I was a junior marketer with a ridiculous budget. 

I was cutting my teeth as a marketer while being onboard an explosive rocket ship that wasn’t slowing down any time soon. The company had the right product and the right audience at the right time. I thought this experience was normal and how all marketing gigs would go. You get a stack of cash each quarter to place bets. Sure, you want to win some of those bets, but if you don’t then at least you get to learned something new. I don’t want to date myself, but well over a decade later I’ve learned that experience was a 1 of 1. 

Experiences are how we evolve and prepare ourselves for 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲. There was an experience during that stretch of my career that won’t be found on my “One Shining Moment” highlight reel. The screw up is a better fit for my blooper mixtape, but taught me one of the most valuable lessons that sticks with me today:

We live in a world where people look for answers before reaching out. 

I was walking into work when I got a buzz on my iPhone 5 from my boss. I’ll never forget the words that came out of his mouth to this day. 

“Brett, I was digging around with our team budget and I found $18,000 extra. We’ve got until Monday to spend it or we'll lose it.” 

I think about that conversation now and it still seems crazy to me to give a 20 something year old marketer that kind of coin and responsibility, but that’s where we were. I ran up to my desk and looked at my CRM dashboard. We were a week out and I needed more leads to hit my number. I didn’t even think twice about it. I didn’t email. I didn’t send a LinkedIn message. I cold called a content syndication provider and told them I had $18,000 to spend and needed leads….that was probably the easiest deal that rep ever closed.

I thought I made the best decision imaginable. We were going to not only get to promote a new report that we’d written, but I was going to get a ton of leads on the other side. I waited a couple of days for the campaign to conclude and got a CSV file of leads in return. I quickly uploaded those leads to the CRM and assigned the leads to our inside sales team. The arrow on my dashboard instantly went up and to the right. I felt like a marketing superhero for less than 24 hours. 

The next day I walked into work I was awaiting an email from our head of inside sales. It just said, “Brett, we need to talk”. I had little to zero experience during that moment in my career, but understood well enough that that type of ominous communication could not have been good news. I tucked my tail in between my legs, took the elevator to the 3rd floor, and found the bossman. 

“Brett, these leads suck. I had 5 or 6 messages from my team yesterday alone saying that the prospects they were calling didn’t even know who we were”

The conversation brought me back down to earth and taught me a very important lesson that sticks with me today. Great marketing and the results that are produced can’t be transactional. It takes much more than transactional tactics to get the attention of the people you’re trying to reach. 

This story is more relevant to me now than ever before as we have conversations with our customers about 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲. Remember, we live in a world where people look for answers before reaching out. I’m not here to say that having an outbound strategy won’t work, but I’m here to say that your next customer is in complete control of their buying process. 

It’s not enough to try to buy their attention. 

The best that we can do is to make sure that we show up when they have a question that we can help answer. 

The Content We Dropped This Week

In the fourth episode of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 podcast we hosted Stephanie  Fornaro, Founder and CEO of Hello, Nanny! to discuss using data to better inform how to find your next customer. 

Stephanie shares stories about started the business and how being proactive in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 has helped her business scale. 

Please follow and subscribe to 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 wherever you consume fine audio and video content.

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify 

• YouTube

Quick Tip for The Search Economy

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 is very much about the execution of tactics to show up when your next customer has a question that you can answer, but that’s not everything. It’s about the opportunity to be different.

It’s not easy to grow. Whether we like it or not, the product or service that we’re trying to sell isn’t one of a kind. We’re selling commodities and most of our competitors are running the same playbook to get attention. That’s why it’s more important than ever to separate the signal from the noise and try things that make your brand stand out. 

It can be focusing on your company story, humanizing your brand, or doubling down on relationships. If you turn left when others are turning right and have the tactics down then people will want to work with you. 

The cookie cutter playbook will only get you so far. 

Be different.

What They’re Saying About Search

AdbdulGaniy offered a great perspective on how we should be thinking about SEO from the jump. It’s easy to fall into a trap of analyzing our SEO strategy from the context of the company’s that we’re competing against. There’s so many tools that exist that can help us do that. 

But, we start to gain quicker traction in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 when we dig into the search behaviors of our customers. Starting with customer insights in mind will always help elevate your position in 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲.

If you’re looking for a team that will help give you a jump start into 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 give Pneuma a shout for a free traffic audit!

Content That Supports The Search Economy

The headline of this podcast by the Wix team caught my attention and knew I needed to hit play. This conversation is phenomenal for anyone who is trying to break SEO out of the silo and get more collaborative. 

You can listen to the conversation here. 

I appreciate you being here for 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐲 newsletter. If you’re looking to learn more about how your company can get found by your next customer then give the Pneuma team a shout.