How to Build an Engaged Community – with Joe Glover from The Marketing Meetup | DMR 253

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Joe Glover
Digital Marketing Radio Episode 253, how to build an engaged community

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Digital Marketing Radio with David Bain

David Bain
I’m David Bain, and this is Digital Marketing Radio, the podcast and YouTube show for enhanced agency and entrepreneurial marketers, you want to stay on top of that he’s his tools, tactics and trends, trends, as shared by today’s modern marketing masters. Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a highly engaged community to build a group of like minded souls who are passionate about similar things, and who trust you to hold everything together? Today in Episode 253, of Digital Marketing Radio, I’m joined by a man who has done just that. Five years ago, he founded a really, really nice place for the marketers of the world to come together to listen, learn and meet and share knowledge. And that place now has a community of over 24,000. Members. Welcome to DMR, the founder of the marketing meetup, Joe Glover. Key, so that was amazing. Incredible introduction. That’s the end of the show. No.

Joe Glover
That is, that was great. I am pumped for this now. Thank you. It’s great to have you on Joe. You know, we, we’re not broadcasting live, but I like to produce shows as if I’m broadcasting live. So when I do, then I’m comfortable doing that kind of thing as well. So I’m glad you think it’s a good start. Hopefully, you think it should, middle, and end as well. But we’ll see. We’ll see how it goes. So um,

obviously, I mentioned that you find the marketing meetup. But what did you want to achieve by starting the marketing meetup.

It’s called the marketing meetup is is a safe place for people to come together to learn, connect, build confidence and do it with kindness. My story is that five years ago, because I was a solo marketer, working in a small company, I was terrified of meeting meeting other people, you know, I was terrified at networking events. So really, the only objective at the beginning of the marketing meeting was to create that place where I could go, where I could feel safe, where I wouldn’t have to be treated like a budget or a job title, I could come in and say, Hey, you know, and be me. And people will go, Oh, Hi, you know, ask questions. And that felt good, and safe. So really, right. At the beginning, though, there was no crazy objective, it was just let’s create a place which feels nice and good. And really, that that’s how the marketing we have grown for the past five years. I mean, if if you were to ask about our profit and loss statement, and stuff like that, probably wouldn’t know an awful lot about it. Because honestly, the thing that matters the most is that we’ve created this space, which feels good. And, yeah, so So really, when we started that, that was certainly how we, how we began.

So you mentioned that we’re kinda so I was gonna ask you, how you came up with your style, your communication style, it’s very friendly as well. Is it just a style that you would have wanted to receive yourself as a marketer? So you’re, you’re writing for yourself?

100%? Yeah, there’s nothing too contrived about it, I think. So most of our marketing emails, the stuff that goes out to the community, this stuff goes out via LinkedIn, I post far too much on LinkedIn. And it’s mostly written communication as well, because that’s stuff that I’m far more comfortable with, generally speaking,

I love your email follow ups to deliver webinars, you do just incredible quality there.

Thanks, pay? Well, you know, it literally takes it doesn’t take long at all. That’s the secret actually, you know, like, I write it, and then it’s done, usually speaking, and that’s because it’s written from the heart. It’s written from my brain, you know, then it’s, it’s out there, you know, and it’s me. So, I know that we spend a lot of time as marketers, sort of telling people to come up with these messages, which is like, match it to your audience expectation and stuff like that, in my very specific circumstances, I just wrote from the heart. And I’m really lucky that people have chosen to engage with it over the course of time and indeed enjoy it. And for me, that also speaks to something which is the freedom of sitting in the middle of the community and sort of saying, you know, what, we’re going to be doing this thing. And, you know, come along for the ride, if you want to be sort of, Okay, if you don’t want to, you know, and having that pride, that sense of purpose and that clarity, on you know, this is what we stand for, and having a comfort with, with that level of slightly obnoxious copywriting but in the best way possible.

I think it’s great as also, obviously, from someone that’s grown up natively in digital, we’re on social media as well, when it’s very comfortable. being real. I think, maybe traditional meetups are a little bit about someone else to a group, and very much presentation rather than interactive. Just do you think that’s fair?

is such a good point. So a couple of points there. So the first is that social media so social media was actually my gateway drug into marketing. Like that was the place where I started out I actually thought marketing was social media. So I’m 29 Now, so like Facebook was like quite prevalent when I was at uni. And like, of course, my 17 year old sister is going to be rolling her eyes at me posting on Facebook, because that’s really old school now, you know, but whatever. But like, I definitely grew up in that era of copywriting and that sort of era of sharing, and then sort of being quite comfortable in sharing with a lot of people. So I think that’s, that’s, that’s really spot on. The second point, though, that you touched on, which is absolutely crucial, when it comes to this conversation about community is that it’s not just a broadcast, the whole purpose of community is that it’s there to create interaction, and not just interaction from a central point to other people. But for other people to interact with each other. In this amazing sort of spider’s web of a network that sort of exists beyond, you know, just the group itself. The greatest buzz that I get really now is I see the Facebook group, and people are asking questions and helping each other without me being involved. And I don’t hear from that anymore. And that speaks to the true sphere of community. So if we’re going to sort of give takeaways and sort of like tactical advice for folks, if they’re looking to build their own community, then optimise to give people that platform to discuss and chat beyond just beyond just broadcast, because that’s really not what it is. It’s it’s a group collaborative effort. And even me just sat here speaking with you today, I’m just a representative of our community, you know, I’m part of it. But if people didn’t turn up, if the speakers didn’t turn up, if the sponsors didn’t sponsor, it wouldn’t exist, and in these every one of those pillars to come together for this to be something special. So you know, it’s a complete group effort. And certainly not a broadcast.

How long did it take before people started interacting with each other, and you could almost be a little bit more hands off in the Facebook group approach.

So it ends in the context of the Facebook group, that took a little bit longer. But the Facebook group didn’t exist in the first instance, how we started was actually in person events, if you remember those from way back when, and, and so in that situation, it was actually quite unnatural scenario for people to network beyond sort of me telling them to network, because that was kind of the point why people were coming. So that was instantaneous, but that also meant that it was built into the culture, you know, that people were coming there to meet one another is one of the main purposes of the marketing meetup. However, to answer your question more directly in the Facebook group, it did take a little bit longer, it took a little bit of, you know, sort of posting, you know, these, these sort of, you know, prompting questions and stuff like that, to get people to engage. I would probably say it’s measured in months, rather than years. I don’t have a precise thing for you. But it also depends on the effort that you put into it. Before we went live, we were speaking about, like how the marketing, marketing meetup podcast is like a really great resource and stuff like that. But it’s simply a rip from the webinars that we run, you know, it’s not a specific thing. And I think the truth here is that I know that the podcast can fly more if I wanted to fly, but it will be equal to the effort that I put into it. And that’s the same for the Facebook group here. You know, the second I started putting more effort into it. And second started being more engaged, was also at the moment that more folks started engaging with it, you know, so I think there isn’t an answer, my experience is that the more you do, the more you get back. So that’s probably the best advice I can give there.

David Bain
You touched upon or you use the words profit and loss, and not really knowing what that would look like. Is there a business model behind having a community and you’re perhaps you don’t have one yourself, but perhaps you could actually offer some advice for another business that’s perhaps thinking of creating a community and and how that would tie into their overall marketing model? Sure.

Joe Glover
So the thing to say up front here is that the currency of community isn’t just finance the currency of communities opportunity. And opportunity comes in many, many forms, be the opportunity for yourself as a company or be that as an opportunity for your members. And you need to be doing both, you know, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t deny that if you’re going to be doing it in a corporate context, you’re going to be want to get be wanting to get something back. But the way you get something back is by creating opportunity for your members. In my experience, the marketing meetup. So I very rarely said I need to cover all of this by saying that the best piece of advice I ever got from my dad was don’t give advice. So I share experience and opinions so that that’s what I do. And like, my experience, and my opinion is that you can’t go into a community building exercise with financial goals in mind. Because that’s the second that the switch flips and all of a sudden, you know, it becomes a fun Eventually optimised exercise. And if it becomes a financially optimised exercise, you’re not optimising for the one thing that matters in community in community. And that’s humanity. So you have to go in, in the first instance, looking to help people in the most meaningful way. And that’s an input, you know, you put as much love as you can into this community, and eventually get it back.

I understand that. And I certainly agree, I do agree with that as well. What about an in-house mark is arrested, justify to his or her CEO of why they’re doing certain things, why they’re spending so much time on certain things? How is it possible to answer that kind of question?

Well, ROI comes in all different forms, right? You know, and there’s, there’s, you know, today I sit in the middle of a community of 25,000, marketers with mailing list of, of whatever it is, you know, with a social following, or whatever. And that’s been built on an input, of optimising for humanity. And when you’re going in as a junior marketer, and sort of saying, Hey, boss, I’d like to do this thing, then there’s a few ways you can make an argument, a marketing argument. The first is you argue on the numbers, but so often, that’s like, complete rubbish, because you’re, you’re looking retrospectively, you’re looking at numbers that have happened, and particularly in the world that we live in right now, then this world doesn’t exist, you know, to what, two years ago? So how can your numbers be relevant as they were, you know, two years ago, so so you can’t argue for numbers necessarily. So then the second one is you’re arguing for logic, you know, so Hey, boss, I’d like to walk in. And I would like to run this community thing. And it seems logical, because x y, Zed. Well, you know, they may buy into that. The Thirdly, if you can’t argue numbers or logic, then you might argue example, they say, hey, look, there’s this community out there. And they’re doing a really good job. And you know, what, they seem to have a really special place in the heart of people in the, in the heart, the community, of the marketing community, I think that we can do something special like that. So you know, maybe that’s another way to argue it. And if you can’t argue the the numbers, the logic or the example, then you can argue the magic, which is, you know, what, I feel like it’s gonna make sense is probably a good thing to do. There’s no way I can prove this to you, but give me some time. And you know what? It may work? It may not. But you know, what, I think it’s the right thing to do. And they may turn around, they may say no, but they may say yes. And if they say, if they say yes, then this is what this is the experience that I’ve had, it’s never really been about a commercial thing. Now, except that, you know, people will always want a commercial return on things. And the encouragement that I would give is to look beyond just a point of finance, because ROI is not just about finance, you know, it could be an awareness based goal. So for example, we’ve got this amount of people in the community and they’re engaging with that stuff, you could also say is consideration stuff. So you know, what we’re building on these later list, that’s going to be insanely valuable. And we can speak about how the market to me it would have died without the marketing without our list in 2020, because of COVID. So your newsletter list is insanely valuable.

David Bain
So certainly on my list of things, to talk about COVID, because obviously, that has changed the way that that marketing and that that meetups are done significantly. I’m gonna like your answer there, I think there has to be a certain percentage of feel involved with marketing. And then it’s not all facts and figures. And if you’re just looking at the facts and figures, then perhaps you’re limiting yourself to just a certain type of marketing, maybe a last click, maybe a close to sale, decision type, advert rather nicely, top of funnel approach. So you’ve got to blend and maybe say to your boss, look, give me x percentage to work on feel. And I’ll focus x percentage on something that I actually give you a hard fact and finger for as well. But I mean, just before we get to, I guess how you’ve caught but over the last year or so and how perhaps you’ve changed your, your style of operating a community. Going back to when you started, you’re obviously doing a lot of face to face meetups. How did that get started? And how did you actually fuel that growth initially?

Joe Glover
So it got started by finding a venue in Cambridge, which canteen in Cambridge, asking redgate software if I could use their canteen, finding two speakers putting on a buffet and then putting people on meetup.com I think at the same time actually started a Cambridge all abilities welcome football meetup. And so part of the reason why the marketing meetup exists is that I really wanted to make the most of my meetup.com subscription started to grapes as Interested in football, I was interested in marketing and, and after a few weeks, and there was 100 members in the, in the marketing group, so I thought I better do something about this. So, so that was literally how it started. And you know, 30 4050 people came to the first event. And I thought, Well, I better carry on them. And so I did know. And the truth of the matter is that the marketing metre grew through word of mouth. And we did stuff to encourage that. So the first thing was simply to ask, the last thing we asked every event was, if you enjoyed this, would you mind telling someone else is a simple ask. But the power of actually making that ask is something that’s radically underestimated. People won’t do things if you don’t ask them to. So. So that was the first thing that we did. The second thing we also did was encouraged word of mouth through little sort of, I guess you could consider them campaigns or stunts. Things like handing out business cards to every person who came to the marketing meetup to business cards, in fact, saying, I think you will really, really, really, really, really, really like this, and then encouraging people to give those business cards to to other people. And that was our attempt to exponential growth. But you know what the next event, we had double the amount of people there. So that seemed to go, okay. And then, the other thing that is really, really important to say is that I didn’t do it by myself. So over the course of time, I was running this event in Cambridge, and I started getting people come up to me and say, this event that you’re doing in the canteen in Cambridge, well, I really like it. And you know what, I want to do it close to my house, because I’m driving from Bedford or Birmingham to come to this canteen on a Tuesday night. And so that was Nick in Bedford and James in Birmingham. And, and so we grew out the community, initially, based on geography on places where people were willing to run events close to their house, we got to the place at beginning of 2020, where we had 13 locations around the UK, we just started in New York as well. So we had 140 events planned for that year, about 50, of which I would have been running myself and the remainder would have been run by volunteers and people getting involved with the community, just because it felt like the right thing to do.

So it sounds like you’ve been just mega successful. You’ve started a meetup. It’s grown fairly quickly. 30 or 40 people to an initial meetup is incredible. Certainly, because I’ve been to several meetups with a lot less people than that. Please tell, please tell me that there was one less successful thing that you’ve done. So an example of some something that you’ve tried to do to keep people engaged, and you’ve maybe tested but but you wouldn’t do again.

They all seem like the fun ones. So like, at the NIH, we’ve done stupid stuff, like we rickrolled the entire database just because it’s in fun, you know, and we, we got, you know, remember when COVID hit, and, you know, everyone was doing those silly, like, we’re there for you messages and like, so we got Sean Paul to do hours just on the cameo video, because that would be fun. You know, like, let’s be honest, I have no idea whether they’ve been successful or not, because I never really imagined it all that much. I just thought from having a nice time. Look, you went there,

when I’m just still picturing this poor old marketing manager justifying things as CEO,

of course, said like, let’s, let’s let’s help the audience, right, you know, and let’s be let’s be real here. And, you know, I just, the reality is that marketing manager setting sat in the large court right now, I’ve had the freedom to do these things, because it’s the community that I’ve grown. But the other reality is that if you’re starting an organisation, any marketer worth their salt is going to realise that not every activity is going to have an ROI associated with it. And the place that you need to get to is trust, you know, trust from the seniors trust from the team around you to say, you know, what, I know that, you know, what, I know, David’s really good. And he’s got this gut instinct that this thing is going to work with no idea if it’s going to be you know, it’s gonna cost 80 quid, if that’s gonna cost the equipment, you know what, we’ll give it a go. And so, you know, I feel like you earn trust over the course of time through doing good work, and that’s probably the other half that we’re speaking about. That’s probably the source of your wins right there is you know, this this ROI, data driven marketing which is based on the You know, hard facts and figures and stuff like that. Yeah, but the reality is here, we’re speaking about community, we’re speaking about not a marketing tactic, we’re speaking about human experience. And so if you’re trying to force, this sort of metric driven, sort of blunt tool in into something that is actually fundamentally wrapped in emotion, then it feels like the wrong way to approach things. And so that’s why I’m really, really passionate. And I’m not, I’m actually being quite willfully naive, willfully ignorant on the marketing conversation here. Because I’ve got a fundamental belief that that’s not how you grow a community.

I’m wincing, partly because I was that marketing manager in a large organisation that struggled to justify why I want to do certain things. And inside, I was going, trust me, I know what I’m doing, it’s the right thing to do. But figuring out how to justify why I was thinking that way was quite a bit of a challenge. And I think that I think that you’re right, and that I think leaders are probably better now at understanding that marketers have to be intuitive and creative to certain degree as well. But there’s a fine line between doing that and not being able to justify anything and I guess, ideally, you need to be able to do both. Absolutely. So you know, the questions that you may be asking to your bosses, you know, why is community important to us? You know,

you know, you and I have sat down and said, You know what, this is going to be a topic that’s going to be really important for us for the rest of the year. So why is it going to be really important for us? You know, and they may come back and say, Well, you know, we just want people to be aware of our thing, you know, and say, you go, Okay, great, well, you know, what, I’m gonna try and get a bunch of people to be aware of our thing. But in the process of that, then I’m gonna have to do a bunch of stuff. That means that shows that we’re not just, you know, like, some random brand with someone who really cares. You know, so, this is the theory, according to Joe, you know, feel free to ignore it. But I think that if a brand is going to build the community, they have to show that they really care. So in the process of making people really aware, I’m going to have to do a bunch of stuff, and we’re gonna have to get out to see whether we can make people aware. If you know, you could then ask the boss, you know, is there make a turn around and say, you know, what, really, really bothered about the newsletter this year? And in that case, you know, you turn around, say, Well, okay, you know, they’re gonna have to be in our community first. So we’re gonna have to make it really fun, enticing, good place to be in, we’re gonna have to make it place where people want to be, you know, what we’re gonna have to make it so, so good, that they’re then going to want to give us their details as well, you know, because they want to stay involved. And that’s, you know, that’s not a conversation where you’re like, you know, what, we’re gonna get this scalpel, like, you know, make this really surgical is, it works both ways. So you got, you’ve got to optimise for the customer, the customer experience if we want our horrible marketing term on it,

that is, oh, well, there’s so many rabbit holes or additional threads that you’ve thrown out there that I can grab onto, but I just want to quickly go down the COVID thread before we move on to the next section. So how did what you intended to do change at post COVID? And how well did you adapt? How much do you have to do?

So it’s been, we’ve been really lucky, you know, we’ve, we’ve been really lucky. It’s been a really positive year after a really, really terrible situation. And like, the first thing that needs to be said is that not one of us wishes this happened. So, you know, in that case, you know, it’s almost a given, but I think it needs to be appreciated, because the thing that follows on from that is saying that the past year has been good for the marketing meetup. So, if we’re looking at pure metrics, then the community has gone from 11,000 to over 25,000. Our guests have gone from meatheads like me to people like Rory Sutherland and Mark Ritson and the Global Head of Marketing for the Olympic Games. We’ve gone from hosting, you know, 50 people to six 700 every week. So it’s been a crazy year. As I said earlier, we’d planned 140 in person events for last year. So like that was big, and I’d been working for four years really, really hard to get to that point and so had the other volunteers and organisers. And so when we had to cancel those in a moment, then it was March the 13th. Then I felt really sad that she spent four days either just sat on my computer Clicking, but really sure, why not really doing anything that of any of any substance. And that was hard. That was really, really hard. But I think in that moment, you sort of have a choice. You can, you can start to feel sorry for yourself, we can do something about it. And so I decided to do something about it. And my mum sort of said that I channelled my granddad a bit in a way and decided to be a little bit confident. And so I spent a weekend emailing the most well known marketers that I knew and saying, you know what, everyone’s a little bit scared right now, but hopefully we can provide a sense of normality. And, you know, we can do this together. And they said, Yes, so you know, we had the likes of SSA, Mark Ritson Come on, cuz, you know, in my eyes, the king of marketing, you know, and Rory, and, you know, Margaret Malloy is this most amazing marketer for Siegel and Gale over in New York, and all of a sudden, these people were being exposed to new audiences, but we were providing something for a greater community to. And we were sort of freed from the shackles of geographic dependence as well. So you go on any marketing metre webinar each week now and you get people from South Africa, Greece, Australia, Macedonia, Russia, you know, wherever, sort of turn up and all within the spirit and the the the ideals of the marketing message, sort of ethos, but there they are, as well. And we never would have been able to reach those before. So there’s been a couple of advantages, I would say that something that I desperately Miss, and you know, sort of when I’m having a low day, or I do, one thing I do miss is a sort of getting the bus of seeing lots of people and sort of hugging people, you know, I like a good hug.

Unknown Speaker
So

Joe Glover
I miss, I miss all that. And so I would say that if we speak about the marketing metre, educating and connecting marketers with kindness, I think we’ve nailed the education bit. I think we’ve nailed the kindness bit. But one thing I would love to do more of all, I think has been room for improvement over this past year is the connection bit Are we done that to a certain extent, through the zoom chat feature through the Facebook group and stuff like that. But the reality is that there are moments where it’s just nice to see people in person too. So it’s been a hell of a year. One that I’m glad I’m glad in the context of the marketing meetup world happened, especially because I got three month old daughter at home now. So, you know, it wouldn’t be doing for me to be travelling three, four days a week to random events around the country. So I’m glad that’s happened. And it’s given us an opportunity to also review what else we can do for the community as well. So like we’ve revamped the website, we got a rebrand done. The webinars have been going great, we’ve added a bunch of stuff, we just launched a subscription that would never have happened before. We’re going to be launching the jobs board soon. And like, we’ve suddenly shifted from, you know, a very specific events sort of place to a sort of a more holistic marketing opportunities place where people could come together and sort of get what they need, which has been great.

Oh, you’re doing a wonderful job. You’ll keep up the wonderful work. And thank you, Sam, the segue to part two of our discussion in so it’s now time for Joe’s thoughts on the state of digital marketing today. So starting off with SECRET SOFTWARE. So Joe share a lesser-known martech tool with it’s bringing you a lot of value at the moment and why that tool is important for you.

Well, so it’s interesting, in a martech sort of world, so I’ve literally in the past weekend, just been playing with Data Studio, and I know that it’s probably quite well known Google Data Studio. But there are a few despite my brazenness about sort of metrics and stuff like that. There is a few things that we look at and increasingly so with the community so things that are going to be important for the growth of democracy meetup just as a health check to make sure that we’re doing okay is one is about profitability, so we can make sure that we can survive. So that’s that’s important and it’s not an operation, optimised for finance by any way but In fact, I’m sure most people who say it’s a terrible business. But that that’s one. The second is our newsletter, which we went from ConvertKit. And I’ve been very impressed with ConvertKit removed from MailChimp to ConvertKit. And been really pleased with that. And then the third is the marketing metre plus which are built on the combination of Devi, and memberpress. And so Devi is what we built the website, I’ve been really pleased with it, I know that there’s quite a lot of sleepiness, maybe within the website development community, who will probably say that it’s not particularly great. website building kit, for me is work perfectly. So I’m perfectly happy. And memberpress. It seems like a perfectly robust membership platform as well. So I’ve been getting my head around that as well. The last thing our member presses that, particularly in this world of people building a lot of subscriptions sites and stuff like that. Certainly, if you’re looking to integrate with WordPress, then that seems to be the best one. After spending a lot of time researching it, it doesn’t seem to be a topic that a lot of people cover either. So. So yeah, I definitely recommend that. That’s

great. A lot of great recommendations there as well. It’s funny, you mentioned Devi, and you’re not sure whether it’s actually a professional WordPress development opportunity. I mean, I actually use Elementor. So I’m very similar theme builder. And they’ve come on so much over the last even three years or so. It used to be quite tough to actually change WordPress site yourself if unless you knew Coldwell yourself, but But yeah, anyone can do it.

Yeah, yeah. Likewise, I’ve been really, really pleased. I remember when I first started my marketing career, I had a job, which was built a site built with HTML. So I’m really, really good at editing HTML now. But you got one thing wrong, one load online, and the whole site broke, it was just like an absolute nightmare. So to have something that’s quite robust, like that, albeit that sits on top. I’m not really sure on how it compares performance wise, but like, just sits on top nice. Oh, yeah.

It’s back in 2004. I was getting started with web design, and I used Dreamweaver I taught myself PHP includes. It was, it was so difficult compared with nowadays, it’s a joke, it says I’m sorry, just in relation to your your giggle when I pressed the bumper noise there as well. It got me thinking, actually, I do things by gut instinct, and do what I like as well. I mean, that’s what I like to do. I like to create a show and put in different sections. And if the if the guest laughs or the listener last, yeah, that’s, that’s great. If If people hate it, then I guess you’re not my audience as well, you know, because I like to do Yeah, absolutely. I

think it’s brilliant. Absolutely love it, I was so so impressed like this level in the best possible way, you’re doing such a good job. It’s like it was

fun. I enjoyed it. Well, let’s move on, from something you currently use to something that you’re going to use. So that is NEXT ON THE LIST. So what’s one marketing activity or tool that you haven’t tried yet, but you want to test him?

So we’re going to be exploring doing some social advertising for the first time ever. So I mentioned earlier to you that we’ve grown by word of mouth, and that is pretty much how we’ve been growing the entire way. Either that or organic social. So I’m on LinkedIn is something that’s important to me, and is that that’s also a source of growth, we’re going to be exploring whether paid social can bring in a group of marketers that sort of retain that value that and that that sort of community spirit that we’ve spoken about. But do so at a rate, which is more than it is right now. And that’s not about growth in the the aggressive sense that, you know, everyone else speaks about growth, as if it’s the be all end all. Not really bothered about that. But what I do think is the community is good, why not share it with more people? So, so yeah, we’re going to be exploring a little bit of paid advertising. So 20 question more directly. I don’t know what the specific piece of software is just yet. But I’m on the lookout for a good bit of paid software paid, paid social management stuff. And it may just be their native platforms. I don’t know. Or it might be something like I think those ad espresso or something like that.

There is Yeah, I mean, I used to involve an agency. But I’m, I’m long out of that knows, I wouldn’t be able to give you the best heads up in terms of using activated and a lot of people using the platform’s needs natively as well. I mean, when you say social advertising, would it be LinkedIn that you try first?

Well, I don’t know. So that the cost per click seems really, really high on LinkedIn.

Yeah, I’m going to talk to someone bring recently about LinkedIn. And they said that the average cost per click is about $10. And the average cost per lead is between 50 and $100. So it’s not entirely a

no, and really, you know, we, we optimise more of the experience of the individual, but you know, when you’re doing stuff like that, then inevitably, the implication is that you’d like to bring in a decent amount of people, you know. So as much as you know, one person into the community is a great thing. If you’re spending $100 on that, that seems really, really expensive. So Facebook, and it’s the seem to sit more neatly in terms of our expectations, a budget, even if it’s not necessarily in the context of of business. So it will be an interesting experiment to test to see. And I’ll report back on my LinkedIn perhaps and again,

on another episode in the future, that’d be good as well, I’m experimenting with Facebook ads a little bit as well. And I’m grazing a video for each episode and spending 15 pounds. And the last couple of videos, I’ve got something like 40,000 views to the the videos and also allegedly, by about 4000 clicks through my site. But with Facebook, it appears that the majority of those people that click do end up on your website, they may be click for a second and then go back. So it’s, it’s a strange platform you have to use I guess. Yeah, I mean that that’d be insane. Like, yeah, targeting people around the world. So I do get a lot of clicks from many countries outside the UK and the US may not necessarily be what you want to do. But I think a lot of views are available around the world that are that are cheaper. So that could be appealing. Yes.

Yeah, it’s very, very good thought. Interesting. I’m intrigued.

Well, let’s move on to this or that round. So this is the quick response round 10 quick questions here. Just 2 rules. Try not to think about the answer too much. And you’re only allowed to say the word both on one occasion, so use it wisely. Are you ready? Ready. Tick Tock on Twitter, tick tock, Facebook or LinkedIn, LinkedIn, YouTube or podcast. YouTube, traffic or leads. Traffic, paid search, paid search or SEO, SEO, ads or influencers? Didn’t say neither. ads, Google ads or Facebook ads, Google ads, email marketing or chat marketing, email marketing stack are all on one platform. Both one to one or scale. Once more. I think we made it I think we reasonably well. I had I had a repeated time. Clock there. So you know, here we struggled with a couple wasn’t it was it was a period of paid search or SEO that you struggled with?

No. So I mean, SEO is quite clear when I think he said ads or influences.

Okay. Yeah. And you said neither for that one than you?

Yeah. So I think the interesting thing about, you know, obviously, that’s just a lot of fun. I think the interesting thing about marketing these days is that is often reduced to total statements, you know, this or that. And, of course, the context is important, right? So, you know, the context for influences. If I’m looking to, you know, help with specific things that will suit the strengths of influences, then then I’ll go there, you know, otherwise, it may be at elsewhere. So, I guess, in that specific context with that specific answer. I’m almost channel agnostic in a lot of ways. You know, it’s the right tool for the right job at the right time type of thing. But enjoy something like

work or it’s no now Yes.

I spent too long listening to stuff. I mean, he spot on with a lot of stuff. So it’s really, really interesting, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. But I mean, he said it’s a it’s a bit of fun. It is a bit of fun. But what it tends to give me is just just one or two answers that I didn’t expect an opportunity to drill deeper into that. And I think I think it probably didn’t with you as well. Yeah, so

Was there any more was that was out of interested in then he come up there were you like, Oh, that’s interesting.

I normally do fairly good. I don’t remember every single one. I think. I just think you’re at your your your answer that you just gave, you know, it’s your channel agnostic, you. You don’t like to commit I think a lot of your answers were forced and you didn’t feel particularly passionate about one over the other. I think that was probably the biggest finding for me. For sure. I think the only the only exception to that rule is probably LinkedIn. Which is right. Yeah.

particularly useful and good is the upside down social media network at the moment in that reaches good. Whereas the other ones, cutting rates, LinkedIn seems still seems to be giving it out. Do

David Bain
you use LinkedIn to schedule events?

Joe Glover
We we literally started in the past couple of weeks. And I would say that it’s not been particularly successful in terms of organic reach, I would say that the mechanism where you can invite your connections is, is important. And if you’re going to be doing that, I would say that it’s an interesting feature in LinkedIn, where if you go into the app, and I don’t know if it’s replicated on their desktop experience, but you can, when you reject an event, is sort of says, Do you still want this to send you event invites, and like, it just seems like a really interesting thing to me, because it’s always them acknowledging that event invites a little bit annoying if there are contexts and like, it’s almost like they’ve created this function, but don’t quite believe in it enough. So I think it could be really, really powerful. And I was fortunate enough to actually be on the beta for it. And so they’ve actually upped it a lot since since they started with it. But I think they’ve still got a little while to go on on it as well.

I tried it about a year ago or so. And I don’t think they had the functionality to generate leads as part of it back then. And I got a few 100 people to sign up to an event, but not many people showed but then I spoke to Bob Lowe on episode 251. And he said afterwards that he was having an incredible amount of success. And he was lead using it to generate leads. And now they’ve got this obviously lead capture form that’s integrated in it. And I was intending on giving it a go again, but now I’m no I’m deflated by your answer. They’re not that good.

Well, no, don’t be deflated. As I say, you know, everything’s in your own context, right. And so a lot of marketing meet up audience. And now on our list, you know, and so the truth of the matter is that if we send an email, then we’re going to get a lot of signups through that way. LinkedIn is almost like a supplementary thing. You know, but and for that reason, we haven’t done northmet testing on it. That does sound like an over reliance on one platform. But right now it’s okay, you know, so I think it’s worth testing. And that’s why we’re testing it. And I don’t have the answers. I’ve just got experiences. Okay.

Unknown Speaker
Let’s move on to the $10,000. Question.

Joe Glover
If I were to give you $10,000, and you had to spend over the next few days in a single thing to grow your business, what would you spend it on? And how would you measure success?

So I have three answers for this that came to mind, I appreciate I’ve got to pick one of them in the moment that the three places that it could go would be people advertising, or the third is that we’re soon to be starting a marketing meetup grant as well, a grant system. And the reason for that is that I’ve been fortunate over these past few years. And so generally speaking, I think you have to put the ladder down behind you, if you’re going to help it to, you know, bring other people up to the level that you’ve got to over the year. So. So I wouldn’t spend the 10,000 on that. Because I think there’s other ways that we’re helping people still. And through those activities, then we can make the grant more significant. But I think that was that was the third thought. The second thought was about people. And so something that I am hysterically bad at is, is the flight email, like replying to one to one email and stuff like that, and I really don’t enjoy it, I find email there. And I enjoy a two way interaction which is like jovial, and then and then but i’d far rather have a phone call or something like that. So the first hire for the marketing meetup is definitely going to be like a logistics person, someone who can come in and do like, do email, do the do the clicky stuff, which I’m not very good at, because I tend to lose my attention is just not one of my strengths. Whereas there are people out there who would be far better at that. So that would be the second option.

Just before we get into the first one, actually, you might be interested in a service called inbox done by the arrow historic inbox.com. And he actually specialises in getting people to manage inboxes people just resistant, so interesting. Nice. Well, I’m

writing that down right now because I am very interested in that. So thank you very much. I appreciate that. You may have just changed my life so

we’ll see. If that sounds good, see I sent you if it sounds bad, see someone else. Yeah.

So yeah, that would be the second one, but maybe I don’t need that anymore. So if we don’t need that anymore, then the first one was that and the reason why that is, is that we have never done it before. So as an experiment, you know, it’s an experiment to see whether we can bring people into the community who will add as much to the community as the folks we’ve bought in organically can to,

oh, what would your natural instinct be in terms of type of ad to experiment with initially,

with the truth is that I feel like we’re providing a tonne of value from the academia, like the content that we’re putting out is, frankly, ridiculous at this stage, you know, the speakers were getting are amazing. It doesn’t speak to me, it speaks to the value of the speakers we get along and the value of the community. So the feels like there’s an opportunity for a bit more top of funnel awareness through slipping up, you know, Rory sutherlands, great quotes and sort of doing a bit of an awareness piece on that. If we can get people into the Facebook group. Via that way, that seems great. But then the other way of advertising really would probably be more like carousel picture based with just the speakers that we’ve got from the upcoming webinars. I feel like folks would come in, I think people always need to experience it to a certain extent to understand, you know, what it’s like to go to a marketing meetup webinar, people are there, you know, genuinely supporting each other chatting, enjoying the process. So if we can get people in on a more functional basis, sort of seeing these amazing speakers, and then really, really, really enjoying the experience of it too, then I think they’re far more likely to stay in the community as well. So I think probably picture based carousel based using the speakers as the hook. And then, you know, sort of going from there, I think, I think there’ll be my gut instinct, but it needs to be tested,

returns. Well, to finish off let’s finish. Let’s finish by shifting the focus to someone else who deserves it. So that is MAGICAL MARKETER. So who’s an up and coming marketer that you’d like to give a shout out to? What can we learn from them? And where can Where can we find them?

here and I had a little discussion about this one before we went live right because I was a little bit nervous about this because there’s too many there’s a few So the first is a girl called cloudier Carter nanny. She is she works a great influence, which is run by a guy called s Jones. cloudier is an amazing personal branding, sort of expert at this stage. She’s definitely going to be one of the up and coming people in the industry. She’s very relatable writer, which is good fun as well, she’s you know, and she knows she knows her stuff about personal branding. So that would be my first recommendation. I think the things you could learn from her would be about humility in in work. I think he learned about personal branding from her. I think she’s a good egg. The next would be open Co. Kak Bella, he is a videographer based in Thetford, and he is putting his heart and soul really integrating some great video content that is just good fun as well. He often feels at home by himself, and sort of his characters and stuff like that. But he’s really, really, really, really, really cares about great videography, and great photography. And so you know, as a young up and coming raw videographer photographer, then then oh, as he’s known, is really, really good lad. I’ll give the third one and Sophie’s less up and coming, but maybe not as well known in the broader marketing community, but very well known in the freelancing community. So Sophie cross, she is the editor of a new magazine called freelancing magazine. But she’s also got a background in marketing consultancy. As someone who’s built their own community, but has also made an effort to elevate other people and create a really valuable resource for a community of freelancers. Then, she’s just a phenomenal human being, I think the things that you can learn from her about proactivity about giving. She’s very, very good on Twitter. And, you know, just a really smart person, she’s also just raised the massively oversubscribed Kickstarter campaign as well. So she knows a thing or two about that sort of stuff as well. So, so yeah, those would be three probably slightly more under the radar people. And then you can speak about the Harry dryers and the Kerry roses of the world, but they’re all really really well known anyway. So it’s good to give someone else a place in the sun.

David Bain
Superb. And you also win the award for the three hardest names to spell and so I’m gonna have to get you get links from you afterwards. I normally do. All right, good job of searching their names actually finding their LinkedIn profiles, as we’re actually discussing. I can do that. For me afterwards. Look, this was Episode 253, of Digital Marketing Radio where Joe Glover from the marketing meetup shared some wonderful tips about focusing on fun and enjoyment, like getting that feeling right to begin with about what you’re doing not ROI, putting the community first and then they’ll naturally self serve each other and you’ll win over the long term for that, but you can’t focus on ROI. He’s a wonderful guest recently like Mark Ritson and Rory Sutherland as well. So you’re obviously doing lots of things right. At your SECRET SOFTWARE. Joe was Google Data Studio, he also mentioned ConvertKit. And also if you’re marketing meetup, plus, Divi and memberpress. Your NEXT ON THE LIST was social advertising, namely probably LinkedIn and Facebook advertising. Your MAGICAL MARKETER is cloud you garden le, Enrico tag valla and Sophie cross, I think I got those names, right. But I will certainly make sure that I include all the links to that in the show notes at Digital Marketing radio.com. Joe, what’s the best social platform for someone to follow you and say Hi, LinkedIn 100% just Joe Blow on the bald guy with glasses. Okay, first of all, make sure there’s the link obviously to Joe in the show notes there as well. I’ve been your host David Bain. You can also find me producing podcasts and YouTube shows for B2B brands over at Casting cred.com until we meet again, stay hungry, stay foolish and stay subscribed. Aloha Digital Marketing radio.com Digital Marketing Radio, Digital Marketing Radio, Digital Marketing Radio, Digital Marketing Radio