• 18:02
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
AI digital marketing, niching down, digital game plan, software tool, B2B marketing, client relationships, core strengths, opportunities, business strategy, marketing command center, feedback as a gift, industry experts, virtual workshops, client partnerships, marketing efforts.
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Curt Anderson
Damon Pistulka 00:02
All right? Kurt, it’s Friday, and you know what that means. It’s time for stop being the best kept secret. We’re going to have a little fun today talking about AI, digital marketing, niching down until it hurts. Holy goodness. What would we be talking about here today? Kurt,
Curt Anderson 00:20
so Damon, do you say niche or niche?
Damon Pistulka 00:23
Niche? I don’t know. Actually, it both ways.
Curt Anderson 00:25
Because if you say, if you say niche, it’s you know, because when they say the riches are in the niches, so then you have to say the riches reaches are in the niches. So I’m not sure. I get a little tongue tied. I like I have a horrible accent. I can’t even speak. I can’t even speak English, you know. So it’s alright. So we’re going to talk about riches in the niches or not, you know, not necessarily getting rich, right? So it’s really how to get laser focused, right? Yeah. And so everything is like, I mean, my goodness gracious, you can’t throw a baseball. You can’t throw a bowling ball without people talking about AI digital marketing, so we’re going to dive into little AI digital marketing. And Damon, this is a pretty big day for us today. Dude, like, I, like, I’m, I’m fired up every time we come on live. But man, today is, like, a little exceptional, like, we’re going to, it’s a little, we’re going to show off a little something today, right? Little maiden voyage, little maiden voyage, like two old dudes are like working on a little software strategy here, if you will, little little sass. We’re getting a little sassy today, right? Is that? Yeah, does your wife ever accuse you of getting sassy? I have more than once, more than my just, alright, just twice, twice. Tops, right? Yeah, we’re going to get a little sassy. But before we do, we do, we are going to We’re super excited. Damon, I’ve been working on this little software tool. Damon, do you want to talk about what do you want to do? You want to tell everybody what’s going on? You go ahead. Kurt, you take it away. So I we have this wonderful, incredible tool. We’re in the midst of building out this software tool, and it’s called the digital game plan. We’ve been using this thing for years with our clients as a proprietary tool, and we’ve been just it lives on a Google Sheet. You know? We’re we’re scrappy, we’re cheap, so we just put it on Google. It’s free, and our clients build out their digital game plan on Google. But I’m super excited to announce today that we are we’re getting close to an MVP. Damon, are we not? Yes
Damon Pistulka 02:24
we are. Yes we
Curt Anderson 02:25
are. Okay. So let’s first before we reveal before we drop the curtain our little maiden voyage today with our new SAS program, this digital game plan from your perspective, my friend, why is it so important to stay in your lane to niche down. I know some people push back and they’re like, hey, these gurus say, like, you know, riches earning niches. But man, I just personally think it is just critical to niche down your thoughts. Well,
Damon Pistulka 02:52
I think when you do that, you can really help those people a lot better. I mean, from a business standpoint, overall, business standpoint, and when you back up and go, Okay, how does that help sales and marketing? Well, that really helps sales and marketing in two, two ways. One is the way we talk to people. If we know exactly who we’re talking to and we’re or talking to this one type of person, it’s much easier for my salesperson to understand what are their problems, and how do we really help them? And then, from a marketing perspective, it’s what are the kind of things that those, those that people, that that person wants, what do they need? What are their challenges in respect to what we do? How do we talk about those? How do they a first find someone like us. How do they get to know someone like us? And then how do they trust us enough to to reach out or take the next step? You know, because it’s, it’s, it all ties into the business strategy of how we’re going to grow the business.
Curt Anderson 03:54
Yeah, totally, totally agree. And what, you know, we were on a call with a client this week. They sell, you know, huge equipment, very hundreds of 1000s of dollars, and they we had an interesting strategy session where we were talking about, like, you know, sometimes they find themselves that they get into a situation, they’re in a client, and maybe they got out of their wheelhouse, out of their core lane, and next thing you know, you know, something got a little bit too customized. Now it’s not in their superpower, not in their strength. Now they’re kind of goofing up. The customer’s mad. They’re like, Yeah, everybody wins. Yeah, right. And so again, we like, you know, hey, well, you know, we’re trying to be everything to everybody. You become nothing to noone. But you know, alright, let’s, let’s dive into Are you excited? Are you ready? Do you have a drum? Let’s get a
Damon Pistulka 04:38
drum ready to go. I’m ready to go. The drum wasn’t ready today. Drum
Curt Anderson 04:41
wasn’t ready. Well, you know what? We’re going to reveal this without the drum. How’s that? Yeah, so Alright guys. So hey, welcome Damon. You see my screen. I mean, again, see, okay. What this is, is, this is the brand new B to B tow digital game plan. And what we love to do is we love to dive into So who here has heard of a. Swat, you know that SWOT analysis your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities and your threats? Well, guess what? When you’re hanging out with Damon and myself, you have no weaknesses, my friend, you have no threats. We’re having. We’re in our little happy place. Are we not, Damon? Are we? Yes, we are. So we focus on our strengths and our opportunities. We want to focus on our strengths and our opportunities. Now what we’re showing here is like, Hey, this is we have this tool, and what it does, it creates the strengths and opportunities on your company. So just to kind of reveal we’re just hey, just to show that we’re eating our own dog food. Who came up with that expression? Damon, eating our own dog food? Do you ever, you know, I don’t know, you don’t eat your own dog food. Do you like? Well, Odin, Odin is probably eating steak and like you’re eating, like, your own ground beef, like you’re having burgers, like you get a these, get a T bone, right? Like, it’s better than you do. Probably, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, because in your in your house, in my house, you know, with a pet, it’s like, I’m, like, a second class citizen, you know, right? Yeah, yes, I definitely know
Damon Pistulka 06:01
where I place.
Curt Anderson 06:02
All right, so I listen. I digress. Forgive me, I digress. So let’s get back to our strengths and opportunities. If you’re just join us, Happy Friday to you, whatever day it might be, for catching us on replay. We are thrilled, and just love that you’re with us today. What we’re doing is we’re talking about, how do you niche down. And we’re really talking mainly about AI marketing strategies, right? And how do you niche down till it hurts to stay focused, to really exhaust your superpowers. So what this tool is doing here for us, it’s going through here, and it’s telling us like, Hey, what are you guys best at? So like, for example here, Damon, check this out, comprehensive digital game plan framework, their proprietary B to B TAIL. Digital game plan provides a structured, step by step approach for B to B companies to optimize their digital marketing efforts, ensuring clarity, focus and measurable results. My goodness gracious. This little tool went out, got this information from the I don’t know what what is, what is AI like? How do you define, do you know how to define AI? I
Damon Pistulka 07:05
don’t know. I know how it works. It’s artificial
Curt Anderson 07:07
intelligence. Now, that’s the thing, you know what? I’ve been calling myself artificial intelligence for decades. You know what I mean? Yeah, you know, just artificial we could even leave out the intelligence. So somehow, someway, we have this wonderful new SAS tool, where it goes out and it goes into your information, and it gives you this preparatory information on what are you absolutely best at? Damon. Let’s dive in a little bit further. Focus on the strengths for a minute. Okay, what are like clients that you’re working with, working with, or, you know, let’s stay right here. We’re going through, talk a little bit about, like, the core strengths that you’re seeing here that’s coming back on for B to B, tell with this digital game
Damon Pistulka 07:47
plan here. Well, you can see that, you know, the educational content we provide that’s pretty, re really prevalent in what we do. And then you go the data driven strategies. I mean, we’re, measuring what’s happening all the time and understanding how that’s working. And then we and then down at the bottom, you know, teams with B to B into experienced teams is B to B industry knowledge. I mean, that’s where we spent our entire careers in B to B and B to B commerce. So it’s, it’s where it’s going. And then long term client partnerships. I mean, we have many multi year client relationships. It just that’s the way we’ve worked. So I think it’s really did pick up on a lot of good things here. Yeah, and
Curt Anderson 08:29
what I love this line B to B, tell excels at out teaching competitors by providing valuable, actual insights through blogs, webinars, guides that build trust and position them in as industry experts, industry leaders. So the thing is, what we’re trying to do here is, like, get laser focus on what we’re best at, and then, you know, like, not do the things that we’re not good at. Damon, like, before we just went live, we’re talking about, like, you know, Facebook marketing. If somebody needs Facebook marketing, I’m probably the last person that they should reach out to, right? You know, people are killing it on X or, you know, other social media platforms, whatever it might look like, right? But the thing is, is like focusing on what you do best and then just relentlessly doing that over and over. Because when we say it niche down till it hurts, it kind of hurts the giveaway to pass on somebody offering to pay you something, right? Times that you’ve turned away business, or that you’ve had to say, like, hey, you know what? I’m probably not the best fit here. How’s how’s that worked out for you?
Damon Pistulka 09:28
Well, it’s better when you do it right. It’s better when you do it. It’s hard to do it and it’s hard to do it in the beginning, but it’s better off once you do because I can tell you a lot of lot more horror stories about when you take on clients that you really shouldn’t, or you’re trying to help, help somebody with your products or services that really is a marginal fit. I mean, you run into problems. It doesn’t matter if I’m if I’m selling off road products to somebody that’s got a Subaru that they’re going to drive on the, you know, city streets every day. It could be a consulting firm. It can be an. Accounting firm. It can be a lawyer, law firm, so many different people. If you don’t really stay focused on where you help people the most, you can run into trouble.
Curt Anderson 10:09
Yeah, I totally agree. So again, as we’re running through this, what we’re focusing on are the core strengths. Now, Damon, let’s slide over to this middle column, because when you focus on what you’re best at, okay, you know, if you’re a restaurant, like, hey, we mess, we make the best, you know, the best burgers in town, right? Whatever it might be. Well, if you make the best burgers in town, does it make sense to like, hey, we could start selling sushi, or maybe we could start selling lasagna, you know, like, or, you know, like, Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. Like, you know, we make, we’re like, We’re known Our legacy is around our best burgers in town. But just because we make a good burger doesn’t mean that we make great sushi or good lasagna,
Damon Pistulka 10:48
right? That is true. That is true. I will be afraid at going to the same place trying to get good
Curt Anderson 10:55
Right, right? Damon, you get the sushi. I’ll get a burger. You let me know how it goes, right? So
Damon Pistulka 11:01
we’d have to see which is which, depending on
Curt Anderson 11:04
the That’s right, that’s right. Alright. So let’s dive into opportunities. We’re talking about our strengths, our opportunities. Now what’s wonderful is this little tool here goes out and it provides to you some suggestions. And I’ll tell you, Damon, like going through here, like this was fantastic. It’s like, there’s a lot of things in here that I hadn’t thought of. Yeah, there’s wonderful things on here talking about, like, where are there, you know, potential opportunities and maybe again, like, focusing on that niche down. So it hurts. Maybe this is an opportunity for not right now, but maybe we can say Not yet. Yeah, might be as you’re trying to grow your business, that type of thing. So right here, like, you know, hey, building up community for B to B, marketers to share insights, challenges, solutions. Can foster loyalty and position B to B, tail as a central hub, you know, offering niche consulting for international B to B, E, commerce expansion. So again, like going down this list, hosting virtual events and workshops. We love hosting virtual workshops, right? So again, this tool, what it what it’s doing is taking our core strengths and really aligning with opportunities. What do you want to add to
Damon Pistulka 12:12
that? Yeah, I think this is a, this is a tool that really helps you, maybe uncover some blue ocean opportunities that you haven’t thought about before, or just, you know, slight directional changes that you go, Okay, now we can move into this, a different thing with different product or service by making this little change. And that’s what we’re really trying to do here, is understand, okay, what are our strengths and how can we use those strengths to to improve our business, grow our business,
Curt Anderson 12:39
exactly. So, all right, we’ll start winding down now this, that last column over there, the So, what? Damon, what the heck is a So, what mean? What does, what is so, what?
Damon Pistulka 12:49
It’s stuff that are, you know, your customers really won’t care about so you just want to, just like, take it out. Forget about it. Don’t work on it anymore. Get those things out of there. You know, you really got, you really have to look at that as wasted time.
Curt Anderson 13:05
Yep, yeah. And I’ll tell you, this tool did a phenomenal job. Like, you know, like, who, who likes criticism, right? Who likes being criticized? But you know what, we had John Azara, our dear friend, John Azara from iMac, was on a call about a year ago. He was on a live show year ago. He dropped one, like, drop the mic moment, he shared how when we asked, Hey, what’s the best business advice that you ever received? This father, who was a Chicago police officer, he told John. He said, You know what feedback is a gift. You don’t have to take it, you don’t have to listen to it, you don’t have to do it, but if you can have the thick enough skin to just to receive it and accept it, right? Yeah, and so, like, feedback is a gift. So what this tool is doing for us is, though, we’re not focusing on our weaknesses or our threats, what this tool is doing, it’s going out and saying, like, hey, maybe you’re not so good here, you know, like, if somebody lands on your website and says, so what? Well, that’s the wrong buyer, right? That’s not that’s going to take you down the wrong path, and that’s what we’re talking about, niching down till it hurts. So again, when I scroll down here, there’s a lot of great opportunities on here for us to maybe, like, really tweak, massage and strengthen, right? Sharpen our pencils. For those of us that are old enough to remember what a pencil is, yeah, is. Yeah, is, how do we just really get a little bit better at our core strengths and like, eliminating things like, hey, you know what? We weren’t that. Remember, we worked on that with that customer that one time, and it didn’t go so great well either a we’ve got to get somebody, our team, to prop that up so it doesn’t happen again. Yeah, we, let’s align ourselves with another company, another agency, someone else that is just crushing it in that space, because now we look so much better when somebody does that referral. You know what I mean?
Damon Pistulka 14:50
Great, great service for the customer. Then,
Curt Anderson 14:53
yeah, I was just, I just, I was on a call this week, and we’re a woman is is taking this court, our dear friend, wesleen, and our dear. And Sarah man, they’re going through like this public speaking, uh, course together. And I called on that course a couple years ago, and the woman said, You know what, you’re not a good fit. She told me I wasn’t a great because I told her what I was trying to do. She’s like, that’s like, they help people do like TED Talks. They help people do like keynote speeches. And that’s not, I’m not going in that direction, and she’s like, and like, I can’t tell you how much respect and admiration and trust that I gained by this woman saying, You know what, like, she doesn’t want to take, she didn’t want to take my money, you know. And I’m just like, that was really admirable, that she did that. So, you know, again, niching down till it hurts, right?
Damon Pistulka 15:38
Yeah? Well, yeah, I mean, and that’s a great that’s a great example of the power in that and and the power of doing that, because you will regret taking those, those marginal customers if you do it more than once, you might get lucky once, and things will turn out, but it will bite you in the end, they won’t be as happy as they could Be. You won’t be nearly as happy doing the work that you have to do for that, and it just works out better if you stick to the best customers possible
Curt Anderson 16:11
Absolutely. So hey, Damon, let’s wind down. So we have, you know what? I know. Everybody’s out there super busy. They are just solving all sorts of problems, making the world a better place, so we’re going to move on. So again, what do you want to close out with parting thoughts, words of wisdom? What do you want to share with folks as we close this out today?
Damon Pistulka 16:29
Yeah, well, I think, you know, first of all, don’t try to be everything to everyone. We know that we’ve talked about it 100 times, 1000 times, maybe even more than that, you know, really focusing on the people that you can help the most create the best benefit for, because that’ll that’ll align your your company, help your business strategy, and away you go. And then, you know, the the digital game plan SAS that we’ve got here, we’re working through the MVP on it we’ve got, you can obviously see there’s a few more place, a few more modules that are that are coming to fruition in this thing, and we’ll continue to show that so people can see how this niching down really helps you go all the way through your business strategy.
Curt Anderson 17:10
That’s right, this is really a marketing command center, if you, if you will. It’s a step by step guide to implement that strategic plan to help take your business to next level. So again, drop Damon a note. Connect with Damon on LinkedIn. My name is Kurt Anderson. Love to connect with you. And so we wish you an amazing, incredible, wonderful weekend. We will be back here on Monday, and we will catch you then. So have a great weekend.
Damon Pistulka 17:35
Yeah, everybody, glad you can stop by with us today. If you didn’t get this all you got in late. Go back to the beginning. Start over again, because we are just showing for the first time ever, our our digital game plan, SAS. It’s going to be coming out in September, but we’re going to be doing some limited showings to people before then. Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend. Bye.
