Growth Decoded

Episode 36: B2B Writing

Episode 35: What it Actually Means to be an Affiliate

You’ve heard of affiliate marketing, but what really is it? The term has gotten a bit of a bad reputation over the past few years, so we wanted to learn about what it takes to be a true affiliate and set the record straight. To learn more about affiliate marketing, we chatted with Kendra Losee, a marketing coach, consultant, and ActiveCampaign affiliate, in a new episode of Growth Decoded. Here are some of the highlights: To be a successful affiliate, you need to take the time to test different ...

Episode 34: Create Better Online Learning Experiences

Trying to recreate in-person experiences in a virtual setting is where most online courses fail. Instead, leverage the strengths of online experiences you can’t do in a real-life setting. To learn about what that means in practice—we chat with community builder, online education expert, and author, Alex Hillman in a new episode of Growth Decoded. Here are some of the highlights: How to take the online learning experience beyond repurposing offline tactics Bring the best of “hallway chats” to onl...

Episode 33: Community-Led Growth (and Robots)

Can community building and chatbots lead your company to faster growth? You’ve probably seen those chat buttons at the bottom of many websites, but is it the right move for your website? Will a community around your product or service help you create a better customer experience? Find out in this new episode of Growth Decoded, where we chat with Sara Pion, an expert in chatbots and community-led growth. She’s also the co-host of a podcast called Self-Control and Cheese. You’ll learn: Why a commu...

Episode 32: Creating Statement Content

Why do some businesses attract all the right customers? And some only the wrong ones? It starts with the statement that brands are making. It’s what our guest in this new episode of Growth Decoded calls, “The Statement Piece” Listen in as Hillary Weiss, founder of Statement Piece Studio, talks about how to put a stake in the ground and create content that is unique to your passion and personality. You’ll also learn about: How to go beyond content that’s about “who’s your audience, what’s their p...

Episode 31: The Future of Businesses with Web 3.0 and NFTs

Are we headed to a future surrounded by cryptocurrency, NFTs, the metaverse, and Web 3.0? We’ve all heard of these trends, but what are their practical applications? How will everyday businesses take part in it? We get to the bottom of this and more in this episode of Growth Decoded. Tune into a new episode of Growth Decoded, where we chat with Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner, and Brian Fanzo, digital futurist and host of NFT365. You’ll learn: What Web 3.0 is all about The opp...

Episode 30: Positioning your Business to Succeed

Before you even launch your new service with marketing, advertising, and operations, what’s the one thing you need to ensure that everyone in the company is aligned? A strong positioning statement. Join us for an incredible new episode of Growth Decoded featuring Ryan Stewart! Ryan is a marketing consultant, author, and CEO of SEO agency, Webris. As a self-proclaimed “process nerd,” he’ll take us on a deep dive into positioning and how to carve out a space in the market where your business can s...

Episode 29: Building Community

Do your customers know each other and hang out together? In other words, is there a community around your business? When your customers are growing and learning from each other, and you’re the connection between them all…everyone wins. Join us for another brand new episode of Growth Decoded featuring Andrew and Pete from ATOMIC. Andrew and Pete run a community of small (but mighty) business owners and entrepreneurs looking to earn more, and do more of what they love. You’ll discover: How and why...

Episode 28: Making Content that Matters

STOP TRYING TO BE THE BEST BUSINESS Instead, focus on becoming your customer’s FAVORITE. This does a few things: First — it’s a more attainable goal. Because, what does it mean to be the BEST? It’s hard to define, and it’s impossible to attain. Who’s to say that you’re actually the best? Second (and most importantly) — it shifts the focus of your messaging and marketing off of your own business, and onto your customers and audience. So how do you do this? We spoke with Jay Acunzo and talked abou...

Episode 27: Monetization and Content Alignment

These days, you hear quite a lot about monetization — everyone says you should monetize your audience, your YouTube Channel, your email list, your coaching services… the list goes on. But what does it mean to monetize? How and when should you do it? On July 7, 2022 join us for a brand new episode of Growth Decoded where we sit down with business coach and content creator, Leslie Samuel. Leslie went from high school biology teach to college professor — by creating videos about science on YouTube....

Episode 26: How to Launch and Grow a Newsletter

EMAIL NEWSLETTERS ARE DEAD. Just kidding. They’re far from dead. But now that you’re paying attention… Your email newsletter has the potential to be the launch pad for your entire business, the engine that drives everything forward, and the most direct line of communication with your audience. It’s a cornerstone of your email marketing strategy. But how do you start a newsletter and actually grow it? Is there someone who can tell us? Yes, there is. He’s Jay Clouse, and he’s the brain behind the ...

Episode 25: Growing your business using LinkedIn

How do you grow an audience on LinkedIn? You know there’s a ton of opportunity out there, but it’s tough to get started — especially if you’ve never really tried before. What do you write about? What types of content or posts should you make? What’s the best way to get started? On the next episode of Growth Decoded, we sat down with LinkedIn maven, and founder of LinkedIn Business Accelerator, Judi Fox — and got some answers. You’ll learn: How Judi grew her LinkedIn profile into a revenue engine...

Episode 24: How to boost your productivity

What’s the recipe for productivity? For creating high-quality work on a consistent basis? If you ask Justin Welsh, it’s all about the system you implement. Join us for a brand new episode of Growth Decoded featuring Entrepreneur, Angel investor, Mentor, Coach, and Creator Justin Welsh! Justin is an expert in the world of solopreneurship. He has successfully launched multiple digital and knowledge-based products, a successful newsletter, and amassed a huge social media following. You can learn mo...

Episode 23: Don't Fear the Analytics

Do you feel like you could be getting more out of your analytics? When it comes time to dive into the data, do you feel confident in your ability and process to get what you need, or what you want? Join us for a brand new episode of Growth Decoded, featuring Brie Anderson! Brie is a marketing strategist and consultant, and the owner of Beast Analytics. She has developed a simple framework for analytics that helps inform your approach, strategy, analysis, and data collection. You’ll learn: → Brie...

Episode 22: How to find your target audience

Ramon Ray is an expert on personal branding as a tool for small business success. He's an author of 5 books, successful entrepreneur, the founder of Smart Hustle Media, and a keynote speaker and event host who brings events to the next level. Ramon is passionate about helping businesses to start and build their personal brands, and using that to market and sell BETTER. In this conversation, Ramon stopped by to talk through his approach to finding the right audience. You'll learn: → The rule that...

Episode 21: Can brands be...funny?

Tim Washer spent 20 years at IBM, Cisco, and Interpublic Group while learning comedy writing from Stephen Colbert and improv from Amy Poehler. He’s a contributor to shows you may have heard of: Saturday Night Live, The Late Show, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Tim stopped by and spoke about the importance of restoring creativity and human connection to our business communications — and the critical role that humor and comedy can play. You'll learn: → A 5-step way to incorporate comedy i...

Episode 20: Deliverability Factors & Engagement Tagging

You'll hear from Hanna Fray, expert and senior deliverability specialist at ActiveCampaign, as we break down email deliverability and email engagement. You'll learn: The difference between "email delivery" and "email deliverability" The different factors that impact email deliverability What the acronyms DKIM, DMARC, and SPF mean What is email engagement and why is it important? Ways to automatically track email engagement Why unsubscribes might actually be a good thing Common mistakes and best ...

Episode 19: Blog Writing

No way! It's prolific bloggers, international speakers, best-selling authors, and founders — Jay Baer and Lee Odden! In this episode we're breaking down the blogging process from topic selection to publishing. Join us as we talk through the benefits of blogging, tips for writing, and processes for creating consistent, high-quality blog content that's relevant to your audience. You'll learn about: → Topic selection → SERP (search engine results page) analysis → Keyword research → Outlining and re...

Episode 18: Contact & Lead Scoring

What if you could know, at a glance, who your most engaged contacts are? Or who your least engaged contacts are? Better yet — what if there was an automated system that monitored the actions your contacts took, assigned them points based on those actions, tagged your contacts based on their points, and notified you any time you needed to know something? Good news — there is. And that system is lead scoring. You'll learn: → What is lead scoring and why is it important? → Key factor to consider wh...

Episode 17: Workflow & Process Automation

You'll sit down with Colleen Bowe, Email Marketing Manager at ActiveCampaign. Colleen has automated countless workflows and processes for the internal teams at ActiveCampaign, as well as all of the operational workflows that route ActiveCampaign contacts, leads, and customers through the customer journey. You'll learn: → What is workflow/process automation and how does it benefit you? → How to identify processes that you should automate → How to approach workflow automation and ensure positive r...

Episode 16: Webinars & Digital Events

You'll sit down with Brianna Haag — Director of Demand Generation at Hopin, and hear from Ashley Levesque — VP of Marketing at Banzai You'll learn: → Best practices for webinar production, promotion, and communication → Common webinar and digital event mistakes → The different webinar formats, and which is right for your content

Episode 15: Email Automation

This episode investigates, "Email Automation" and seeks to answer some big questions: • How do you get started with email automation? • How do you keep going? How do you decide what to build, improve, or test? • What are the foundational email automations that businesses need? You'll hear from co-founder of Boundless Labs and email marketing expert, Chase Dimond! Chase has sent over 1 billion emails resulting in $75+ million in email attributable revenue. In this episode you'll learn: → Strategi...

Episode 14: Lead Generation

This episode investigates, "Lead Generation" and breaks the topic into 2 areas: 1. What is lead generation and how should you think about it? 2. What are some common and effective tactics for lead generation? You'll hear from internationally-acclaimed speaker, business and marketing consultant, college educator, prolific blogger and best-selling author: Mark W. Schaefer! In this episode you'll learn: • What is lead generation? What is a "lead" ? • Why is lead generation so difficult? • The quest...

Episode 13: Site Tracking

Today's episode investigates, "Site Tracking" and how you can use it to improve your customer experience. Site Tracking connects the actions your contacts take across your website to your sales and marketing efforts. It is, effectually, your websites ears or digital listening system. Site Tracking gives you the ability to see what your contacts are interested in, and store that information via segmentation for future use in your targeted communications. In this episode you'll get answers to the ...

Episode 12: Holiday & End-of-Year Planning

In this episode, we investigate “Holiday Preparation & End-of-Year Planning” and focus on how you can create effective holiday marketing campaigns, as well as ways to finish the year strong and start the new year off right. The holiday and end-of-year period are changing and look different to businesses and consumers. More holiday shopping is moving online creating a hybrid holiday experience, split between online and in-store shopping. Consumers expect positive customer experiences, and bus...

Episode 11: Thought Leadership

For our return to Growth Decoded, we investigate the topic of, "Thought Leadership" — from Content Marketing World in Cleveland, Ohio! The Grow Team attended Content Marketing World and had the incredible opportunity to sit down with some of the best and brightest minds in the content marketing universe. Our guests for this episode include: — Joe Pulizzi — Zontee Hou — Michael Barber — Melanie Deziel — Jay Baer — Ann Handley — Rachel Mann — Lee Odden — Carla Johnson — John Jantsch We sat down wi...

Episode 10: Email Subject Lines

This is Growth Decoded — a show that helps you grow your business by figuring out the customer experience, one piece at a time. In this episode, we investigate the topic of “Email Subject Lines” and explore how important the subject line is to getting your recipients to open your email. We also investigate how to write better subject lines, best practices for creating curiosity and intrigue, and explore the benefits and mechanics of A/B testing subject lines. You'll hear from past Growth Decoded...

Episode 9: Email Analytics

This is Growth Decoded — a show that helps you grow your business by figuring out the customer experience, one piece at a time. In this episode, we investigate the topic of “Email Analytics” and explore how you can use them to segment your audience, learn who your engaged contacts are, keep your contact list clean, and improve your email deliverability. You'll learn how to move past open and click-through-rates, strategies to increase email engagement, and hear new perspectives on the Apple iOS ...

Episode 8: Facebook Custom Audiences

This is Growth Decoded — a show that helps you grow your business by figuring out the customer experience, one piece at a time. In this episode, we investigate the topic of “Facebook Custom Audiences” and learn how to use them to re-target individuals who have shown an interest in your brand. You'll hear from a Facebook ads expert, and a successful business owner who successfully uses custom audiences to sell, upsell, re-target, and educate! How do they work? What do folks get wrong about them? ...

Episode 7: Abandoned Cart

This is Growth Decoded — a show that helps you grow your business by figuring out the customer experience, one piece at a time. In this episode, we investigate the topic of “Abandoned Cart” and how ecommerce businesses and digital storefronts can use simple reminder emails to reclaim a significant percentage of lost revenue. We'll hear from Jonathan Young, the Ecommerce Manager at J!NX and Dawn Manske, Founder & CEO at Made for Freedom about how they use abandoned cart automations. Join us f...