, is a the first phase of the process. So you're really just blasting out general information that educates people. But I mean, speak to that. What do you what what do you think is that level of content? in the beginning people might not even they're kind of like they're not totally aware of, you as a service or a product.

(05:52) Right? You're trying to build awareness for your, thing. So you're, you're creating things that introduce your company, your product or whatever. General. In a very general way to to get them to understand that, hey, this is a thing. But I thought the. Idea was with the F word was that there's less and less people.

(06:14) So that it does kind of look the size of, Yeah, it does do that. Like it visually. You are culling down your options. You like starting. Let's say you're starting with 100 and, you know, 100 of those aren't going to, you know, buy your product or service. but, you know, you might get five and they've made their way all the way through that upside down triangle, that triangle shape with a hole at the bottom.

(06:42) as a warm lead. What? Or a hot lead or. I mean, this is where the confusion with with funnels is... There's actually if you talk to marketers, there's certain things. You've talked to salespeople, they have their own version of it. And there's a it's almost like, it's one on top of the other type thing.

(07:04) so that's how you get into this point where everybody's got their own version of what the thing is the F word is. The basic marketing concept of the funnel where you've got the different stages of awareness, and then the other one would be like, oh, we're going to build a funnel. And the funnel is going to be a lead generator.

(07:30) And and a follow up email sequence and stuff like that. There are people who call consider that a funnel. Okay. I think that's misleading. And I have more issue with that being called a funnel, than the marketing concept. What would you prefer that be called? a lead generator or an offer. Putting together an offer.

(07:50) Well, like talk would specifically. So that's like a five email campaign where it starts off for a wide and then kind of gets more specific. Like really, the reality is, if you've got a funnel and you have and you're trying to hit people at the different points, if we're going to accept that idea of a funnel and we've got the awareness up here, then the consideration and then the decision you need do you need to have some kind of like offers, lead magnets or something for every step in that journey to keep people coming back,

(08:26) and as people would say, move them along the funnel. So calling one of those pieces a funnel is pretty misleading. so I would I would say you're packaging it up as an offer and, or your packaging up a lead magnet and the lead magnet's goal is to provide value to the customer where they're at right now.

(08:53) Show them where they can go from there, no matter where they are on their journey. What are the next steps. Right? And then, capture that email address. So you can then follow up with emails. and that's where you're guiding people on their journey. and I again, I like I like the word journey way better than funnel.

(09:17) Duly noted. Yeah. We're talking about guiding them through a journey. And the ultimate goal of what you say is email. That's what we're trying to capture. What's why why just an email I mean obviously we want the sale, but But I think there's a bunch of different reasons why you might want to do why emails preferable.

(09:37) one is relatively cheap. I mean, almost every service out there, you pay for the amount of contacts you have and or how many emails you're sending. that cost is relatively low, especially when you compare it to advertising dollars on social media or Google or whatever. Right? So that's great. The other thing is you you're not really like with organic social and everything like that, you're so tied into the whims of the algorithm, fighting up against all those things to where you can put it out there, but really, you can't just, like,

(10:15) put this thing out there, and not do anything else. Like, I think there's a lot of, like, engagement in a lot of other stuff that you need. There other social media activities that you need to be doing to try and make sure that that thing that you did organically shows up. Right? So with email, you, you've got a list of people who you know are somewhat interested in you, something you're doing because they've expressed interest, right? You're not subject to the algorithms that, that social media is, you know, favoring.

(10:47) It's a walled garden in a sense. You have your own audience that you've accumulated and can curate and And reach out to them in a very customized way per segment. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that's... getting into segments and stuff like that. That's even more, you know, that's a level of sophistication.

(11:06) You know, that's a 201 class, I think when it comes to like, email marketing. email marketing is one of the more effective things, consistently effective. And you control it all like it's more portable, like if, you know, if your email service provider that you're using, let's say MailChimp isn't doing it for you, you still got your list.

(11:25) move on to something else. Can you move your list from Instagram to TikTok? to reach them using a different thing? No, so... I think there's a lot of benefits to that. I think what you need to be able to do is know know where your customers are, what their needs are, and be able to create emails that allow you to stay in their inbox a little bit.

(11:47) like, they may not read it, but at least your name keeps popping up But you're providing enough value or potential value in what you're doing that. Yeah, they may not read this one, but they're not going to unsubscribe. Yeah I was just going to say that's that to me is the it's a little sneaky, but it's effective in a sense where just keeping your name, the brand in your customer's head, everybody still checks their email.

(12:11) That's how business is done most of the time. B2B, you know, services or products, both of those. That's... everybody still lives in their inbox. And that's. Just having the name. Even if they just go to delete it, it's still in there and it's familiar and it's in their conscious, which is valuable.

(12:28) You know, I mean, for me, I, I like the idea that I can we can you can batch things up front and do a lot of these types of things. you know, if you schedule things out, you can have a pretty good idea of what's going on. You can do for you could do it you honestly, you can sit down and do years worth of emails in a day if you really, buckle down and and brainstorm them all and start, okay, maybe a day is too much or not enough, but you know what I mean.

(12:54) Like you, the idea is that you can schedule all that out and then let that work for you while you work on other things. if you know what you're promoting and you have a really good idea of your offers and where your customers fit towards that. That doesn't mean set it and forget it either. I mean, if there's topical things that come about, what it does is it, allows you the time to go in there and create something that might be a relevant topic, maybe your product or services on the news, or there's a annual

(13:26) something that happened that brings your, you know, group, your your vertical into the news. You can then go and not spend a ton of time, write something to it, get it out there in an email. your audience is aware. Yeah. So I mean, I'm a big fan of big fan of email, more so than a lot of the other things that that we've tried.

(13:48) So we were talking about emails and we were talking about, let's talk a little bit about the content around those emails. I mean, I know that, you know, we talked about you can write at all different types of levels and how that fits into the F word. Yeah. What what what are those things that are relevant when you're creating content around an email campaign? I think really.

(14:12) You have to know your customer. I think knowing what their what problems they're facing, what are they're wants, what are their needs, and being able to write to those is going to be way more effective. The wrong approach is to send out emails every week. But check out how much better we are than you and all these things.

(14:33) You should you should buy from us. Yeah, because we're awesome. We're super great. Buy from us. You get 2 or 3 of those things. You’re going to tune out. Ah forget it. Yeah I don't care. But if I, if my, my car is making crazy squeaky voice. that's a problem. Right? And if you could send me an email that's saying, hey, is your car squeaking? It could be, you know, this, this, this or this.

(15:02) Oh that's good. Maybe I'll save that for later. And then when I realized that oh I need to have somebody really look at this. Who am I going to go to. It's going to be the people who've been sending me this helpful thing. You're building this like relationship with people. It sounds a little weird to say, but you you're building up this trust with them that you've never even.

(15:23) Yeah, like, hey, they know me. How did they know my care is squeaking? What the heck? Yeah, those guys are good. Yeah. Knowing where they're at and then knowing that those needs are different the closer they are in their journey to actually purchasing from you. Right. Like in the beginning you've got that awareness thing, you're, you're talking about like just hey we're out here.

(15:49) We're like you see a lot of content marketing stuff out there like for that are written to that kind of top, top of the funnel. Tofu as we like to say. Okay, you know, there's a lot of content marketing out there that you, you that I think that's where I discover a lot of different, brands out there or services or something, because you've written something and they've written some great article that helps you understand something, and you're like, I have never even heard of this, but oh, this is an interesting,

(16:20) you might not even consider them, but it might come back up later. So that's the awareness side of things. Right. So that's different than okay I've, I'm aware of this problem. I'm trying to solve it a little bit more. Now I'm trying to consider who who should I go with. I mean there's content that goes to that.

(16:41) And then as you get further down the decision, why should I choose you over this person? at every point that you should understand their needs and try and speak to those needs. So you're becoming more of that helpful kind of assistant or like, advisor or something like that in the way. And you've done the, you've done the work to kind of buy space in their head by sending these emails on a consistent rate that you've bought the real estate in their brain already, and now you're connecting the dots

(17:12) with stuff that meets them along the way, that all of a sudden now I. Maybe I need to call those these people or. Whatever, like, wow, I feel really good about them. Like feel like I feel like they've been had a mic in our office. feel like they really know me because, like, everywhere I... Every step of this journey that are like, anticipate, they've anticipated my needs and they've shown me the way, like, they they know me.

(17:39) Great. And how could I go wrong working with. if people are they're aware that you exist and now they're considering options, then you can if you can provide something that you trade an email for, you can capture that email and you might be able to guide them towards the solution because they already that they're aware of a problem.

(18:07) there would be different lead magnets you would use for that, that stage. Then if you're a little bit closer and they're really trying to decide, there's probably other other lead magnet things that you could do, like hey, we're fully aware of, they're fully aware of who you are, what you can do.

(18:23) They're just trying to decide between you and a competitor on what, what's important or whether this is where I want to go. Let's just define what a lead magnet is one more time, because let's assume that some people may not know what that means, by lead magnet. A lead magnet is something that where you can provide something of value to a potential customer in exchange for their email.

(18:47) So then you can take that email and nurture them over time. And they they're the ones who get added to your list. So it's like a downloadable it's something extra than just here's some general information about what we do. It helps them if maybe they're next. They're moving on to the next phases of this.

(19:05) Here's a little worksheet or here's a little e-book or some research we did around this topic specifically that might help you make a decision or just educate you as to what's out there. I mean, it's really hard to talk in vague terms, you know, about what you are if you search the web and like, what's the best...

(19:24) lead magnet, you're never going to get a great answer. You just get a whole bunch of people who've had things that worked. But there's not a one size fits all thing because it's so contingent on knowing your customer’s journey through things and what, what they need at different points in their journey.

(19:39) Effective things are like, like coupons or like discounts, you know, like get, you know, get percent off your first order. you know, if you have some kind of like consultative service or something like that, like providing them with stuff that they can try and do on their own, like a worksheet or workbook, something that that's kind of interactive, that can help, you know, that that could be almost ideal because you got them doing a bunch of the work before they even come to work with you if you're in that more of a service-based...

(20:11) But it's helpful to them because then they become a lot more self-aware where they might be in this scale of where they might be as far as on the journey of. Yeah. Learning more about your product or service or whatever it is. As they're getting closer to that decision and probably gives them a much better idea of what it would be like to work with you in those examples.

(20:31) Like a workbook or worksheet type thing could be insanely valuable if it's something that people are really struggling with And if you and especially if it's really great with your services, it can help them get a really good idea of what it's like to work with you. And before they've even contacted you, it really helps them get a great sense of, what's going on? I think a lot of marketing teams of one have to build a case sometimes for making larger purchases or going forward with certain services

(21:02) and things like that. And maybe, you can think of it in terms of like building, building tools to enable them to help make the case for an investment in X, something like that. Maybe it's that's where like worksheets and things like that can come. Out. That you can produce and give away, for that email that might help them.

(21:24) Oh, I'm, I'm working on improving this part of our process, whatever it is internally, I'm really looking at the software or the service, whatever it is. Oh, and then they've given me this downloadable thing that I can go and add in all my data, show it to my leadership and and help them inform them on making a purchase decision or something. Yeah. Yeah.

(21:47) And that works for the people that they are trying to sell to too. Right? That's that narrow vertical. Like you said, you really have to know that's not going to work for everybody else out there. You know. That's very easy. That's where you really have to learn and know your customer and where they're at not so much on that psychographic level, like this is a 32 year old female into yoga.

(22:11) eats, you know, only vegan or something. You know, it's like you don't have to be that specific with it. But knowing a lot of those things will help you really craft an and tell them too, that you understand who they are, you're meeting them where they're at. And again, leads to that confidence of going forth with working with you or buying your service or... yeah, yeah.

(22:33) Are there any examples of these things that you've run into that you think are very effective and have resonated with you? I mean, I can think of one specific one that I am insanely jealous of. And, I want to try and do you someday. Good. There's a there's a design group called Kodo Design, and they, work only with beer breweries. Yes.

(22:57) They do. They do reprints and packaging for beer brands. And they're they have put together a beer branding workbook that is, chef's kiss, it’s wonderful. It's brilliant on a number of different levels. You've got this book that you've this workbook that you can work through, and it helps educate someone.

(23:26) I'm assuming the people at these breweries don't know everything that's involved in going through a rebrand. So it's kind of walks through exercises that they would need to know. So it's like a helps them work internally about like: What's their mission? How do they want to be seen? What's the you know, it does a lot of these like brand building framework type things and it's incredibly engaging.

(23:50) It's beautiful. It's it's it fits their market perfect. The design implementation is fantastic. You go through the whole workbook and then you get to what I love is there's, a spot where their their services are needed. They put a coloring page in there and say, here, color this, go put up a beer, drink this beer, color this.

(24:16) While your design team knocks out some amazing work because of all the work you've done up here. and then the next thing is. Okay, now that your stuff's done, now that your brand is. Everything's been designed and it’s perfect. All right, here's what you need to do to promote it. Here's the steps.

(24:31) So it's like it's it sits in this perfect spot. Like if I was if I was trying to find someone to help rebrand my brewery, I was like, I don't know how you would go with anybody else. Yeah. Becasue they've provided all these things for you to understand what's going on. You get you get a sense of their personality, of how hard it is to work with them.

(24:56) And the deceptively brilliant thing about this is a lot of people look at that workbook and go, Oh, that's a lot of work, a lot of work. I don't have all the answers to all these things. Some people might, and that's great. They can come into meetings and they can come into those engagements ready and prepared.

(25:15) A lot of other people, they might need to be coached through those things. Oh, I don't know how to think about this or this. so it's even like like, yeah, we can give it all. We can give you all our insights for free, but for free. Yeah. But you know, you you can probably get it done quicker if you come see us.

(25:34) Well, it's that the model of pricing too. When, when you start to talk about it, we can guide you and you can do it all and we can help advise, we can do it with you where we're both alongside of each other, doing something with you. Usually I think we we can speak most comfortably to professional services.

(25:53) That's really where our expertise and our background is, is just selling those professional services. So really works well for that. But then that third step is we do it all for you. And those are those three different ways it meets them in all of those spaces, which is really the the art of that whole piece that they developed on that, that freebie that they just give away.

(26:14) Here's the whole process. I mean, another design firm could come in and take that and say, this is our process and kind of follow that because it gives away all of their IP, all of their process, you know, which is really something. But I'm sure there's a lot of special sauce behind that too.

(26:29) Exactly. That really makes them tick. That I mean, yeah. Well, and it shows I mean, it shows great intent on their part towards working with a client. They, you know, they care. They they've put the they have the genuine feels, as the kids like to say. Yeah, yeah. But I mean there's I've seen a bunch of other really good, good ones with that.

(26:53) That lead magnet is, you know, I'm not I'm not even their intended audience. But I can look a that and just drool. For a number of reasons. It's awesome. It looks great. It's perfect for what they're trying to do. Well and the copy is funny. Like in walks you through in a nice nice. pace, you know. I want to drink more beer.

(27:16) and I want to copy that and do it myself. I'm just. I'm jealous. I think as we, the more we look at nice things, it just builds up the jealous rage inside. All of us. really, when we see those. One I know has been really effective for, Storybrand is, on there I think it's still on their homepage, but they have a website makeover lead magnet.

(27:41) And the idea is you sign up and over three days, you get a video content trickled out of different things you can do to improve your homepage of your website. and, I would have no problem sending anybody who's like, oh, I feel like I need some. I feel like something's off with my website. Reading through that, it's you really kind of helps establish some great if you're lost and twisting in the winds.

(28:07) Going through that series right there is really great. And the great thing is after that, through the emails, they're all they're all promoting that, hey, you can learn, you can learn this messaging framework and you can, apply this to your stuff. It's a great lead in to where they're at.

(28:24) But like the the pain point there is that there are marketers who feel like their website isn't as effective as it could be, and that they and so they've educated them and shown them a path. And you could not work with Storybrand, but you could take the stuff that was part of that video and then implement some of those things.

(28:41) And from what I've heard, that's been one of the more successful, lead magnets that they've ever done. And it was done six years ago. So series of videos, kind of very advisory, kind of somewhat general. Obviously it's not specific to them, but it covers a lot of really valuable tips and tricks in a sense. Yep.

(29:00) Mostly around copy? Right. They don't. Yeah there's some structural things in there as well. but yeah, a lot of it is just copy. You know. copywriting. I think we were attracted to that for sure. when we started to do the some of that stuff. What other samples can you think of? Is there any other great ones that you've seen? Other.

(29:22) I think reports or some like in-depth things where you've done a lot of work behind the scenes to like, provide statistics and numbers and yeah, those can be really effective for certain people if, if though, if they, they can use that data, to further their, their work. Yeah. That that those can be really good. I'm not as I'm becoming less and less of a fan of like the e-book like the general e-book thing.

(29:47) I don't know if those are as effective as people would like them to be. And I think you probably would have better success actually putting those things up as content on your website. and getting the SEO. You know, that comes from that instead of burying it in in a gated. Yeah. Because the SEO, the spiders don't really catalog that or rank it as high.

(30:15) Well, if, if you're, if your PDF is in a place where it can get crawled, you're kind of ruining the Yeah... the point of your gated content. Right? Most of the time when we do it that PDF lives somewhere that's not going to be crawled and we send it, we deliver it via email to whoever signed up for that.

(30:33) I think that it is. I just don't I don't get the feeling that most e-books are a really good way of, They prove authority, I think is one of the most effective things that they do is you've got large amounts of content that are produced in a publication style that comes across as a magazine or something like that. That's really helpful.

(30:53) I mean, as, as designers, it's always fun to think of, oh, hey, we can harken back to our days of designing publications and, you can have more freedom and fun with it. But I, I just don't know if they meet people where they're at as effectively as people would like them to. I wanted to go back to statistics because I think that's something that if you have access to data points, that speaks to so many different levels of people in your organization, it's really helpful and it's expensive.

(31:28) I mean, I know that we work with some clients that spend an enormous amount of money on studies and statistics, and that's something that you can't just go find a lot of, you know, you can go to like I mentioned before, Deloitte does a nice job of putting together that survey and those numbers, which is pretty valuable stuff, but it's pretty hard to kind of get any more granular, on your specific market.

(31:55) It gets expensive. So, you know, I'm not saying give away the bank, but if you have knowledge and, and access to some of that data and have the ability, I know that if you buy it, you know, you have publication rights you need to be wary of. You can't just splash, what is maybe gated, you know, data, out there in public.

(32:16) But just make sure you're checking on that. But, that's really valuable stuff. People spend a lot of money on that, and that's super valuable. But if you yourself have data that could be helpful, for your target audience as they're on that journey, like, that could be gold, that could be a really successful.

(32:35) You know, it's like that. Case study kind of model where you're trying to prove viability around the work that you've done or. Stories or on certain projects maybe you've worked on. Yeah. I don't know, I've seen I've seen other things out there that, I, I haven't tried myself, but I do think, I like in theory not so much a quiz, but like an assessment you can send out there and people can fill out and see where they like, almost benchmark themselves against their competition or see where they're where they're at.

(33:06) I think the best thing about that, and what makes me intrigued about trying that, is that you can actually the that quiz information or that assessment information can be fed to you as a marketer and you can see which people who fill that out where they're at on their journey and maybe even pass off to sales as really warm leads like, hey, this person fit all of our ideal client.

(33:32) Criteria. We should like reach out to them with an email. It wouldn't even be cold though. Be aware of who you are, what your services are because they filled out the assessment. You doing a personalized email to them after the after they filled that out would probably be very effective. So I'm really intrigued by that idea.

(33:51) I think that there's a dynamic there. It's that mirror dynamic I think that's been talked about in marketing a lot, where if you give people your perspective, your personalized perspective, and this could be done through a survey or a test, here's how you rank on here's how you, you know, those kind of things really.

(34:10) People cannot help themselves. But try to get an idea. Here's where your website ranks. Here's where you, as a person doing this job ranks against others or against other industries or things like that. That's people love that kind of stuff. Yeah, I. Mean, they love the basic ones, you know, you know, Facebook, social media ones, like which Harry Potter house would you belong to? you know, we're talking so much about that, you know, for which Arrested Development character you must like something like that.

(34:42) I would, I would do that one if it exists. Well, who would it be then? I mean, which character? Oh, gosh. I'd like to say Michael, but. Oh, more like Tobias or something. I'm more like Michael Cera, the son. Just kind of confused and wandering around. Turns out we’re both Job, and we are just one Segway away from being Job.

(35:13) Right? I don't know other ones that seem very interesting to me is, like a calculator. Like some kind of, like, like. So when you see, like, return on investment calculators where they can kind of plug in their numbers, that's especially really good as you get into that, decision making phase. Like if you can shoot if they could even price out what it would be like to work with you over a competitor, or something like that.

(35:38) That could be a really compelling thing to kind of nudge people towards, towards the sales. And again, it's something you take to stakeholders and leadership and they're like, oh yeah, well obviously we need to go with them, you know. Yeah, yeah. Help people help themselves a little bit right. Yeah I guess that's the whole idea is you know I think people want that and are empowered to take control.

(36:00) They don't want to feel manipulated. They don't want to feel like they're being forced to do anything. They're they're making the journey themselves. And that's my way. And this is it's going to work for us in our organization. And that's what's hard to understand, is that's so unique to every organization out there.

(36:17) There's no way you can appeal to them on such a specific level. But using some of the things that I think we just talked about will really help kind of just burrow a little bit further, deeper into their conscience. And hopefully. And just be mindful of the fact that people you're reaching out to, you know, when they think of marketing, they're not thinking of the F word we've been talking about. They’re thinking about the more common F-word.

(36:43) Right? Right. Yeah. Marketers. Yeah. F those guys. That's what they're thinking about. But if you can not be jerks about it or not be like, so much, we're awesome, you know? Yeah, we've done this and this and this. If you're meeting people where they're at and providing helpful, helpful content, helpful tools, I think it's going to be way better for your efforts in the long run.

(37:11) Yeah. Yeah, I think that that that just is an easier way to come to a relationship with anything like that, that they're choosing to reach out to you. You're excited to work with them. You know, I mean, there's just a lot of positive energy around that symbiosis. So are we done using the * word? Oh I'm gonna have to bleep that one more time.

(37:34) F*nnel - f*nnel - f*nnel I'm done. Well I think that's a great place to end the podcast. Mike you've done a great job of putting a finer point on the F word. but it's been good. Appreciate it. Thanks man. Thanks man. Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, Apple or Spotify Podcast Networks.

(38:05) You can also chat with us on the r/marketingteamofone subreddit, or visit marketingteamofone.net to learn more.

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