In this successful episode, James Hipkin, CEO and Founder of Inn8ly, shares how he helps founders achieve extraordinary success, by mastering digital marketing.
You will discover:
– The biggest mistake brands make when defining who they market to
– Why every startup entrepreneur needs to excel at digital marketing
– How to figure out which digital channels you should be on
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is the one and only James Hipkin, who’s a seasoned marketing expert with over 40 years of experience helping brands build meaningful, lasting connections with their customers, starting his career with global giants like Apple visa and Toyota, James has LED high impact campaigns and developed strategic marketing insights that drive real results today through innately, he empowers small and medium sized businesses with AI driven marketing tools and website solutions designed to simplify digital growth. He’s also author of the book journey to success Digital Marketing for Small Business Owners. He’s here with us today, James, so excited to have you on the show. In your book, even as early as the title, you tie digital marketing to this idea of entrepreneurial success. And so question that I have for you to open up the show here is, Does every entrepreneur need to excel at Digital Marketing?
James Hipkin
I believe they do. I mean, it’s the mark, it’s your front door. In this world, people will go to the website before they phone, before they drop in. Even if you have brick and mortar, they’re still going to go to the website to find your address, to find out, etc. And that’s the website is the anchor, or I like to call it the hub within this the wheel that is your digital marketing. You know, the website is the hub. The various channels you’re using are the spokes and the content and messaging strategy is the rim that holds it all together. Yeah, and if you don’t have those three things working in concert with each other, you have a lot of pretty noise.
Scott Ritzheimer
I have seen a lot of pretty noise. So you mentioned this. I want to dial in on that this kind of spokes conversation. So I’ve seen a lot of folks. Okay, gotta have digital marketing. So I’ve gotta have a blog, I gotta have a podcast, gotta have a YouTube channel, gotta have punchy content on X cat photos on Facebook, and AI renderings of me dancing on Tiktok, because God knows, that’s never gonna be seen actually happening. But how do you know? Like, do you have to do all of those things? How do you know, what are the right things to do like, how do we put some real strategy behind the decision of which channels to be on and how to use them?
James Hipkin
Well, you do not have to be in all things. And in fact, you shouldn’t be on all things. The biggest, common, most common mistake I see, is business owners standing on their rooftop shouting at the world at large and telling them how awesome they are. Sorry, the world at large doesn’t care. And what you need to do is you need to truly and deeply understand who your best customer is. And I chose my words carefully there. I’m not just saying who your customers are, it’s who your best customer is. Most businesses, 80% of their revenue is coming from 20% of their customers. Everybody nods their head, just like you’re doing when I say that. But do they know who they are? Yeah. So you want to understand who your best customer is, and then you want to document that understanding in the form of, sometimes it’s called an avatar, sometimes it’s called a persona. I don’t care what you call it, you just you need to understand who they are, demographically, what they’re like as people, the characteristics that they have, what is the pain that they’re trying to overcome, and what is the gain that they’re hoping to achieve? And that avatar can inform an awful lot of what you’re doing, because if you’re just shouting random stuff out into the world, it just becomes part of the noise, yeah, but if you’re talking about something that actually matters to these best customers, they’re going to go, oh, Wait, that’s for me. But as with most things, strategy has two parts. There’s the customer avatar. Many people recognize what that is, and they may even have one, but the other half of it is the buyer’s journey. What is the process that the customer goes through as they’re completely unaware of what you do. They have no need. And quick side note here, the best marketing in the world is not going to change a customer’s needs date. If they don’t need you, they’re not going to see it doesn’t matter how good it is. Sorry. Again, there’s a. Lot of bad news in this one, I’m afraid. What’s the transition from being unaware to aware? What causes them to start thinking about it? What are the kinds of questions that they’re asking through the consideration phase when they’re researching their potential solutions? What are the kinds of questions and obstacles they’re trying to overcome in the prospecting stage, where they’re trying to choose between two or three different options. And then what are the questions that there need to get resolved when they’re making the buying decision, if you’re combining the avatar with the journey map, so you know who you’re talking to, what’s important to them, what they’re trying to achieve, and you’re aligning that with their journey. That’s why, when I describe the Hub and Spoke marketing system, the website is the hub, the media channels are the spokes, and the content and messaging strategy is the rim that holds it all together. Without the rim is just a bunch of random pieces of shiny metal, and it doesn’t do much right with that rim, everything’s connected, and the power in marketing comes from the connections, not the things you’re doing, yeah, but when you’ve got those insights, when you know the demographics, you know, if your audience is over 40 and has a college degree, I don’t care what Your nephew says, you probably shouldn’t be in kick Tik Tok, right? You know when, when somebody has raised their hand and asked for information? You know, give them the information they’re asking for. I’ll give you a an example of this. I’ll often ask a business owner, so what do you think the primary objective of your website is? And I’ll get a litany of things they want the website to do, and we’ll have a quick conversation about the definition of the word primary. There could only be one, right? And oftentimes they will settle on conversion. Okay? Almost always wrong. Conversion may be your primary objective, but it is not the primary objective of your audience. When your audience gets to the website, they’re looking for confirmation that you understand their problem and that you have a viable and believable solution for their problem. Yes, so the primary objective of the website is not conversion, it’s confirmation. Yeah, because when you start thinking like that, you’re start to you’re starting to support the journey that your best customer is on. Another example of this that I like to talk about, it’s a bit controversial. Do you mind a little controversy? Let’s do it. Okay. Stop saying call to action. And I know every business owner, everybody has told them that you need a call to action from the moment they started their business, right? And I’m saying stop, stop saying call to action. Why is that? What you want to do is you want to create pathways, people like you, pathways on your website, a pathway is an invitation. A pathway supports the journey that your customers are on. People like you. Pathways call out to the sub segments in your audience. We did a website recently for a client they make stone ground organic flour, and they have basically two audiences. There’s the beginner bakers and there’s the artisan bakers. So we created a pathway for each one of them, and with somebody selects one of those pathways, two very powerful things have happened. They’ve told you exactly who they are, yeah, and they’ve given you permission to give them more information. How awesome is that? That’s yeah, no functionally, a pathway and a call to action. Exactly the same thing, but a call to action is a marketer shouting at a customer and telling them what to do. A pathway is a marketer calling out to sub segments in their audience and inviting them to learn more about what interests them. Yeah. Which do you think is going to get the better result?
Scott Ritzheimer
Oh, yeah, hands down. I. Um Yeah. Love the idea of a pathway and and it opens a door to and you just kind of threw this in. But I think it’s really important the fact that there are multiple segments, because a lot of folks in the marketing space will kind of, you know, they’ll go to the primary objective thing, and it’s like this universal primary objective for everybody, and then that gets conflated with the call to action, and then it just, it can be a bit of a challenge. And I’ve seen a lot of people just kind of knowing like resisting that intuitively. So I like this idea. One of the things that you run in with run into, though, is trying to talk to too many people at the same time. So when we’re thinking about a website for a business, they’re helping a couple of segments. How do you help them dial in that primary objective without, you know, unnecessarily ostracizing or alienating other segments?
James Hipkin
Okay, well, let’s, let’s talk about that. What’s the problem with alienating other segments?
Scott Ritzheimer
So we’ll go to your example with the stone ground flower. I’m assuming that both of those groups were of interest to them, the artisans and the new ones. So then, for their example, the cost would be, well, let’s say they over index on the new person, and it seems juvenile and doesn’t attract the artisan.
James Hipkin
Right? And that by creating the pathways you can speak to both audiences. But one of the essences of marketing, David Ogilvy said this. David Ogilvy is an old ad guy, even older than me, the essence of strategy is sacrifice. Yes, if you try to be all things to all people, you’re going to end up being nothing to nobody. And so the making those decisions around who are we trying to attract are are fundamental, and that means that you’re, you’re it’s as important to repel the wrong customers as it is to attract the right customers. Yes, and when you when you understand who your avatar is, you understand who your customer is, you also understand who they aren’t. When you understand the journey that your customer is on, you’re addressing the questions that your best prospect has. You’re in essence, repelling the folks who really aren’t a good fit for you. You know when, when I took over the an advertising agency in San Francisco. Earlier in my career, I was recruited out of Chicago, and they shipped me to California. Within the first six months, I’d fired about 1/3 of the clients. Wow. They weren’t a good fit. They weren’t a good fit for what we were trying to do with the business, that we weren’t a good fit for where we were trying to take the business. Yeah, staff turnover went down, profitability went up, and growth was ignited. Yeah, you know these, a lot of these customers that aren’t a good fit for you are sucking up your energy, sucking up your value, not giving you value in return. A business relationship is a mutually beneficial relationship. Yes, a customer needs to receive value and the business needs to receive value. This is not an interpersonal relationship. It’s a commercial relationship. And the distinction between those two things is another concept that it’s important for a business owner to wrap their head around. A lot of times, people conflate the, you know, rules for interpersonal relationships into business relationship. And a lot of them do match up, but a few fundamental ones don’t.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so true. So let’s say someone has, they’ve taken the time, they’ve crafted a strategy, they’ve picked what they hope are the right channels, but there’s this thing in the back of their mind, either by virtue of fear or boredom, that, did we pick the right ones? Are we running the right strategy? And so when you’re working with a founder, how do you suggest that they think about measuring effectiveness in the time of that, how do you know if it’s working, and how long should that take?
James Hipkin
Well, it, how long it takes is a different question. You can start to see results pretty quickly when you start to measure, and that’s a missing link. Oftentimes we run across people and you know, we’ve had some considerable success, but we’re like, do you know what’s driving the success? And they don’t. So we’ll do a simple thing, like starting to add UTM tracking codes into all of their links, and that allows us to use Google Analytics. Six to determine, Okay, so you’re spending all this money on YouTube. You’ve hired this agency that specializes in YouTube. You’re doing all this amazing content on YouTube. You’re not getting any traffic from YouTube. So couple things either you gotta reassess what it is you’re doing over in YouTube. Did start generating traffic? Or you need to stop putting money there? Yeah. You know, it’s surprising how often we see this, where people are like, but I’ve been doing Instagram for years, so that’s fine. You’ve been getting no traction for years. Just because you’ve been doing it doesn’t mean you should keep doing it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So we’re measuring or measuring traffic. We’ve got a clear pathway set up. How long until that starts showing up on the top line of the organization’s P and L?
James Hipkin
Well, usually depends on the media channel, but it’s you need to give some give it some time. If you’re seeing traction, you need to start, you know, watering the flowers and pruning the weeds. And one of the most important factors of digital marketing is that patience is absolutely essential, because while things are really important to you in your bubble, from your audience’s point of view, from the customer’s point of view, you are barely a speck in the horizon in terms of all the things that they’re dealing With. So it takes time to break through? Yeah. We earlier my career, I worked on a loyalty program for a large telecommunication company. Now this was a $2 billion base of business, okay? And I sat down with the marketing director, and I explained to him in our very first meeting, I need you to stop spending so much money. He Damn it, fell off his chair. It’s like, wait, what? Because 80% of your audience doesn’t care and they’re never going to care. It’s a low interest category for them. They’re just not engaged. However, 20% of your audience cares a great deal. You need to understand who they are. You need to start crafting your marketing to appeal to them. The result will be, you’ll spend less money because you’re focusing more on the people who actually matter. So they bought this strategy from us. We it take about a year, very big business, right? Takes a long time. Took about a year to put everything together. And at the end of the second year, I sat down with him, and I said, so how are we doing? And he said, Well, market share has not changed, but we’ve generated 20% revenue growth on a $2 billion base of business, wow, and it’s all traceable to your program. Wow, that’s awesome. Okay, it takes time. You got to have belief, use your measurement to start to see the action, because you’ll start seeing results pretty quickly. How those results go down into the thing, into the the top line? You know, that takes some time, yeah, but they, you know, keep pushing the stuff that’s working and stop pushing the stuff that’s not working.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so true. I love there. It’s also picking the right measurements right if they were just going after market share, they’d miss the whole thing together, and they’d have been spending, you know, gobs more than they were as well. So picking the right metrics really, really matters. So James, there’s a question that I have I ask all my guests, and I’m very intrigued to see what you have to say. All right, so here’s a question. What would you say is the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching and listening today knew?
James Hipkin
You don’t need to try to boil the ocean? I mean, you’ve touched on it several times in the questions that you’ve asked today. So your your instincts are there. You really don’t need to try to do everything. You need to do the stuff that is actually getting engagement with your audience. And then when you figured out how to do it, figure out how to do it better, you know, and I wish I’d learned that earlier in my career, but over the course of my career, I have absolutely, I spend a lot of time saying no to clients, you know, that’s that’s just No, not right now, not right now. Got to stay focused on this, because this is what’s getting us traction. We have. Do it better. We have to build on what’s working, not distract ourselves with like whatever is shiny and new.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. So true. James, there’s some folks listening, and they could use a voice like yours helping them craft the right strategy, saying no to the right thing, saying yes to the right things. Where can they find more out about you and the work that you guys do?
James Hipkin
.Well, there are a couple things. If you go to VIPchatwithjames.com you can grab some time on my calendar. I love to hear from business owners. I love to hear the problems that they’re facing, challenges that are trying to overcome. It’s very valuable. Great insights. If you want to understand more about your audience, we’ve developed a product called Marketing sage advantage. That’s sage as in the smart person, not the stuff you burn in that smells nice. Marketingsageadvantage.com is a tool that we’ve created where we’ve harnessed the power of AI to analyze customer interviews using an interview guide that we’ve prepared and that will generate a really viable avatar and buyer’s journey map that a marketer can then use to transition their marketing from pretty noise to marketing that actually engages with real people and generates real results.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. I love that. Fantastic tools. We’ll get both of those links in the show notes for you all so you don’t have to go look for them. VIPChatwithjames.com and marketingSageadvantage.com do check them out. James and his team just a wealth of resource and knowledge, and you cannot go wrong there, James, thanks for being on the show. Just a privilege having you here some amazing stories and insights that are gonna be a massive help for some folks listening, and for those of you who are listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact James Hipkin
James Hipkin is a seasoned marketing expert with over 40 years of experience helping brands build meaningful, lasting connections with their customers. Starting his career with global giants like Apple, Visa, and Toyota Today, as the CEO of Inn8ly, he empowers small and medium-sized businesses with AI-driven marketing tools and website solutions designed to simplify digital growth. His innovative tool, Marketing Sage, enables business owners to create detailed customer avatars and journey maps, transforming data into actionable insights for targeted, customer-centric marketing.
Want to learn more about James Hipkin’s work at Inn8ly? Check out his website at https://inn8ly.com/ VIPChatWithJames or MarketingSageAdvantage.com. You can also get a copy of his book “Journey to Success: Digital Marketing for Small Business Owners” on Amazon at https://amzn.to/4bA1F8J
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