The Beat: Educated Fools

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO, I’m Ian Truscott, CMO and host of Rockstar CMO, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from our community, our podcast and our street knowledge blog

Hello!

Happy Sunday, I hope you've had a great week. Thanks for taking a look at this newsletter, and if you are a subscriber, thank you some more! (If not, how about it?)

This week, I published episode 170 of the podcast, and in thinking about what to share here, it felt like a moment to reflect on what I've learned in that time.

I started the podcast a little over three years ago (170 weeks ago, in fact), and It was a lockdown project; I wanted to get out of the house virtually, share some of the knowledge I've gathered on my path to CMO and learn something from my guests. And, of course, give this podcast thing a go, as I am a huge fan of the medium.

If you are not a listener of our podcast, my regular guests are Jeff Clark, ex-Forrester Research Director, who came to Forrester via the SiriusDecisions acquisition and Robert Rose, Chief Trouble Maker of The Content Advisory, a former CMO, author, and speaker who played a role in inspiring my marketing career. Every week I get to share their insight and shamelessly get the sort of advice their clients, CMOs like me, pay the big bucks for.

So to mark episode 170, here are a few things I've learned from these chaps.

Oh, and this newsletter issue is named after Educated Fools, by Damian Marley, for this lyric:

We may not be three monkeys sitting under a tree, but three guys (and a special guest on each episode) on a podcast, and if you are a listener, you know I love five f'in' things - so… 5 f’in’ things I’ve learned:

#1 - It's gotta have a goal

In the conversations I have with Jeff, we usually are chatting through a model with 5, 6 or 7 steps (or my preference - 5 f'in' somethings), and regardless of whether we are talking about campaign planning, content marketing or any aspect of marketing, step 1 or 2 is always about goals and tying these to the goals that of your business and leadership team. Whatever you are doing, you gotta know why.

#2 - You gotta have a process

One typically associates content marketing, Robert's specialism, with being creative and making things - it's cool, right?

But, when Robert shares with us what's going on with his clients in our chats, it's clear how much content marketing is actually about the team, the process and not about content.

Regardless of the topic I discuss with Robert or Jeff, it's not sexy, but, you gotta have a process and clear responsibilities, and as Robert shared, your team needs a mix of process or operations people and creative people.

#3 - Know what is enough

There is always a measurement step in all of Jeff's models, and it's the same in Robert's advice, and as marketers, we are obsessed with metrics. But we shouldn't measure just because we can and always think we need more; we need to know what's relevant to our goals.

Robert made a great point in episode 167 when talking about measuring brand awareness. He asked, “How much awareness do you need?”. And we need to apply that to all of the metrics; what does success look like? How many hits, followers, leads, or whatever we measure is enough to hit our goals?

#4 - Market the Marketing

Market the marketing is an easy alliteration, but communication is another strong theme that comes through chatting with these chaps.

In content marketing, Robert once talked about a content marketing team going off and doing their thing disconnected from the business and finding their work was irrelevant as the business had changed tack. When Jeff talks about goals, he advises that we must clearly communicate up to the C-suite and ensure we are still on track.

#5 - Don't believe the hype

Jeff and I did a series called “one hit wonder or wonder wall”, discussing various hyped terms and trends for marketing, I also have my regular question for my guests asking what they would chuck into our Rockstar CMO Swimming pool (our portal to marketing hell for the overhyped trends) and the chat with Robert is often about something that has come up in the marketing press.

What has been born out of three years of doing this, don't believe the hype. Sure, be curious and investigate, but when the CEO slaps down an airline magazine and says we need to use ChatGPT to get on Tickface, be cautious, I've had so many conversations about how these things distract from our mission.

So, after what has been over four working weeks of recorded content (each podcast is over an hour, and there are 170 of them, so over four working weeks), it’s hard to boil it down, but these are five of the many things we've shared, and I’ve learned.

I hope it’s helpful. As I shared in last week's Tuesday 2¢, the advice might be easy, but the implementation is hard, I know this from experience!

Please get in touch if you have any thoughts or comments on this newsletter, our blog or the podcast.  

Cheers,

Ian

Ian Truscott | Chief Bottle Washer | Rockstar CMO

Latest on the podcast

Street Knowledge

Some of the articles from our blog and around the community…

Get your Monday Morning Marketing Mojo Working

Here it is, Damian “Junior Kong” Marley - Educated Fools, although I seemed to have picked a tune with no video!

The promo image used on the web page was partially created using A.I. through NightCafe Studio