The Beat #2 - The beat goes on...

Another hit of marketing street knowledge from Rockstar CMO

Author

Ian Truscott
January 29, 2023

Thanks for opening this newsletter!

If you read last week’s newsletter then you’ll know that I’ve moved from the now-defunct Revue, a victim of Twitter’s cuts to Beehiiv, which so far has been good. And I’m getting back into the newsletter groove after a bit of a break.

My intention is to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our Rockstar CMO community, as well as the latest we are sharing on the podcast and our street knowledge blog.

If you have any feedback or something you’d like to share, let me know - just reply to this email.

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Founder and Chief Bottle Washer | Rockstar CMO

The Bare Minimum

This week I was musing about doing the bare minimum as a marketer on my personal blog, especially this year, in the current economic climate when we as marketers are likely to be asked to do more with less. My thought was based on three ideas:

  1. Robert Rose refers to doing product marketing like you are playing golf (for example, in this article). The point of golf is achieving your goal with the minimum number of strokes, so understand your goal and map the minimum things you need to do to get there.

  2. Seth Godin’s concept of the minimum viable audience or “The smallest group that could possibly sustain you in your work”.

  3. An experience I had advising a client. The client wanted to do all the marketing things, but when we focused on their revenue objectives, we realised we could be very effective in creating a smaller but much more focused pipeline

We don’t need no education?

Marketing education comes up a lot on the podcast, and if you listened this week we’ve been chatting about marketing fundamentals. Our resident strategy advisor Jeff Clark remixes these ideas into an article about the five core skills marketers need:

Why Do Marketers Need an F’in Education? - Rockstar CMO

The Five Essential Marketing skills form the basis of marketing enablement. It’s important for everyone in marketing to know the basic skill elements that comprise good marketing. And, it helps everyone appreciate their role in the marketing mix, like the lead singer appreciating what makes a good rhythm section.

rockstarcmo.com/why-do-marketers-need-these-essential-skills

Watch this space

On next week’s podcast, I will be talking to Izzy House, who has a passion for space and marketing that come together in her work as an author and podcast host. Check out her work below.

IZZY HOUSE

Space Marketing Podcast and book introduce marketing strategies and tactics for the new commercial space industry.

izzy.house

Get personal

A friend of the podcast and past contributor to Rockstar CMO Dennis Shiao has updated his advice about building a personal brand over on Content Marketing Institute blog, worth a read:

Forget the Resume; Use Content Marketing To Find a Job

Turn a job loss into a content marketing journey to create a personal brand that helps land your next job. Dennis Shiao tells how he did it and what he wished he knew then and what he knows now.

contentmarketinginstitute.com/articles/content-marketing-job-loss

Latest on the podcast

151: The F'in' Fundamentals, Backstage with Shamir Duverseau and a Cocktail for First-Party Data Episode

This week Jeff and I discuss the Rockstar CMO 5 F'in' Marketing Fundamentals, I go backstage with co-founder of Smart Panda Labs Shamir Duverseau, and Robert has a thought about data over a cocktail in our virtual bar.

rockstarcmo.com/151-the-fin-fundamentals-backstage-with-shamir-duverseau-and-a-cocktail-for-first-party-data-episode

Ian knows his stuff hands down. His guests are on point and his jolly nature makes this show so much fun to listen to.

Review on Apple Podcasts from DigitalMarketingDive

The last word on AI-generated content?

I don’t need to tell you that the topic of AI is hot. Specifically, whether tools like ChatGPT are a threat to copywriting jobs, etc. etc. And this is just perfect from Ann Handley, author of Everybody Writes (from her newsletter):

“AI is a robot perched on our shoulder, not the creator at the keyboard”

Ann Handley, from her newsletter - How to Write Like Robots Can’t

Finding an uncharted journey

I’m a big fan of the Uncharted Journeys podcast, hosted by my friend and multiple-time guest on our podcast - Cathy McKnight. It “captures and shares the adventures of amazing women, their careers, their success, and the secrets they learned along the way.” Give it a go:

Uncharted Journeys

..captures and shares the adventures of amazing women, their careers, and their success..

www.unchartedjourneys.net

Monday morning marketing mojo

Finally, get your Monday morning marketing mojo working with this track we dropped on this week’s podcast - The Creator Has a Master Plan

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