Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I'm Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, keynote speaker, strategist, your host and Chief Shark Officer.

Shark 0:25
What kind of data and insights are you using to shape your content and social media? For a lot of teams, it comes with just the ones you can control or recognize, but what about the data points that come from other sources where your customers have interactions, say with sales or customer service, your call center, and when you've created that content, to the teams often siloed know what to do with the content you've created to help your brand better connect in some way with the customer. All while each of the teams works together to serve a common goal.

Shark 0:55
Zontee Hou is the founder of the digital agency, Media Volery, as well as the head of strategy for Convince & Convert; she was recognized as a LinkedIn top 16 marketer to follow in 2021; she has been recognized as TopRank's top 50 Most Influential content marketers; and her work has garnered multiple awards including several PR news platinum awards, and a Forrester groundswell award.

Shark 1:16
And on this episode, we'll discuss content strategy, breaking down silos across teams and channels. Using data and storytelling content with context in the journey measurement. Netflix surprises, the Grand Ole Opry, the International Monetary Fund flamingos and seagulls, baking pies, and a lot lot more.

Shark 1:34
So let's tune into a leader of a volery with a leader of sharks on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Shark 1:43
Zontee, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. If you would tell us a little bit about your background and your career today.

Zontee Hou 1:49
Yeah, absolutely. So happy to be here, Kenneth. I have been the head of consulting at Convince & Convert, which is a digital marketing consultancy since I've been with the team since 2013. Prior to that, I was in house at a variety of different brands. So I've spent my whole career in digital marketing. I'm also the owner of an agency in New York City called Media Volery that works with small medium businesses mostly in the professional services and high end retail spaces. And on top of all that I speak around the country. I've been a lecturer at Columbia, and at the City College of New York, I really am passionate about helping people take marketing, frameworks and perspectives and really turn it into a work product that really supports their team on a day to day basis.

Shark 2:41
So I know you talk a lot about digital strategy and helping tell people what to do. But describe what that is when you start forming out a digital strategy or going in to work with a team. Tell us a little bit about the size of the team and where you start to set things up with the strategy.

Zontee Hou 2:57
Yeah, absolutely. The Convince and Convert team we are six teams 16. Top Level marketers across the US really focused as a strike team on working with major brands. I've worked with clients like Caesars Entertainment, the Grand Ole Opry, Hilton, the IMF, the UN, FAO, Allstate, Oracle, many other brands like that, to really take their digital marketing work, and build a strategy that really unites all the different elements of the team that helps them to be more thoughtful and business goals oriented in their marketing approach. And that really helps to organize their different channels. And so when I'm coming in with my team to do that work, we're really assessing not only what the competitive landscape is doing, but what best in class brands are doing in order to use various channels. That's everything from social media email website, as well as different kinds of content creation, to really take brands that speak to this particular audience that and take that up to that next level by making sure that we're being really targeted in focusing on that audience's needs. If your digital marketing is not addressing the needs that your audience has at the specific moment within their customer journey, then you're not going to be effective in moving that needle, right? Because people won't want to work with you. Something that I say to my clients all the time is that if you are only focused on that bottom of the funnel, and you're telling people, you know, come try our product, come try our product, come try our product, and they haven't even bought into the use case for why your product category is relevant to them. And they're only somewhat aware of what the possibilities are, then you haven't connected the dots for them and they're not going to be ready to buy right. So you really targeted in what message where and why is very much a part of how we build out those strategies. The thing that I hear again and again is that most companies can end up in This problem where they're doing content and marketing for marketing sake. And that's not useful, right, we really have to get back to that business goal.

Shark 5:09
So first of all two phrases you never hear together two names, you never hear together, the Grand Ole Opry and the International Monetary Fund. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Second of all, are the marketers that you're working with, or brands that you're working with? Do they still seem to be unaware of this, because I think for a lot of us, we think of this as old hat by now. But yet, there's still such a giant need for it. And I see it over and over again. And I'm constantly surprised when I go in. And it sounds new to some people.

Zontee Hou 5:39
I think that most people understand conceptually, that they need a marketing strategy that is grounded in business goals, that they need to be united that they need to have clarity across all their different channels. They notice it's not the idea of it is new, it is that the execution of it can be really difficult for a lot of organizations, especially those that are somewhat more legacy. In fact, I was just working with a client this morning, that they are a tech company, they're maybe only 10 or 12 years old, but they still have through inertia ended up in a situation where they're extremely siloed in specific teams or mentalities around what marketing messaging should look like, and they don't have a centralized strategy. So it's not unusual that teams end up in this place where they're like, we know we need to change, we do not know how a good example that I think about is, you know, most of us know that we need to exercise more, because it supports heart health, it's gonna be you know, good for us, it's gonna make us feel better, it's gonna clear up our brain fog. But you also get into that place. I know, I certainly have during this pandemic time of, you know, not having the time to dedicate to it or just the ability to get into a process for exercise that makes me really feel good in the way that I want to be. I think that's what we end up with for a lot of marketers. It's not that they don't know that they need to get to a more strategic place. It's that it's difficult to take the time to focus on that strategy when you're deep in the weeds day to day.

Shark 7:09
So used one of the dirtiest words you could in data science that's in marketing and advertising, it's silos. How do you recommend that teams break down the silos so that they can really look at their data holistically as a as an entire group as opposed to an a siloed group?

Zontee Hou 7:27
Well, I think that the first part of solving that problem is to recognize that you have a problem to recognize what are all of the different sources of data that we actually have? And also understand what are the specific things that we need to understand both about our customers are different personas or customer segments. And all of our different touch points, we as a firm have been moving further and further into the customer experience space, because one of the things that we recognize is that you actually have to put together all of the different teams who touch these different touch points of the customer. And make sure that you're sharing data across the board, and also connecting the dots, right? So for instance, I was speaking to a client about how they generate content, they said, you know, these are the things that we think are the top pieces of content. And I said, Okay, and what are the pieces of content that your sales team is actually using? And what did they see as the top performing pieces of content, and they were like, We have no idea. We know that they use the things that we've provided them, but we have no measurement tool in place, and that we have no feedback mechanism. And you know, when you speak to the sales team, and they're like, Hey, we actually don't know that we're using the right things, we get no guidance from the marketing team on this. So we we, you know, the left hand in the right hand are not talking to each other. And this is a really major brand, one that probably everybody in America hasn't heard of. And when I was speaking to their team, you know, these are the kinds of things that you hear and it's recognizing that you have a problem. And sometimes it's hard for them to reconcile that position of, we actually have all of the pieces, we're just not communicating them to each other. We have no feedback mechanism across all these different teams to bring that information into one dashboard to form that holistic picture, and then inform the correct players.

Shark 9:20
And this is going to be one of the worst analogies you're going to hear to explain this story. But for a lot of people they don't understand until you show them once. It's kind of like going into the kitchen and making a pie. If you've been making a really bad tasting pie forever. You almost need a chef to come in and show you how to make a delicious apple pie. It's a ridiculous example. I know. However, in order to do that, you've got to be able to see and touch and probably buy the ingredients you want, right? This happens though with data that especially if you're on the consulting side or with an agency, there are only so many NDAs you can sign before the legal doesn't want Zante or any other consultant, working inside their data to be able to show their? So how do you go about bridging that to be able to create the pie to be able to show them. This is what a delicious pie can taste like. Now I'm hungry for apple pie. But that wasn't, that wasn't the point. But I have seen this happen before with consultants who were restricted. And a lot of it'd be for good reason, a lot of companies want to overly protect their data. Unfortunately, some don't do it well. But when you're trying to explain to a marketer, who's not a pure data scientists, here's what we can do with it until you sort of bake them the actual pie and show, here's how you make this happen. It can be difficult.

Zontee Hou 10:44
I actually really liked this analogy, because I am a big Baker and cook. So I really relate to the idea of pie crust. And I want

Shark 10:51
to use this one stage. So I have a feeling you will as well.

Zontee Hou 10:56
I like it. Well, let me say that I think that you're absolutely right, that there are situations especially we work with a lot of financial services, brands, a lot of health care brands, where they're going to be really concerned about what you have access to now I don't need access to the raw data to know what the challenges are that you have. We can have conversations with the various stakeholders who interface with that data and get a pretty clear picture of what is available, what is being pulled out how it's being cut. You know, pivot tables are your friends, understanding how your data is organized is really important. And then really understanding what are the scenarios and use cases where we can really solve for the other thing I think is really helpful is building that trust by demonstrating to them where they can go wrong, because oftentimes, they will recognize those situations and say, You know what you are talking about something that we face. So I'll give you an example with pastry, right. So if you are big on making your own pie press, you know that you need to get that butter really cold, you need to get it to a fine crumb before you actually add in the water to congeal it, if you get that temperature of the butter incorrect, it's gonna make for really mean really, really flat dough that doesn't have that nice crumbling us. And so if you can describe those different scenarios where people go, Oh, I've eaten a pie like that, and it was really gummy, and it was really unpleasant and dry, then you can start to get them to understand, oh, what I really want is that flaky situation. And this is how we get that flaky situation. So I think for a lot of teams, it's showing them that you understand where they have had barriers, or what might be the ingredients that they treated in a wrong way to end up with this bad situation, right, because a pie crust that's good and a pie crust that bad are both going to be made out of flour, butter and water. But if you didn't actually put them together in the right ways, bake them at the right temperature, treat them correctly, then you are going to end up with a different result. And that I think people do understand. So I think, you know, the more you can have these conversations with people in a really open Frank way about where they want to go, what that end result should or could look like the more excited they get.

Shark 13:08
Yet, I think I'm also leaning into several past conversations I had when I worked for a big data company. And there were rooms and hallways and floors of buildings that even employees couldn't get access to that same data for good reason. So as we get guarded, I think there's just a lot of people who don't understand it. And they probably only by Murray calendar instead of making their own pie crust anyway. So there's nothing wrong with that, probably that. So let's talk then about content marketing, because I've gotten to hear you speak at Content Marketing World before, how do marketers need to leverage data as part of their content marketing strategy? And then really, as well to kind of fall into that? Use it within storytelling? Yeah, absolutely.

Zontee Hou 13:51
There's really two sides of this coin, which I know you've heard me talk about, which is that first, I think the data itself can be really powerful for storytelling, the vast majority of companies actually have a lot of information about either the, the audience, their concerns, their interests, and or they are actually conducting research that demonstrates their thought leadership. But it's also really fascinating for people in lots of different positions, right? If you take the information and data that is available to you and look for the stories that your audience is interested in, that can serve as a really powerful backbone for bringing leads in getting press coverage, building out resources or calculators that are really helpful to your team. And it really serves as part of that content marketing backbone that we talked about before, which is that it attracts people to your brand as a resource on an ongoing basis. So I think that there are a lot of great brands that are doing interesting things with this already. An example is our friends over at rival IQ. So they are a social media benchmarking and competitive data tool. But they also take the data that they actually have internally within their tool as a company and pull out these industry benchmarks that then become a really interesting annual report. They also identify some specific niches where they can actually create research and content around some of the things that they've analyzed and pulled out of their data. And that's a really great example of storytelling using the actual data that's available out there. And something that I tell people all the time is that you can start identifying are there short surveys that we can send to our existing user base that helps us refine the product or service that we actually offer, but also might help identify some interesting storytelling opportunities within content, people just want to be seen and recognized, as I'm gonna say, not out of the ordinary. So a good example of this is our friends at clear voice, have for a couple of years run a survey where they asked people, what's your biggest single content marketing challenge? It's an open ended single question. Survey, they get answers on 1000s, of marketers, and then they analyze that. And then when marketers look at that, they go, gosh, that's exactly how I feel other people feel this way, too. That can be a really powerful way to get your audience to trust you, because they see that you identify with the problems that they have. The second way that you can really use data is of course, in honing the content marketing that you're doing. And I just had a conversation with a client about this, where they said, Well, how do we know that our assumptions are correct. And, of course, hopefully, you made your assumptions based on good data good deep in understanding of what your audience is speaking about researching, actually asking. But once you get to that point, where you're starting to create different pieces of content, I think the most important thing is to build trackable pathways to and from that context. So you can see what the results are, does this content get consumed, but then it's a major exit page from our website? So it's people who want to learn something, and then they leave? Or is it a piece of content that sends people through to a higher level piece of content or a call to action or lead form so that we know that this is a more valuable pathway into what we want our audiences to understand? And those are the questions that we have to ask and make sure that we've we've as the marketers set up those experiments right from the beginning, so that our audience is going to be teaching us something as they're consuming that content. That's how you set up good experiments.

Shark 17:38
So for you with all the clients that you're working with today, how do you really approach then we've talked about silos, but really walled gardens as well, because when you start marrying up, well, just in the advertising space alone, all the different walled gardens with, you know, the data that you're pulling from Facebook, or the data you're pulling off your website, with Google or some ads, you're running elsewhere, and then also your other marketing efforts, specifically, your content marketing efforts, how do you as a marketer work to pull all the pieces together? Because again, for me, a lot of this with looking at, especially with attribution is focusing on the viewpoint of the customer who doesn't have a clue what walled gardens are, they don't think about your blog, necessarily, they just think about all the things that make up your message in marketing and advertising.

Zontee Hou 18:27
Yeah, absolutely. And you're exactly right, that for the customer, they don't care about those walled gardens. And so for organizations, oftentimes, it is about bringing everybody to the table and seeing if we had a holistic view of the customer, what would you want to know? And people will start calling things out, right. You know, I would love to know where they go. Next, I would want to know, you know, what is the likelihood that a particular person is using email as a pathway, I would want to know how often they're engaging with us from the customer service point of view or speaking to their sales? Rep. How could we actually score people and analyze their behavior across their lifetime with us so that we could serve more relevant content, marketing messages, engagement with them. And when you start bringing people to the table, and they start ideated, around that they get really excited about what could be possible? And then you can start saying, well, listen, this team has this piece of that pie and that team has this other piece. What would it take to actually connect this into one place? And for a lot of organizations, the challenge is that they don't have a dedicated data and Linux team, right. They've identified that there's a couple of people who own some metrics within some specific place. They don't actually have a central seat for that. So identifying who needs to be the owner of that central seat of visibility becomes a really important resourcing question for organizations. No, not every team is going to have the budget to have a team of analysts specifically for marketing. But I think that once you demonstrate that There are a lot of pieces that need to be united. And if somebody actually had the bandwidth and the ownership of that the organization could perform better. I think there's more willingness to figure out, okay, how can we allocate that as, as a bunch of different teams to, to our budgets so that we can actually get somebody in that position. And then the other piece of that, that I think is important is identifying what is the the hub and spoke or Center of Excellence model that's going to be appropriate for your company so that you can share not only the data itself, but then the the insights and the guidelines that come out of that to shape the marketing?

Shark 20:41
Talk about, if you will, what you're seeing as far as who's doing what, what is right, and maybe some of the ones you see doing better than others? Because I know you said, you work with a lot of financial services, firms, a lot of NGOs, and so on and so forth. Obviously, there's a lot of varied industries, and it can be vastly different at looking at data in storytelling in one industry versus another. What do you see sort of rising to the top as far as I hate using the phrase, best practice? Because I think all best practices suck. But when you see the ones that are generally performing well, what are the industries you see that are really leveraging data in content marketing, storytelling and in their marketing as a whole?

Zontee Hou 21:25
Yeah, I think that that's always a really complicated question, because you'll have a couple of winners across certain industries. But as a whole, I find that there are a lot of industries where they're very conservative, and they're really laggards. So for instance, if I look at financial services, I would say that a company like Amex is doing some very clever things when it comes to how they segment and how they use marketing messaging. At the same time, financial services as a whole, I would say, is a really laggard industry in a lot of ways. Because while they have more data than the majority of industries, in terms of what they are actively collecting, they're also much more conservative about using it for marketing purposes. And so they're actually less likely to do the kinds of customizations or data sharing that we're really talking about even within their own internal teams. And similarly, with healthcare, I would say that there are some interesting health tech companies that are starting to push the envelope in terms of what they understand. I think, for instance, ZocDoc as a as a platform is doing some really fascinating things, both on the b2b and b2c sides, when it comes to what marketing they're producing. But again, as a whole, I would say that healthcare is somewhat behind. I think that the industries where there's the most clear cut approach to data is, of course, anything that is more tech centric, because they, again, have some abilities to track more information than others. But I think it's the companies that are really disrupting in those spaces that are doing some interesting things. So tech companies that are disrupting, say, HR, or banking or, you know, the management of your personal finances, those are things where you can actually see that they're coming up with some unique ways to really segment their audiences in a very fine way really identify those use cases and really identify those triggers that send people back and forth to content. I mean, I think we all know that a couple of years ago, this was 2016, Netflix's VP of innovation, he had said, you know, our dream is to one day, just have a button where you come onto our platform, and you click it and we'll just show you the thing that you want to watch. And in 2016, they were like, This is our dream. And in 2021 they rolled it out. Now when you sign into Netflix. Yeah, show me something, play something. Play something. I've never clicked it. So I actually

Shark 23:52
have no idea. I don't think it'll blow up my TV.

Zontee Hou 23:56
Yeah, I'm scared to to I think that I'll just be disappointed with it. I've never tried it. I think

Shark 24:02
they'll get it right. And it'll upset me more. were disturbed me.

Zontee Hou 24:09
I like it. I'm the pessimist. You're the optimist about the data here. And

Shark 24:14
having worked with big data and know what kind of data a lot of these folks collect, and that's it, that's what's scary.

Zontee Hou 24:20
Sure. And I think that Netflix is an example where again, they've actually refined in a very thoughtful way about the, the mentality of their customer, right? They know that what I like to put in my list of things that I want to watch are a high concept documentaries. And then when I actually sign on, what I am probably going to watch is reruns of shows that I've already seen cooking shows and like love is blind, right? Like these are the things that are different in terms of what you say and what you do. And they are going to serve up a whole set of content based on that mentality, which You know, when people remember that at the beginning, there was some manual tagging that they were doing, that ended up serving up some strange results, where they would say, you know, like you watch, I don't know, like wrestling, and you watch The Little Mermaid. So you're going to like Star Wars, and you're like, I don't understand why these would be related. And that was weird. But now that they're getting more refined in terms of the behavioral aspects, I think that they are clear on what they're offering you. That's an example of a company that I think has gotten really refined, obviously, Amazon is another example where they've gotten really refined based on behaviors, they know what you're likely to buy next month before you do, they've already sent it to the warehouse. And that's what the possibilities of big data. But again, I think that we as marketers can't leave these possibilities to these huge data oriented companies, we also have to change our thinking so that we're preparing for that data driven future, which is, again, not even really the future anymore, right? It's happening now.

Shark 25:59
I absolutely agree with everything you just said. And primarily, I think it's interesting that not all of the companies or brands that you necessarily think of that collect a ton of data are always the best at it. But having the right mindset of being an innovator with data is where you're starting to see a lot of these people come through, especially the ones that do it in a ethical and transparent way as well. So as we get closer to the close, where do you sort of see sort of one tip for people in general to start thinking about whether they're a big brand or a large how they can start thinking about tying data as to the rest of their marketing efforts, specifically, with their content, marketing, and storytelling?

Zontee Hou 26:41
I think it'd be start mapping out what data you have at each point of the customer lifecycle, and what is available to you, and what are the gaps in what you do and don't know, the more likely it is that you're going to be able to start to unite these different pieces of data to do better marketing, the challenge that we often have, especially for, again, those more legacy brands, but again, I see this all the time, even in Tech brands, is that people will say things like, well, we've never asked our customer about their usage or their reasons for coming to us or where they came to us from. But we think we know that because our sales people have had conversations, there's a difference between what you assume and what your audience is actually doing. Making sure that we're actually collecting in these different points is really important, because it gives us a different more nuanced picture. Most of our customers have the ability to interface with us pretty easily. Now, whether you're sending them a text message or an email after an engagement, you could ask them small questions that actually give you a lot of nuance. The other thing is that once you actually have developed out attitudinal database personas, you can allow your audience to actually self select which persona is right for them, they're gonna know who they are, for instance, one of our large clients is one of the largest alumni associations in the US over at UT. And that's the University of Texas. And what we were able to do was identify three really large attitudinal groups in terms of those alumni, why they cared and wanted to stay connected with the school and the school have previously thought that it was very much oriented towards their life cycle in terms of being a recent graduate, or, you know, being in their 50s or being in that, you know, prime of their career where they're, they're starting to really build up their skill sets. And in fact, those were not the things that mattered, they found that there were people who were 23, and who were 63, who actually had the same reason to connect to the university, which was pride around, you know, the identity of being a Longhorn. And that's a completely different reason for being connected to the university than I'm building my career. And so it really helped them to shift their thinking about what they wanted to focus their messaging around. And that really came from asking these kinds of questions. And so I think that we missed the boat when we make assumptions about what we think our audience cares about, or what they need from us. If you're not asking what it is that they actually care about, and making sure that you're capturing that in many different ways. You can really take yourself down a path that actually wastes a lot of time and energy.

Shark 29:31
Ask don't assume that's such a great point. So Zante in the cold waters in nasty waters of the rivers around New York, I'm going to ask you this question that hopefully you'll never see him there. But is this of all the guests on my show? What is your favorite kinds of shark and why?

Zontee Hou 29:51
Oh, that's interesting. I think I'm gonna have to say, Nurse Shark looks, because I feel like they still have all of those shark qualities, right? But they're just out there doing their own thing and they're not scary.

Shark 30:13
Okay, there you go. That's not not bad at all. All right, well Zonta gets a special time in the show. And I did. I did do a pivot with this. But are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Zontee Hou 30:25
Yeah, I love interesting questions.

Shark 30:27
Alright, so I did a pivot while we were on here because I got hungry thinking about it. So I called an audible here. Talking about pies. Apple pie or pumpkin pie.

Zontee Hou 30:40
We're gonna say pumpkin pie. Yes,

Shark 30:42
a pumpkin pie. You need year round. For breakfast. Apple pie is great, but it's not a it's not a breakfast food. And Thanksgiving would not be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie.

Zontee Hou 30:52
I really had pumpkin pie yesterday.

Shark 30:55
Oh, there you go. Perfect. All right, number two, Columbia or NYU?

Zontee Hou 31:02
Oh, see? That's really tough. I think Kenneth knows that. I went to both

Shark 31:06
masters and undergrad. Yeah. That's your right. That's right. Oh, I didn't want to I didn't want to get one of those against City College. So I have to stick with Columbia or NYU.

Zontee Hou 31:17
I feel like if I pick I'm gonna get in trouble. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna respond to this one.

Shark 31:23
We got to you gotta pick one and the suck, they're gonna come back on you.

Zontee Hou 31:27
I'm gonna say I'm gonna say NYU in that case, because I think that I did my undergrad at NYU Stern and it's a really fantastic community. But I spent a lot more time at NYU than I did at Columbia Business Journal, but shorter. So there you go

Shark 31:42
for the college experience. Alright, number number three. Which would you rather do? Convince or convert?

Zontee Hou 31:53
I think that I would always rather convince because I think that once you have gotten people into a mindset in which they agree with you, they will inevitably convert when they are ready. But convincing people is the harder job. Because oftentimes by the time someone is ready to convert, they've already convinced themselves. So I think the work is in convincing.

Shark 32:17
It's a really good answer that Jay Baer should listen to. So. All right, number four, talking a little bit about media, Valerie and Valerie, which is a flock of birds, which is your favorite. A flock of flamingos or a flock of seagulls?

Zontee Hou 32:34
Definitely flamingos. Again, one of our clients was Caesars Entertainment. Flamingo is one of their hotels. So I've stayed there many a time and enjoyed seeing their flamingos on that campus. And it's really lovely.

Shark 32:48
I would say Flock of Seagulls because they ran they ran so far away. It's cheesy, but it'll work because it was actually not a bad song. And whatever decade it was. Alright. Number five. And the most important question that you're gonna be asked today is biscuits or cornbread.

Zontee Hou 33:08
Oh my gosh,

Shark 33:09
you've been doing baking tearing me apart. You're tearing me apart tougher than Colombian and by weight NYU, my

Zontee Hou 33:15
gosh, that's really tough. I'm gonna say cornbread. But that is a really hard call. It's like just like a whisper of a difference there.

Shark 33:26
Agree. So Zontee, where can people find out more about you, keep up with your thought leadership what you're doing in this space in the data space as well, and more?

Zontee Hou 33:34
Absolutely. You can follow me on all the socials at Zontee Hou. My website is zonteehou.com for my speaking if you are interested in marketing for major brands, our website is convinceandconvert.com If you are interested in marketing help for small and medium businesses, you can reach us at mediavolery.com.

Shark 33:55
Wonderful. Sandy, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Zontee Hou 34:01
It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much Kenneth.

Shark 34:08
So there was my conversation with Zontee Hou, the founder of the digital agency Media Volery as well as the head of strategy for Convince & Convert; she has been recognized as LinkedIn top 16 marketer followed in 2021; she was recognized as TopRank's top 50 Most Influential content marketers; and her work has garnered multiple awards, including several PR news, Platinum awards and a Forrester groundswell award. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from a conversation with her

Shark 34:34
First, it drives me crazy to often hear a lot of the talking heads in marketing talk about companies needing to have content strategy, because you would think by now most people would know it and have a marketing strategy aligned with their business goals and put in place but as easy as that sounds, the execution of it can be really difficult for a lot of organizations. legacy companies especially have this issue, and I'll paraphrase she said through inertia, they ended up in a situation and where they're extremely siloed. And specific teams are mentalities around marketing and messaging and what that should look like. And they don't have a centralized strategy agreed. And we know we need to change. I love the exercise analogy. We know what we need to do, but not making the time to dedicate to it doesn't allow us to take the time to focus on it, because we're in the thick of it. So make the time do the necessary exercise. And for this example, anyway, put down the pies.

Shark 35:26
Second, great example on siloed content marketing team doesn't know what content works out of the outside of the data that they can't like, they don't know if it's working well, a sales, sales teams don't even know because they've been given little to no direction for marketing, and then it becomes a finger pointing exercise if some of these numbers aren't high enough, because there's no mechanism for the two of them to communicate well. You know, in creating content, one additional thing to think about internally is not to just think about the words, the images of the content, and where it may sit for a customer to consume outside of your boundary, think of who else internally is going to be using and open up that dialogue. Open it wide open, could be a group you don't know well, who has a different if not better access to the customer, you may create it, but ultimately, you may not deliver it or be questioned about it. But someone else in your team? Well, if you can't think about it properly with a sales team. Think about it this way, does your CEO completely understand and agree with a content and can he or she communicated to a customer or a board member who asks something to think about anyway and add some clarity to your point of view.

Shark 36:29
Third, at the end of the day, pulling all the pieces together, or at least trying is so incredibly necessary. Even if you aren't a data science monkey like me hanging out with all the cool attribution kids. You collectively as a team, though, have to know what works collectively for the brand's customers, get other people inside to be collectively thinking about what can be measured. They don't have to be data scientists. As she points out, it creates an environment where people are more willing to share. This goes so far beyond some simple sales data to start diving deeper into all the data points you can collect, not just you or your department, what they collect, but what others collect as well and then start thinking about what gaps prevent you from stitching all of this together. map that out and eventually it will help you start navigating towards better marketing.

Shark 37:15
Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at asharksperspective.com

Shark 37:15
Thank you again for the privilege of your time.

Shark 37:21
I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Shark 37:23
Please consider writing a review and let me know your thoughts in the show.

Shark 37:27
Not exactly what the Flock of Seagulls say on the song but "I swam, I swam so far away because I'm a shark" are the lyrics or something like that. And join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
[music]