Posts in Marketing
The Role of AI in Performance Marketing: Key Benefits for 2024

AI's transformative impact on marketing includes:

  • Efficiency: Streamlining operations and enhancing campaign management.

  • Personalization: Creating tailored customer experiences at scale.

  • Performance: Improving campaign outcomes through advanced data analytics.

The importance of AI in staying competitive is clear as it becomes a core element of modern marketing strategies, with widespread usage in everything from customer segmentation to predictive analytics.

Continue reading to discover how AI can skyrocket your performance marketing strategy and drive better results in 2024.

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Paid Media vs. Earned Media: Understanding the Difference and When to Use Each

Knowing when to use paid media versus earned media – or paid media and earned media – can help you orient your marketing efforts toward more ROI. 

You just have to go about things strategically.

Both play important roles in building brand awareness and driving customer engagement, but they serve different purposes and operate in unique ways. 

Paid media can provide immediate visibility and traffic, while earned media builds long-term trust and credibility. 

Understanding how these two approaches differ—and when to use each—can help you make better decisions and optimize your marketing efforts. 

Let’s break down the key distinctions, benefits, and ideal use cases for each.

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TikTok Affiliate Marketing: 10 Strategies to Shine in 2024

TikTok is rapidly becoming a prime destination for affiliate marketing, fueled by its immense user growth.  The platform excels in fostering high engagement and conversion rates through its unique, viral content dynamics. Affiliate marketers can harness these attributes to significantly enhance sales, tapping into TikTok’s robust ecosystem. 

Here's the TL;DR on how you can start:

  • Capitalize on Engagement: Leverage TikTok’s interactive format to maintain high viewer interest.

  • Maximize Conversions: Utilize the platform's viral nature to increase product visibility.

  • Boost Sales: Employ strategic content and collaborations to drive sales effectively.

Keep reading to discover exactly how you can use these strategies to skyrocket your affiliate marketing efforts on TikTok.

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Top Custom Made Ukulele Builders, Brands, Luthiers, & Companies

Ukuleles are more than just instruments; they are an embodiment of culture, craftsmanship, and creativity. 

From the sunlit shores of Hawaii to concert halls around the world, custom-made ukuleles reflect the unique artistry of their creators and offer a personalized touch to any musician's collection.

In this article we walk you through everything you need to know about ordering a custom ukulele and provide a comprehensive list of brands and companies offering custom made ukulele builds.

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How to grow your audience and email list on Linkedin

1,258 new connections in 3 months
1,777 new connections in 4 months
2,852 new connections in 6 months

Those are real numbers from many of the campaigns we have run for our clients at Lead Cookie

Those are thousands of new connections that will now see their content in their newsfeed, and we have set up funnels to drive many of those new connections to email list subscriptions. 

But how do you do it? 
How do you actually grow your audience on Linkedin?
And how do you drive those people to sign up for your email list?

In this post, I will give you the exact frameworks and scripts we use to do this for our clients at Lead Cookie.

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Why you should steal your business ideas from others

Since starting up Lead Cookie I have had multiple people tell me “This is such a brilliant idea for a business.”

I always laugh because I have to tell them, “I didn’t think up any of this. I literally stole the concepts from others.”

No joke, almost everything about Lead Cookie is stolen. 

But the truth is, that is why this business has succeeded while almost every business I have had before has failed. 

In this article, I am going to share what I mean by the “stolen ideas” and give you a framework on how you can steal effectively and ethically.

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How to test and validate your value proposition fast

When I come across many agencies or consultants, they are stuck in this constant idea of “Do I niche down?” 

If you are asking yourself that question, then chances are the answer is Yes.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. Finding an offer and value proposition that resonates with the market can be a challenge. 

Yet I have built a framework for building and testing value propositions at a rapid pace that I have used over and over for different clients and situations in the past.

In this article, I am going to share that framework with you and specific examples of value propositions that I have tested with this framework. I have both examples of failures and successes so you can see what worked and what didn’t.

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Why your marketing isn't working (Intro to the 3 M's)

It’s extremely common that agencies or consultants come to me sharing how their marketing simply isn’t working. They blame it on the tactics and seem to think that everyone who is teaching them tactics is a scam.

They try cold email… and fail.
They try Facebook ads… and fail.
They try content marketing… and fail.
They keep trying new things… and failing.

When your marketing is not producing results, there are 3 foundational elements that can be wrong with it. These are called the “Three M’s”.

In this article, I am going to share those Three M’s with you and give concrete examples of how to think about each one.

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The difference between inbound and outbound leads

Many customers who come to Lead Cookie only have experience closing inbound leads and referrals. Most have never run a cold email campaign, cold calling or Linkedin outreach campaign. 

How you handle an inbound lead vs an outbound lead is different in two fundamental ways.

  • Trust
  • Buying cycle 

My goal with this article is to dive into those differences and help improve your closing rate from outbound leads. 

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The weekly sales habit essential to nurturing & closing more deals

There is a trend that I see time and time again in nearly all of the agencies and consultants that I work with.

They often get leads in some form or another.

But, they struggle to nurture and close those leads…

The reason? 

They have no habit built to nurture and close those deals.

In this article, I am going to share with you a super simple weekly nurture habit that takes 30 minutes each week. This habit will help you nurture more customers through to a close.

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20 creative ideas on how to win consulting clients

Finding new clients and better clients is the ongoing challenge of almost any agency or consulting practice.  

In this post, I outline 20 different tactics that I have seen agencies and freelancers use to win new clients for their business. These tactics are all real-world examples that I have learned from hands-on experience or interviewing agency owners on my podcast.

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A simple trick to generate more leads on Linkedin

About six months ago, an agency owner told me about this interesting Linkedin tactic that he used to win one of their best clients. 

At first, I was skeptical on if the approach would actually work. So before recommending it to any of my clients or readers, I decided to give it a shot myself. 

After 6 months, I can now cite closing more than $10,000 worth of consulting business from this passive tactic. And as I write this, I am in negotiations with one of my biggest clients to date which could take that closed number to $60k or more. 

All of that revenue came from a simple lead generation tactic on Linkedin.

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My system for streamlining my podcast workflow
“Starting a podcast sounds great, but it just seems like a ton of work.”

That is what nearly all of my clients say to me when I propose the idea of launching their own podcast. 

Yet when I bring up the idea of starting a podcast to others, they have a built in belief that creating and running a podcast is going to take at on of time and energy.

The truth is, that is not the case. 

In this post I share my entire workflow on streamlining my podcast process. 

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How to 10x the results from the next conference you attend

When most people go to a conference or networking event, they tend to just show up and hope for the best.

Maybe they will bump into someone worthwhile at the bar.
Or perhaps one of the random people they approach to network with will be a potential customer.

Due to the nature of live events and the connections that can arise of meeting someone in person, these events still can often yield results when those lucky connections do arise.

But, relying on luck to bump into a worthwhile connection is not really the best approach.
Instead, you can 10x the results you get from your next conference or live event by planning ahead and doing outreach before the event.

In this post, I am going to share with you a simple 5 step process for maximizing the results you get from your next event.

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How to find almost anyone’s email address

When you are doing outbound marketing, emails are essential.

Regardless of if you are running a cold email campaign, or following up on a direct mail piece, email addresses are essential to outreach.

In the course of my outbound marketing efforts, I have researched thousands of email addresses and tried out various tools for finding them.

In this post I have outlined the tools and methods I use to find email addresses. 

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The best sales advice I ever received

One of my sales mentors once shared a very simple piece of advice with me.

It’s so simple, it seems almost stupid when you first look at it. 

But yet, I can relate almost every gap of work in my history of consulting down to this simple concept. 

And time and time again, I find myself sharing this information with clients who seem to be struggling to keep their sales pipelines full. 

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Under promise, over deliver

If there is one mistake that nearly all creative professionals are culprit of, it is this.

They make promises to clients, and then they don't deliver on them.

They tell a client "I will have that to you tomorrow."

Then tomorrow rolls around, and they break the promise.  They don't deliver. This broken promise upsets the client and it hurts the relationship. 

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