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Connect with Dennis
https://www.consortemarketing.com/
https://snackablesolutions.com/
https://twitter.com/dennisconsorte
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisconsorte/

Connect with Russ
https://russjohns.com/
https://thepiratesyndicate.com/
https://nextstepnext.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nextstepnext/

Audio digitally transcribed by Descript

[00:00:00] Introduction: Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast™, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

[00:00:10] Russ Johns: Welcome to the pirate broadcast. We're back again. It's a Tuesday and we are rocking and rolling here and ready to at least talk about some marketing efforts, maybe some just all kinds of ideas today with Dennis. Good morning. Good day. How are you doing my friend?

[00:00:27] Dennis Consorte: I'm doing well, how are you doing, Russ?

[00:00:29] Russ Johns: Not too bad. Hanging out here with the pirate community and hopefully we'll get into a nice conversation here and share a few nuggets of knowledge for those that haven't met you yet. And haven't connected with you on LinkedIn. Give us a little snapshot of who Dennis is and what your superpower is today.

[00:00:48] Dennis Consorte: All right. So my name is Dennis Consorte. I'm a digital marketer. I've been doing this for almost 20 years and my super power?

[00:00:58] Russ Johns: Just a newbie.

[00:01:00] Dennis Consorte: I'm just a newbie. Yeah. And in the context of this conversation, my superpower is being able to take a lump of clay and shaping it into what it can be. And we'll get into more of that from a marketing perspective.

[00:01:15] Russ Johns: Good deal. And also don't forget to connect with Dennis on LinkedIn. If you are watching this in the future. At any point in time, Dennis, I love the marketing effort. I kinda grew up in the arena of as I started out as a musician, got into advertising, tech, the tech space. I've supported a lot of early startups adventures, and it's always changing and evolving. And whether you're it's email marketing funnels, online marketing, social media, all of these things, all of these tools we have are part of the. Process of developing your brand and your message. And is there any one area that you have spent a great deal of time on that you'd like to maybe enhance or explore today with the audience?

[00:02:07] Dennis Consorte: Sure. I would say that my strongest digital marketing tactic would be on the SEO side and I really enjoy building. So those two areas would probably be a great place to start.

[00:02:25] Russ Johns: Funnels. Now, for those that may not be completely familiar with funnels, let's break it down for them because once you see a funnel and once you understand what it is, you notice it everywhere. And it's common practice and it's very prevalent in online business. However, a lot of people may not necessarily. Really, understand all the mechanics behind it. So maybe you could break it down for us a little bit and share a few ideas about how to put one together.

[00:02:58] Dennis Consorte: Yeah. So I like to speak in everyday language. I'm not a big fan of jargon, so I'm going to keep it very simple in a way that I would explain a funnel is to think about how you. Build a relationship with a customer in real life off of the internet. And when you think about building rapport with people, it really comes down to letting them know who you are, having conversations back and forth, building trust. So that eventually when they're ready to make that purchase and they have a few different tools. They choose you. And so now we take that and map it out onto a digital landscape. And generally speaking a funnel is just it sounds you have the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel. And at each stage of the funnel, You're trying to achieve different things. So if we think about a conversation with somebody, when you first meet them, you don't automatically say here, buy this $60,000 car. You don't do that. First thing you do is you have a conversation. You say, Hey, I'm Dennis consort day. Here's my. This is what I do. This is what we stand for. So at, in the awareness stage of the funnel at the top of the funnel, you're really just letting people know who you are and what that means is maybe you're putting out display ads on social media or something else. Maybe you're doing podcasts like this, just to get your name out there so that people know who you are. But that doesn't turn people into customers right away, that just puts you on their radar. So what you have to do is start thinking about all of the different let's call them. I'm going to use one piece of jargon. That's called them touchpoints along the customer journey. So that each time you interact with a customer, that is a touch point. And so what you want to do is have lots of those interactions throughout the funnel so that you move from that awareness stage. To a stage where they're actually thinking about maybe buying your product and that's where they're considering your product. And now you're starting to put more in-depth information in front of people. One tactic you can use is you drive people to your blog or to your podcast or to something else. And you give them information, you provide value and you don't necessarily charge for this value. So for example, I have a client that's a health and wellness blog. Part of their business is a health and wellness block. And so we drive people to it. We provide really valuable information on how you can live a better life, how you can be your best self, how you can improve every day, 1% to make yourself better. And what that does is that starts to build our community. So now we're building a community on our blog and on social media, we build our community, whether it's a Facebook group or something like that. And what you want to do at that point of the funnel in the middle of the funnel is you want to start building your list. And what that means is you want to get people to sign up for email newsletters. You want to get them to subscribe to your blog. You want to get them. To say, yes. I want you to send me notifications on my mobile phone. Every time you publish a blog post, if you do that kind of stuff, you're rocking and rolling. Now people are like, wow, this company is providing all this great stuff to me. They're not even charging me for it. I trust them because they're actually giving me value and they're not asking for stuff in return. Let me check them out a little bit. Yeah. And at that point, you start moving towards the bottom of the funnel where people are actually interested in buying a product or service. And at that point it just comes down to showing. How, what you offer is unique and special compared to what else might be out there. And that's really from the top to the bottom of the funnel. And then you can branch out at the bottom and talk about building loyalty with your customers, which means once somebody buys from you, that's wonderful. And we all know if anybody who's done any sort of business knows that the cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than the cost of retaining. So now what you want to do is once you've got somebody on your list, once they've purchased from you, you want to continue to provide them value. You want to make sure that you provide an amazing service. You want to stand behind your products, provide quality products so that now people are loyal to your business. They love your brand. They love everything you do. They continue to buy from you. And then they started talking to their friends and that's where you get your advocate. And so now you've got customers who continue to buy from you and through word of mouth, they're helping you grow your own business. So if you provide an amazing product and amazing service to people, you're going to get all of that free advertising that happens at the bottom of the funnel. Now, the last thing I'll say is that there are a lot of people who do what I do, and they're very they're very good at articulating funnels and sometimes they will also. Articulate different models because it sounds cool. So what I will say is, yes, there are other ways to describe this thing, instead of having a funnel going from top to middle to bottom, you might have another way to describe it as a flywheel concept. And it's the same exact thing. It just means that you're going around in a circle instead of going down a funnel and then coming back up to the top of it, it's the same thing. I hope that clarifies what a funnel is, and maybe we can talk about some of the things we can do alone. Anyway,

[00:08:22] Russ Johns: I love that. And thanks for sharing that, Dennis, because we have speaking of community, I just want to give a shout out to some of the members of the pirate community here, Elise in from South Africa, at least good morning, Russ and Dennis happy Tuesday. Thank you so much for being here. I hope your shoulders feel better, Elise. She broke her. A little while back. And Michael Baker and from Florida, I hope you're feeling better. Michael hope you get out of the hospital soon. And then we got Russ Hedge in from Oregon. Russ is another marketer. He's been on the show and we'd gone back and forth. It's really great to be able to connect with connect with Russ on the show. Karen, good morning, Russ and Dunn. Thank you so much for being here. Karen loved it. You hear Michael Baker also says find common ground a foundation to build upon. Absolutely. And Hiett Ives in from Texas Hyatt. How you doing brother? Been away too long. Yes. You have been way too long. Gabe gave, I have to share a update from Gabe gave good morning. Phillip pirates gave is putting together a library of live streams on LinkedIn. So if you want to get connected in the live streaming community and get engaged with some of the live streamers that are out there and producing content, Gabe is a content creator that you need to know. Love you, man. Thank you for doing your great work. So I appreciate it. Good morning. So I also want to recognize Dennis that in this process, there's awareness, there's understanding, and then there's interest, there's different layers and whether you call it a flywheel or a, I call it a traffic circle for content marketing, you can multitask. This content around. There's a lot of different ways to the equities you can do. And not every company is the same. So like we were talking before the show you like to have a piece of clay that you can mold into something new. And it's typically because of the personality of the brand. A lot of times, content marketing may lend itself to video or, Instagram or different platforms or, like a blog post. Is there any one particular I'm partial to video just me. However, there's a lot of different options and opportunities out there for business owners. So maybe you could share some experience that you have in the marketing world and share some ideas. People could think about as far as content creation and getting their brand.

[00:11:01] Dennis Consorte: What I would say is that you want to explore many different kinds of content. So for me, the easiest way to start is with written content, with blog posts, with product reviews, with things like that. But what you'll also find is that it's not that hard to do videos, to do podcasts like this, or to create little. Even 30 second, one minute video clips that you can then share with people on YouTube, on Tik TOK, wherever else. And in fact, you can get into other types of content. You can get into audio content. That's something that I've been exploring a tremendous amount with one of, one of my clients and. And then if you look to the future, look at what's coming out now. So we saw that Facebook changed their name to Metta. They're all about the metaverse and augmented reality and all of that. So even start thinking about those spaces, is there a place for you as a marketer or a small business owner or whoever? There are just so many kinds of content. And the other thing that I would say is that different kinds of content resonate with different kinds of people. And by that, we tend to think in different ways, some people are auditory, some people are visual, some people are kinesthetic. So you want to create content that touches on all of those senses. And if you can do that, if you can speak in the words that resonate. People then you can start to build that connection with them because they feel like you think like them. I try to think in all of those ways. So when I have conversations with people or when I even write a blog post, I think about, okay, am I touching on all of the senses with the words that I use with the descriptions that I create? If you go through these exercises, when you come, when you create content, your stuff is going to stand out so much more compared to other types of content.

[00:12:57] Russ Johns: The emotional aspect of any content is really something that I think people need to think about and consider when they're creating content is what is the emotional trigger that you're responding or reacting or addressing. In the content itself. One of the, one of the things that I love about live is, there's no script here. There's no, there's no preconceived plan that we had, that we were going to cover X, Y, and Z. And there's no, static one to three questions here. So the conversation could go anywhere. And that's what brings. Unique nature of live video versus, edited video or YouTube or anything that is going on. That's like some of the Tik TOK videos that go viral, or, some of the posts, the long form posts that are really. Foundational. And a lot of what we see like platforms like medium or a lot of great content out there. There's, there's a lot of sub stack and, different platforms that are putting out articles and publishing on LinkedIn as well. There's also an abundance of content. So how do you make it unique enough or how do you rise above the noise? And get your word out there. From a small business owner, that's just starting a blog or just starting a podcast or even a live stream. There's a lot of people that are still, they struggle. And I noticed that a lot of people quit too soon because they don't necessarily have the results they're thinking about or that they're expecting. So how do you get past that momentum step?

[00:14:42] Dennis Consorte: It's a good question. The short answer is that you have to do your research. And by that, you need to make your content so good that it is better than everything else out there. Now it's impossible to do that across the board, but if you pick a really specific niche, then you've got a shot. So if you wanted to put out a piece of content on blue origin, First thing I would do is I would go to Google and I'd look up blue widgets and I'd read all of the articles that are on the first page of Google, top 10 articles for blue widgets. And I would take some notes and say, okay, what are they talking about? What aren't they talking about? Then I would go, I would do my keyword research to see what other keywords are relevant. To blue widgets and make a list of those and look at which ones have the highest traffic potential versus the lowest competition. And there's tons of tools you can use for this online. Some of them you can even use for. Yeah. So that's on the content creation side of it. Just make your stuff better. The next thing I would say is that mixed media is wonderful. So if you can imagine you're you want to rank in the top 10 of Google for blue widgets, not only are you going to have that, that longer form article about blue widgets, because you did your research and not only are you maybe going to have little sub articles that all link with. A longer form piece of content so that you create these little hubs of content, but you're also going to start mixing in different kinds of media. Because again, people think in different ways, they resonate with different kinds of content. So now imagine you have this long blog post and you start creating videos around blue widgets and all the different things that you can do with blue widgets, et cetera. Now you've got a piece of content that has some really cool stuff in there that not everybody is doing. Then, what you do is you want to say, okay, now how do I amplify this piece of content? And there's a gazillion people that I'll tell you all these different ways to build links and to push stuff out on social media, you can find all of that online. What it really comes down to is connecting with people. And by that, amplifying content is not easy. One way to do it. I'll give you one tactic you can use is to think about, okay, how can I take this piece of amazing content that I've created and help somebody else out in the. And by that, you know what, let me go to YouTube or wherever and find somebody who talks about blue widgets and give them a platform on my content, on my blog and talk about what they spoke about. And so I'm going to include that in all of this content that I've created myself. And then I'm going to reach out to that person and say, Hey, you know what? I featured your video in this piece of content. Can you check. And if you pick the right people who have the same mindset, they're going to appreciate that you have shared their content with your community. You've got a really good shot of them sharing your content with theirs. So that's one way I would approach. I don't know if that answered your question.

[00:17:52] Russ Johns: It addressed a lot of different aspects of, one of the taglines I use is be seen, be heard, be talked about in the w the way you have to go about doing that. A lot of times is, build the relationship, build the community because. Getting a million followers on Facebook may not be as valuable to your businesses getting a thousand true fans Kevin Kelly talks about, get these fans and the advocates of your business that are going to continue to pursue and put your brand out there. And I think it's all part of the process. It's just evolution of how. How much can we create, how much time can we spend on the community? And then how much time do we spend on doing business? And it's all a balance. It's all a, it's all a process. And it's an evolution of resources, 10 years ago, live stream video was not a thing a little before that podcasting was not a thing and they have almost 2 million podcasts out there now. Blog posts are still out there. Even though they'd been out there and there's millions of blog posts out there and there's millions of blogs producing content. And I think it's just a matter of finding out who your audience is and identifying who you want to have a conversation with and who you're engaging in your audience as well. So Marcia Reece joined us a Marcia. How are you doing today? Happy Tuesday. Thank you so much for joining us. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about, cause you've been doing this awhile, been involved in it. You've seen it go from, early days of blog posting and creating content like that. What do you see in the future? What's happening in the in the near future in terms of, their AI is out there, they got the artificial. Environments that taken place training is evolving and expand spanning. What do you see? Do you see anything on the horizon that might be of interest to us?

[00:19:56] Dennis Consorte: There's a ton that's on the horizon and I don't even know where to start. So let me just start somewhere. The first thing I will say is that a remote. Is booming. And part of this was because we were forced into a situation that some people didn't want to be in because of this pandemic and lock downs. And that kind of thing. One of the good outcomes of that though, is people started to realize, you know what, I want to do something with my life that matters. I want to spend my time doing. That I feel good about that. That is, that gives me a sense of purpose that I know that every time I do something for my employer or for my clients, it's meaningful and I bring value to the world. So I think that people are starting to be more value-driven and I think that's going to shape what the future is. Now. The other side of that is because we are. Much more interconnected because of the internet and all of the technology we have. It does mean that in some ways you have more competition as a worker and you have more competition as an employer. And what that means is that's why. Being purpose-driven is so much more important. So if you're in Arizona and you're competing with a guy in New York for the same, let's say remote position, you want to talk about how, okay. You've got all the same skills that this other person has, but here's why you're the perfect fit for that company. Or if you're an employer, here's why you're that perfect fit for that employee or. Worker or what have you. So I think the being purpose-driven, that's going to shape the future because the bottom line, in addition to just having more competition globally is that AI is also going to be competing for a lot of things. There are so many things that, for example, that I do as a digital marketer. Okay. Today compared to 20 years ago, it's night and day, right? Machine learning has gone like this. It's amazing. And so you have to start thinking about the trajectory of technology and how you can get ahead of it and how you can continue to bring value. Knowing that the machines are going to be filling those gaps that you used to fill in the past. So maybe in the past where you were spending your time, adjusting bids up and down based on user behavior. And now that's controlled by machine learning. Now you have to ask yourself what value can I bring as a human being that. Isn't going to be so good at. And if you think about that piece of it, now you've got a shot. So if you are a digital marketer and you have clients, you might think about the storytelling aspect of your work, the creative aspect of your work. Th there are plenty of tools that are going to help you with your keyword research and figuring out what to write about or what to create videos about or what have you. But you, as a human being, have that creative touch where you can then intermix all of these different kinds of content to produce something really. And the last piece of course is just going back to that metaverse thing. I know that this is going to be a topic of debate for people, right? Some people are worried because they've seen movies. Like Wall-E where people are basically, they're sitting on, they're sitting in a lawn chair and drinking Slurpees all day and their entire life is online. And then, and they're forgetting about their physical life. And then on the other side of that debate is, you know what, this is an amazing space. The metaverse like you can do all this cool stuff there. When I was growing up, we had the Atari 2,600 and you were playing pong on the screen the day now you're immersed in a three-dimensional environment, you can be like a source or a casting spells and that kind of thing, or a pirate. Yeah. And so it's really exciting. And I would encourage people to look at the positive side of things that are inevitable. So it's inevitable that we're going to be doing much more in this augmented reality space. And if you can capture a piece of that as a marketer or as a business owner, then you're ahead of most people.

[00:24:10] Russ Johns: I love that. I love the idea of what is to be on the, what is on the horizon. It's really how can we do, how can we do something that is going to make an impact on that? And you have, you, you've got a small project we were talking about before the the show started and I think it was called snackable solution. Talk a little bit about that before we wrap up today. Cause I want to make sure that, some of the things that are, not necessarily primarily focused on business, what's Dennis doing, having fun, what's the schedule look like?

[00:24:44] Dennis Consorte: Yeah. I do a lot of things. Lately I've been very fortunate. I'll just throw one thing out there first, lately. I've been very fortunate that. I'm a subject matter expert for digital.com. And so oftentimes I'll be called upon in the media to talk about different topics. And lately I've been speaking about the quote unquote, great resignation as that. That's a really interesting topic, which affects all of us with regard to snackable solution. This is a space for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and people who can share tips to help one another's business. A little bit about my story, not the whole thing, but a little bit about it is that I went through entrepreneurial burnout a few years ago. Because I had too many clients, I was serving like 50 different clients at once. I was touching most of those accounts myself, it was too much. And part of what I realized was I needed to be smaller in order to be happier. And so now I have far fewer clients than that, but I'm much happier. And I'm doing very well. There are a lot of people who come to me for help and they just don't fit the criteria that I need. For my business model just doesn't work and I still want to help them. I still have that in me. I just don't have the time to do it. So I created snackable solutions as a space where I can help people and where people can help each other with these really short one to five minute clips on how to do something for your business. So if you watch one of these short little videos, you might learn. One thing that you can do, and if you do it today, it's going to make your business, let's say 1% better. And if you continue to do these little things, then over time they aggregate and your business does much more. This is a new project that I've been picking away that, and my carrots leave free time. If anyone's interested in getting involved, please, just DME on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I'm Dennis consort. They, you can find me on there very easily. As long as you don't look like a spammer.

[00:26:46] Russ Johns: As long as you don't get the two seconds, Hey, buy my stuff, message writing.

[00:26:51] Dennis Consorte: Correct. If your DM is three pages long with links, about how much you charge per hour and your product, we're probably not going to be talking, but if you say, Hey, Dennis, I saw you on the. Podcast. And I want to hear more about snackable solutions. Yeah. Let's have a conversation and see if we can help each other. There's no cost to it at all whatsoever. It's just a space where people like us can help one another.

[00:27:15] Russ Johns: I love that. I love, and I loved the digital media and everything that goes along with that, Dennis. And I really appreciate you being here and sharing this information with the community. And I look forward to your future conversations. You've got some things on the horizon, I'm sure that will maybe be delivered in the future announcements that could be shared with the larger community and happy to have you back now that you're a pirate.

[00:27:43] Dennis Consorte: That sounds wonderful. Thank you so much, Russ. This was a lot of fun. You bet.

[00:27:47] Russ Johns: Hopefully you enjoyed it and everyone joining in today. Thank you so much for being here as always. We're here to help. I have courses, classes, content, all of the things that we talked about today, and you'll reach out to Dennis, make the connection, start the conversation because as we're only one conversation away from getting what we need or helping someone that needs help. So I look forward to tomorrow night, we got a, another show Wednesday at five and Thursday at 7:00 AM. Tuesdays and Thursdays is now and Wednesday nights, we're broadcasting. So join us at your convenience. And also always know that #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree, so you #enjoytheday. Take care.

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