Tom Shapiro | Stratabeat

Lot’s of marketers talk about creativity, but most seem to think it’s a dark art.

Stratabeat CEO Tom Shapiro sees creativity as more of a science than an art, and in this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, he explains the process that he’s used to spark creativity and develop powerful marketing campaigns.

Tom’s approach includes the use of specific frameworks - including “the opposite” and “cross pollination” - to get people thinking differently. These are approaches that anyone can employ to inspire ideation.

Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.

Resources from this episode:

• Visit the Stratabeat website or Tom’s personal website

• Free download of the first chapter of Tom’s book, Rethink Lead Generation

• Follow Tom on Twitter

• Connect with Tom on LinkedIn

Tom and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen (00:13):

Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Tom Shapiro, who is the CEO and founder of Stratabeat. Welcome to the podcast, Tom.

Tom (00:25):

Thanks so much, Kathleen. I'm really, really happy to be here.

Kathleen (00:28):

Yeah, we're we have an interesting topic on deck for today, which is about how to use creativity to get better marketing results. And I'm excited to dive into it because I feel like sometimes people hear that and they think, Ugh, you know, creativity. That's like one of those things that's hard to define and hard to nail down and you either kind of have it or you don't, but we're gonna make it a lot more actionable and concrete. So stay tuned for that if you're listening. But first, Tom, would you take a moment and maybe tell my listeners a little bit about yourself, your background and what strategy it is?

Tom (01:00):

Yeah, sure. So, uh, I have been in the digital space forever. <laugh> uh, the first website that I developed was way back in 1994. So several years before even Google existed,

Kathleen (01:12):

That's back when they called them webpages. <laugh> right.

Tom (01:15):

<laugh>. And so I've seen a lot of evolution through the years, uh, in the digital space, obviously. And, uh, at one point I joined an agency called iProspect at the time it was an SEO and, uh, paid search agency and helped them grow from 85 employees to over 700 within five years.

Kathleen (01:36):

Wow. That's huge growth for an agency. I mean, having, having worked in agencies, I know <laugh>

Tom (01:43):

Yeah, yeah, it was, it was, uh, very fast growing and, uh, it was really hyper growth at the time and yeah, we can go into detail into how we did that. Uh, and, and there were, there were a lot of creativity plays that, that, uh, factored into that. Uh, and then, uh, at one point I was looking in our toolbox and the only thing that I could offer our prospects was SEO or paid search. And I really wanted to broaden the potential solutions that I could talk to prospects about and work with them on, in solving. Uh, you know, when I was at, iProspect, I used to be talking to fortune 500 CMOs or VPs of marketing, and we would talk literally for three or four hours, literally. And, and we wouldn't even talk about SEO or paid search. I'll be talking about all the problems that they needed to solve in order to win.

And, and I've really enjoyed that. And so I started the strategy to fulfill that right, where we could talk about not only SEO and paid search, but, but we could, uh, you know, talk about any type of inbound that they wanted to do, whether it was event marketing or conversion optimization, um, you know, uh, a lot of content development, uh, and things like that. And, you know, we also offer web design so we can make it come to life. We, we could activate it. And then, you know, once you're you have all of these assets in place, uh, you know, we love looking at behavioral intelligence. So not only how many page views are you getting, but then, okay, people come to your digital asset, what exactly are they doing? What are they clicking on? Where is their attention? Is there any friction in the experience? Uh, and so we try and take a holistic view of that. And so Stratabeat has been around for, uh, about 11 years now, where a B2B, uh, marketing agency, uh, very, you know, focused on the, uh, on the digital, uh, marketing end of things.

Kathleen (03:30):

Great. And, and so let's talk about this topic of creativity, because again, um, I, you know, I feel like there's two camps here. You've got the people who focus their careers on creative, and a lot of them tend to have more kind of design backgrounds. And I do think when people hear the word creativity, a lot of times they substitute and they think it's design, but it's more than that. Um, you know, it's, but there is this perception, as I said earlier, that there's like a dark arc behind creativity that, that you you're either born with the DNA of somebody who's creative or you're not. So I I'd like to break down, maybe start with how you think about creativity and like what it is and what role it should have in the marketing process.

Tom (04:12):

Yeah, sure. So to, to me, creativity is not about design per se, and it's not about being silly. A lot of people think that, oh, you know, you have to be crazy and wacky to be creative, that that's not true at all. Uh, you know, we're a B2B marketing. <laugh>, you know, you can't really get away with wackiness all that often. Uh, and so to me, creativity is about thinking differently, right? And so a lot of marketers for example, will talk about the importance of following best practices. And what I would say to that is best practices actually suck. They're horrible, right? And you need to avoid them in your business and in your marketing. Why? Because if your, uh, if you're following best practices and let's say a buyer is considering your solutions, well, they're not just talking to you, they're talking to five or six or seven other agencies as well.

And if everyone is following best practices, there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of similarity and it's very undifferentiated. And in, in essence, it becomes just this, this, this pool of mediocrity or a sea of sameness, right. It's just a sea of sameness. And so creativity is the whole idea of rethinking what you're doing. Not, not just tweaking around the edges to, to, uh, create change, but to holistically change how you're thinking. You know, you might want framework that we love to use when we're, we're striving for creativity is what if we do the opposite? So it's the opposite framework, right? Um, another's cross pollination of ideas. So let's bring outsiders in, let's get other opinions of people who know nothing about this and see what their reactions are or their input is. Um, and so, uh, you know, there have been studies done where, uh, they were, they were trying to assess the, the, the impact of cross pollination creativity and the way that they were doing it was looking at cities and the, the percentage of immigrants who were coming into the cities compared to the number of new patents that were being awarded.

And what they found was that cities that had a, a higher percentage of immigrants were actually being awarded more patents. And so, you know, I think that that speaks to, you know, not, not design necessarily, right, not silliness, but different ways of thinking, just thinking very differently. And, and to me, you know, creativity is the only aspect of your business that cannot be commoditized. It's the only one you can commoditize technology, right? Your competitors are gonna catch up at some point, someone's gonna leapfrog you. At some point, you might have brilliant people at your company, but, but so do a lot of your competitors. Um, you might have fantastic processes or supply chains, you know, everyone can catch up in those areas, but creativity is the only aspect of your business that cannot be commoditized.

Kathleen (07:03):

That's a great point. And I love how you kind of draw on these frameworks. Um, it almost feels like, like creativity as a muscle that you need to exercise, and there's certain like exercise regimes or regimens or whatever that you can use to, to like to get better at it. So, so when you are actually sitting down to think through a marketing challenge and you want to leverage creativity as part of that process, how do you do that? Like, how do you, you mentioned you have some frameworks, is there some sort of a process you use? Is it a specific set of frameworks you run through? What what's, how do, how do you approach that challenge?

Tom (07:45):

We do run through various frameworks. Like what if we did the opposite or cross pollination? The other thing is brainstorming. Brainstorming's very important. And most companies do it wrong, unfortunately, but it is very important. And I'll give you an example. So I was just, uh, consulting for a half billion dollar software company. And, uh, I was meeting with the executive team. So it was the global executive team flying in from all over the world. And, you know, they said, okay, so how can we become more creative? And I said, okay, just to answer one question for me, how much time, what percentage of your time is devoted to new ideas to brainstorming? Just what percentage and everyone was, you know, in unison, it was unanimous was less than 1%. And I said, well, <laugh>, there's your answer? Why, why you're not being as creative as you want to be, and you're not being as innovative.

Right? So, so a lot of executives understand, you know, the term innovation, a lot easier than creativity, but creativity feeds into innovation. It's very difficult to innovate your business without creativity at the core. And so one of the core questions that listeners can be asking themselves is, yeah, you know, we, we, we, you know, maybe you're, you're claiming that you're a very innovative company. You know, innovation is one of your core values, but really assess it with metrics. What percentage of your time, how much time have you devoted to creativity and innovation in the past quarter? And, and the vast majority of companies that we, when we first meet them, the answer is always less than 1%. So what if you made it 5%, right? What if you made it 10% and, and, and it's, it's really nothing less than revolutionary when you placed that much of an emphasis on the new cause. Think about it. What's the ROI of a new idea. It, it could be explosive, right. Whereas if you're not going to have new ideas and you're just gonna tinker around the edges, you know, yes, you're talking about maybe 5%, 10% incremental changes, but it, it, you're not going to unleash growth.

Kathleen (09:53):

All right. I have a bunch of questions for you. <laugh>, let's start with, you talked about brainstorming and you said most companies do it wrong. And I do feel like brainstorming is another word, like creativity, where everybody hears it and they think they know what it means. Like, I think for most people they think brainstorming means we sit around a table and we throw ideas out. Right. So what is a good brainstorming session look like?

Tom (10:17):

Yeah. That, so the first thing you wanna look at is who is involved, right? Because this is where a lot of companies get it wrong. And they involve only the people in their close inner circle, uh, or those who are in specific departments. Right. And so marketing team's often will brainstorm amongst themselves. Right. And, you know, you might say, well, why don't you include sales? Why don't you include customer support? Why don't you include the CEO? Right. Do it be bold, have a backbone and do it. Um, and if you frame it from the perspective of innovation and innovation, unleashing growth, everyone should be interested. So in a, in, uh, a prior life. So, so I mentioned, iProspect earlier, um, when I joined there, there was no brainstorming going on at all. Um, and you know, not surprisingly when I first joined, uh, sales were completely flat.

Uh, iProspect was having a very difficult time making any type of sales and what, what we introduced while I was there was, uh, brainstorming as culture, right? Just, just you, you know, we did brainstorm by the end, by the end, we were doing brainstorms all the time and it wasn't just the marketing team. Wasn't just the sales team. Wasn't just the strategy team. Uh, it was everyone in the entire company, everyone in the entire company was invited to our brainstorming sessions. And so when we were pitching, uh, say a fortune 500 marketing team on what they should do, you know, you're, you're coming at it with an arsenal of ideas from across, uh, your company, you know, people who had just joined yesterday to people who had been at the company for five or seven years, you had people from, you know, uh, at the executive level, you had people who, um, you know, who were just coordinators.

And the, the beauty of it was just all the cross pollination of ideas and feeding off of each other. Now here's another way to enhance your brainstorming is don't just hold one brainstorming session, but have a follow up session as well. And the reason why is, you know, a lot of people think that creativity and, uh, new ideas, it's, it's all like a Eureka moment, right? Uh, Steven Johnson, you know, wrote a book where good ideas come from. It's amazing. And if anyone, you know, checks out his Ted talk, it's worth its weighting gold, it's amazing. Uh, and he talks about how real creativity and real innovation does not happen with a light bulb moment. It rarely does. It's usually an iterative process where you feed off of prior ideas. And so these are all adjacent ideas, but, you know, you're, you're, you're taking what someone might have innovated last year or the year before.

And you're building upon that. And then someone's gonna build on your idea. So what we're trying to do is, uh, reduce the timeframe for our brainstorming internally as a marketing team, when let's say we're pitching, or we're coming up with a new marketing campaign, or we're coming up with, uh, a, a anything that, that we're striving to do as new goal. Um, and so you have a brainstorming session, but then have a follow up session as well, where you narrow the focus. So this is another great way to have more production out of your brainstorming sessions is before the first one have a set of guidelines, like have it documented, have rules of engagement where people understand what the scope is, because it's actually easier to brainstorm when there are parameters, when you're, when you're trying to rethink within the box is actually actually, you know, you can generate more ideas. Um, you know, it's very, very difficult if you just say, okay, we're open to anything. <laugh>, you know, it's very difficult for people to, to start, uh, and to latch on. So, so by, by having a framework and then having a follow up session and building upon the ideas that were talked about in the first brainstorming session, you know, it's really amazing just how powerful your new ideas can be

Kathleen (14:07):

Any particular tips for like running a good brainstorming meeting and like keeping that discussion and structured in a way that's productive.

Tom (14:17):

Yes. Uh, I would say that you definitely need to call on people, um, and you definitely need to make sure that the alphas in the room are not running the brainstorming session, because I've seen this countless times where you have group of people and the shyer people in the room never say a word, the entire brainstorming session. Uh, and it's the alphas in the room who are really dominating. They, they might have fantastic ideas. I'm not saying that they don't, I'm just saying that you want to tap into everyone's, uh, creativity and, uh, you know, their thoughts and ideas. And so that's, that's one way of having better brainstorming sessions. Um, as I mentioned, you definitely want to document, don't just tell people, but document it in writing, you know, okay, this is the problem that we're trying to solve, or this is the goal that we're trying to achieve, make it very tangible, very real what, what you're trying to achieve. You're striving towards a very specific goal.

Kathleen (15:12):

Yeah. Now, okay. So then, so there's brainstorming, and then you mentioned two frameworks, the opposite and the, what was the other one

Tom (15:21):

Cross pollination,

Kathleen (15:22):

Cross pollination? Are there other frameworks in addition to those, or are those the two primary that you use?

Tom (15:27):

Uh, those are two primary ones that, that we use, but then we, you know, we also do a lot of market research. Uh, and so, you know, you can be extremely creative when you're doing market research into their audience, your, you know, your prospects or your customers audience, and you do a deep dive. You do an even deeper dive than your, your customer is doing. Uh, and out of that can come amazing creativity. And let me give you an example. So, um, one of the companies that we pitched and we ultimately won was, uh, Brink's home security, um, before they were bought by, uh, uh, ADP and, um, uh, a, a D T. And, uh, so when we were pitching them, one of the things that we looked at was, uh, when do people look for security systems? When do families look for security systems?

And what we found was it was at life changing events. Like if you got married, or if you graduated college, you know, you buy your first home. And so then we did deep dive research into each of these areas. So for example, one of the things that we researched was, well, who's buying homes, who is it? And in our research, we found that the fastest growing segment of the home buying market was single women. Hmm. But at the time, if you looked at Brink's marketing, it was entirely oriented towards families, right? Peace of mind, families, you've children, all of that. And so we pointed this out and said, you, you realize you're missing an entire segment of the market the day, by the way, there, there is the fastest growing segment in the home buying market. And by the way, that's when people buy home security systems and they were floored, right.

And so that, you know that to us, that's creativity too. It's not just waving a magic wand and, and, you know, oh, you should, you know, change your colors. You, you know, you should, you know, move to cartoons instead. It's, it's about real solving real business problems in a very creative way that even your customers may never have done. Uh, another thing that we brought up with them was we said, okay, well, you know, all of your marketing today is static. Meaning you determine a campaign and you run with it. And they said, of course we do. How else are we gonna do it? And we said, ah, no, no, no, no, no. We want to introduce dynamic campaigns where literally you wake up in the morning and you don't even know what you're gonna be running in the afternoon. And they said, well, what do you, you mean by that?

And we said, well, so when do people think about security? A lot of times they think about it when there's a, a crime that's in the news, it's from page news and it's on, everyone's mind, everyone's talking about it. So for instance, but that's very, that could be very local too. Like, let's say that you live in, um, I don't know, Chicago, and let's say that there's, uh, a major, uh, a security event or, or criminal event that catches everyone. Everyone's attention. It's from page news. Everyone's talking about it. That means that you increase your marketing, increase your investment, increase your effort in marketing in Chicago for the next few days. And then let's say there's something in Los Angeles. Okay. Then you shift over to Los Angeles. So it's this dynamic pattern of shifting your marketing and shifting your focus all the time.

Kathleen (18:34):

It's like the same principle that I think companies use with, with weather, you know, like certain companies, if there's a storm in a certain area, they'll, you know, insurance companies, they'll up their spend in that area.

Tom (18:45):

Exactly. Exactly. And, and to us, that's creativity as well. And so when we talk about creativity, it really could, does come down to thinking differently. And so if the customer's thinking one way, if they've always done it a certain way, think differently, right. Rethink it. We like to call it, um, lateral thinking. So if, if you're thinking logically it's, it's a straight line, right. How can you, instead of going vertically, how can you go horizontal? Right. How can you, you know, completely change the, the, the, the perspective of, of even what you're trying to do. Uh, so for example, you know, going from static marketing to dynamic marketing, or, um, you know, looking at your audience segments completely differently, uh, so all of that to us, it, we would include in the bucket of creativity.

Kathleen (19:36):

Yeah. I love that example that you gave. Um, so I want to dive into some more examples if you have them. So I want, let's go back to the frameworks of what, if we did the opposite. Do you have any kind of story you can share around when you use that and it, and it was able to kind of lead to a breakthrough?

Tom (19:54):

Yes, absolutely. So this was actually, um, at iProspect. So, as I mentioned, when I joined, they, they couldn't make a sales save their lives, right? Like, like sales had plateaued. Um, and one of the, the ways that the key that iProspect was trying to make sales at the time was very large conferences, trade shows, events, you know, with thousands and thousands of people spending literally $50,000 at, at one of these events to have a booth, have a, a team there. And so I, I started attending these conferences and I was in the booth and I realized that, that we were talking with people for only maybe two minutes at a time. But the problem is, is that then they, they went to your competitor and they had a, another conversation and then another competitor, and they had another com uh, conversation. So they might have talked with 20 competitors in the same day that they talked with you.

It's very hard to stand out. And for them to remember you, when you are just one of 20 who they were rushing through conversations with, uh, they, you know, in two minutes, there's only so much you can cover. So a colleague and I, uh, Andrew Wheeler, he's the CEO of Skyward now. Um, so we got together and, uh, Andrew was opening up the, the Chicago office for our prospect at the time. And we said, you know, what, what, what if we did the opposite? Like, this doesn't make sense. What if we did the exact opposite? Like how could we, instead of having TW two minute conversations, how could we have two hour conversations instead of having, you know, 20, 30, 40 competitors right next to us, how could we have zero? How could we completely do the opposite of what we've been doing to drive leads? And we said, well, what if we held our own branded event?

And we invited who we wanted to attend. And then we had really long intimate conversations with them about their marketing struggles and their marketing challenges. And then, you know, that, that was it. You know, it's just great food, great drink. Um, we, you know, we, we were bringing in speakers from Google or from, uh, Microsoft, um, to also lend their viewpoints. Uh, and, and then literally it was just, we, we rented out a, a, a room in the house of blues. So we made it fun. Right. We made it fun for people to attend, you know, unlimited food, unlimited drinks, and then unlimited talking. Right. We could all engage instead of going to a conference where most of it was attending sessions, no one was talking or you're visiting exhibit booths where you only have two minute conversations. They're very shallow. And you're talking with 30 competitors, you know, we changed everything about it. And we didn't even care how many people showed up out of the very first event that we did. You know, not that many people showed up, we got a multi-million dollar contract out of it and a six figure contract out of it. So we said, okay, let's do this again. Pretty

Kathleen (22:40):

Good ROI.

Tom (22:41):

<laugh> amazing ROI. Uh, and we did another one and we got another multi-million dollar contract out of it. And so this immediately became our number one leads, driver, number one, revenue driver. And it changed everything, but it only happened because we said, what if we do the opposite if we had not said that, and we were only trying to tinker around the edges, none of that would've happened. Yeah.

Kathleen (23:05):

Um, okay. Diving a little bit deeper down the path of examples. What about cross pollination? Is there anything there that you can share story wise?

Tom (23:15):

Oh,

Kathleen (23:16):

So, I mean, you gave us the one about, um, oh my gosh, I've already just spaced about it. Um, the, oh, the immigrants and the patents, are there any others that, that come to mind?

Tom (23:29):

So I, I mean, cross pollination, so we, we brainstorm all the time and we tap into others. So for instance, you know, just the other day, uh, we had tapped into, uh, the digital marketing leader at, you know, a leading biotech company, um, just to brainstorm for, for, for an hour. Um, and it had nothing to do with this person's company or brand, or their marketing at all. It was simply to, uh, tap into her brain, tap into her ideas, her, you know, and, and, you know, when, and she, she, I, you know, I can't reveal the, the specific strategies that, that, that she was revealing to us, but it, you know, we came away with several very tangible, new ways for us to look at our marketing and for us to engage in our marketing. Um, you know, one thing that, that one story which comes to mind, which, uh, is from my, my friend ginger shim, she's, she's head of content globally at SAP, you know, the 28 billion a year software company.

Um, and she and her team, I know, you know, also are constantly looking for ideas, uh, from others and, uh, and constantly brainstorming. And one of the things that they came up with was they have many, many verticals to address. They have 25 verticals that they need to produce content for. And historically, historically they couldn't, you know, it was just physically impossible to cover 25 different verticals. And so what they would do is they would pick the three or four most important ones, and then they would go all in creating content, in support of those, uh, three or four verticals for that particular campaign. And then they came upon a campaign where they were gonna be talking about digital transformation. And they said, wow, you know, we really can't pick three or four industries to, to focus on because digital transformation is just as applicable to all 25.

And, uh, and so it was through, you know, a lot of brainstorming and, um, cross pollination of ideas, where they came up with the idea of, Hey, what if we create, uh, a base piece of product for that's that's 80% complete and can be applied to any industry. And then we customize only 20% and they did this, and they were able to cover all 25 verticals. They started off with white paper. So they, they customized the white paper, 25 different times, but then they said, not only that let's atomize this content, let's turn it into little video, snippets, little audio, snippets, presentations, um, infographics, uh, Twitter cards on and on and on all this different type of content. And then they said, you know, some of our audience is very visual in nature. So, you know, let's go heavy on the visuals for them, others, more auditory.

So let's make sure we have enough, you know, auditory content and others are much more text based. So we, you know, make sure we're blogging appropriately, right. And providing enough long form content. Uh, and they wound up creating 650 pieces of content for this one campaign, this one marketing campaign. Wow. Uh, they covered all 25 verticals and they wound up creating new pipeline of 23 million just from this one campaign. And so ever since they they've been following this path, um, and they've been replicating this, this over and over, but, you know, it took a lot of cross pollination, a lot of brainstorming, a lot of new thinking in order to get there.

Kathleen (26:49):

Yeah, that's cool. Uh, well, I appreciate you sharing those stories. Uh, and this leads me into the perfect, it was the perfect segue into my next question, which is like, you can do brainstorming, you can do all these creative exercises, but I think there comes a point where you, you have all these ideas, how do you winnow through and decide like which ones you should focus on? Cuz I think it could be easy to get really distracted by lots of new ideas and, and like lose focus. So how do you prioritize?

Tom (27:20):

So we have a matrix that is specifically for this purpose of deciding, which are the best ideas and the matrix is very flexible because depending on what your goals are and what your parameters are, uh, it will adjust accordingly. And what I mean by that is, for instance, let's say that you have, um, a conference coming up or a webinar coming up and you wanna brainstorm ideas for the, the conference or the webinar. That's very time bound, right? You need ideas quickly. Uh, and so that's one way that, that the matrix, uh, adjusts another might be, we only have a certain budget. So anything beyond that budget we can't consider. Right? So we come up with a matrix where we list all of our ideas. We brainstorm, we list all of the ideas in the left hand column. So it could be 30 ideas, it could be a hundred ideas, right.

Uh, and then we have, uh, five other columns next to it. One is looking at, okay, how fast can we implement this? Another is how easy is it to implement another is what's the cost of implementation. Another is what's the revenue or the, the number of leads that, that we expect to get out of this specific idea. And then the other is ROI. So not, not just the revenue of the lease, but compared to the cost. Right? Uh, and so we look at those five factors and we give them either a green light, a yellow light, or a red light for each factor. So one idea, you know, you look at how quickly can we implement it is a green light, yellow light, red light. And then what's the cost green light, yellow light, red light. And so all of a sudden you have this matrix filled with green, yellow, and red.

You can winnow out the red very quickly, right? And let's go back to the example. Um, let's say that cost is an issue and you have a certain budget. You can't go beyond that cost. Well then any ideas that go beyond that cost, you know, you, you need to delete that out of your matrix immediately. So you'll see that that box is red. So anything that's red, you filter those out. And it's a very, very fast way of getting down to what's realistic, right? And then it becomes very, very clear where your green lights are and some are gonna be green light across the board. Other it's gonna be ROI is gonna be the difference maker where, uh, it's green. And so you might have amazing ideas that just cost too much, right? There are amazing ideas. You love them, but if they cost too much and budget is an issue, then you it's the, you don't have to spend any time thinking about it. It's, you're, you're deleting it out of your consideration set immediately. And that's, what's so great about this matrix is you can winnow it down within an hour and find your best idea. That's, what's amazing about, so we use this matrix all the time.

Kathleen (29:51):

Oh, that's awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. Um, all right. So for, for anybody that's thinking about this, um, and thinking, I, I need my team to get more creative. Um, are there, like, how do you, how do you get started? What's your advice to somebody who's in that position? They they're listening to this and they're thinking I'm ready. I'm ready to go. Who should be involved? How do you do it?

Tom (30:14):

Yeah. So, uh, let, let's say that you're on a marketing team and you wanna get more creative. One is block off time in your calendar, right? Block off time in your calendar. One to learn, to explore and to solve client problems or to solve prospect problems, right? Um, if you don't have the time to do it, you're not doing it. Uh, it, it goes back to my question to, to, you know, the executive board of this one company. I told you about where, when you ask them, how much time are you dedicating to this? Oftentimes people are not spending time on it. They're not prioritizing, it's not scheduled. It's not in their calendar. They're spending less than 1% of their time. Some people are spending 0% of their time on it. And so if you're not spending any time on it, or if you're only spending 1% of your time on it, of course you're not gonna be as innovative as you can.

So the first step is make sure that your team is blocking off time for innovative ideas. You know, one of the things that, that, um, uh, that, that we do here is, you know, any person at Stratabeat can call a brainstorming session at any time for any reason. So sometimes it's because of something that we're developing internally, other times, it's for a very specific client like, oh, Hey, you know, we're working on their content calendar and we want to, you know, bring everyone together. So even though, you know, Hey, we know, you know, nothing about this client, or, you know, you don't know, you know, all of the content that we've been generating, that's fine because we want your creativity, right? We want your fresh new ideas. Um, so we talk about time, right? And you need to spend the time. You also need to brainstorm.

We think that that's a necessary ingredient in creativity is brainstorming, uh, because that gives you the green light. It gives you the freedom to come up with innovative ideas. And it doesn't matter how, how much of a stretch they are or how different they are or how lateral they are in approach. Um, and so that's very important. And then, uh, as I mentioned, you know, this matrix is really helpful. So don't just have ideas. A lot of companies have a lot of ideas and, and we, and we've seen this countless times. Yeah. You know, how many times do companies go to offsite, right? Where there, the executive team is there spend days coming up with lots of ideas and you write up all the ideas, but then there's never winnowing them down to just a few and assigning who's gonna do what by when, within the next 90 days.

And you know, at every offsite I go to, I, I point that out, like you, we have to do this. It is a necessary part of creativity is if you want to execute, someone needs to be responsible for that idea. They have to own it. They have to be held accountable for it. Right. And there needs to be a timeline and there needs to be a deadline. And there needs to be reporting along the way. It can't just be, oh, you're gonna go be creative. No, no, no. It has to be a lot more specific. You're gonna focus on this idea, which we all agreed was AMA. It was an amazing idea. It passed our matrix, right? So it, you are now the owner of this idea, you have, you know, 60 days or 90 days or half a year, but you know, this is the reporting cadence that, that we're gonna have.

Um, and so we're big believers in dashboards, right? We love dashboards, uh, where you can just get a very quick view of how, what the status is. Uh, and if there are any red flags or if things are, are going bonkers, you know, and things are great. Um, and so we would strongly suggest build in an accountability system, into your creativity building, right? So someone's responsible for an idea, how are they gonna be reporting it? What's the cadence of reporting on it because they shouldn't just go into a black box and 90 days later come out with their eye, you know, okay, here's my plan. You should be discussing it all along the way.

Kathleen (33:52):

Yeah. I mean, if there's one big thing I'm taking away from this conversation, it's sort of that it's debunking the notion that creativity is an art form. Like, it feels very much like this is a process. There are some concrete ways to do it. There's a whole structure around the follow up and the accountability. And to me, that's reassuring because like, I don't consider myself a super creative person <laugh> but I'm good at process. And I'm good at structure. So it's, it is it's it's, it makes me feel better. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

Tom (34:25):

<laugh> oh, anyone can, anyone can come up with fantastic ideas. Uh, anyone can come up with a groundbreaking idea and, you know, it goes back, you know, just think about the example where, you know, instead of focusing on your clients or your prospects solutions and offerings and what they're trying to sell, focus on their audience and do a deep dive on their audience. And it doesn't matter how creative you are. It doesn't matter.

Kathleen (34:46):

Well, that's if you're an agency, but if you're selling a product, um, I guess it would work the same. So like, if you're selling a product and your B2B focus on who your customer is selling to, is that what you're saying?

Tom (34:59):

Exactly. So in, yes. Instead of focusing on your, in that case, instead of focusing on your product, your services, your solutions, focus on your audience and do a deep dive on your audience's pain point Sunday night comes what what's eating at their stomach. What, what what's giving them a stomach ache on Sunday nights. And what we find is, you know, a lot of marketing teams, they're so focused on selling a, a solution, selling an offering and, and their solution might be fantastic, but that's not really what people are looking for. They're, they're looking to solve their problems. And so the more that you can articulate that and get creative in understanding, you know, what is really eating away at them, what's worrying them. Like, even while they're talking with you, like, what are they thinking about in the back of their mind? What are they jotting down notes about?

Like, oh God, I gotta do this later today. I can't forget. Right. What are those things? That's what you need to hyper focus on. And you, and yet you don't need to be the most creative person in the world. Just do a lot of research, talk to people, interview people, you know, conduct content, you know, content, research, SEO, research, uh, online questions, you know, what are the online questions being asked? Um, but you know, it's, uh, put you this way. Anyone can interview clients, prospects, audience members, and, you know, you should be doing it all the time. It's one of the first things that we love doing is interview the audience, right. And how much time are you doing that? Maybe you did like, uh, a, an, a campaign, you know, a year ago where you interviewed five customers. Right. But maybe you need to do that every quarter.

Kathleen (36:29):

Yeah. Or I also always say like, listen, you know, record, have your sales team record its conversations, have your customer success team record its conversations, listen to the recordings. Like that's also a very valuable way of getting kind of a window into your audience's world.

Tom (36:43):

Absolutely. Totally agree with you.

Kathleen (36:46):

All right. We're gonna shift gears cuz we're kind of, we're coming towards the end of our time. And I always ask my guests two questions. Uh, the first being, um, that the marketers, I speak to often talk about this feeling of like drinking from a fire hose when it comes to trying to keep up with everything in the world of digital marketing, uh, because everything changes so quickly. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated?

Tom (37:12):

Yeah, so I don't necessarily rely on a specific website or publication. What I do is I, I actually scan through LinkedIn and Twitter every day, literally every day. Uh, and I will, whatever is intriguing, what's ever compelling is what I will click through. So I click through a lot and I will consume a lot. And so it's not necessarily that I follow specific people or I follow specific companies where I follow specific websites. It's much more dynamic than that. Uh, and so, you know, I, I do that literally every day. Um, and uh, I, I, you know, I I'm, I'm always amazed at just the brilliance of, of people out there. You know, there's just so much to learn all the time, even if it's just a tiny little incremental learning, uh, it doesn't have to be groundbreaking. Um, but that, that's how I tend to consume information.

Kathleen (38:04):

Yeah. It's interesting. I was talking about this yesterday that, um, I've asked this question now for five years as a podcast host in the beginning, EV the answers were very much like I read this blog or I read that newsletter. I go to that website now it's almost uniformly. I have a community of peers and I rely on them to keep me sharp. So very interesting trend. Um, alright. Second question. This podcast is all about inbound marketing, which I define as anything that naturally attracts the right customer to you. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be great at inbound marketing these days?

Tom (38:42):

There is so one company that I have been just, uh, really impressed with throughout the years is Drift. Um, and so that's a company, you know, is originally, um, marketing was spearheaded by Dave Gerhardt, the VP of marketing at the time. He later came back as the chief brand officer and I've had conversations, uh, with Dave just, just, it's always, you know, jaw dropping what they're doing and what they're thinking, how they think about things. Uh, and they are entirely inbound. And so, you know, they have, they, they publish books, they publish an amazing blog. They publish reports all the time. They have four different podcasts. Think about that. Like a lot of companies will have one podcast. Yeah.

<laugh>, they have four different podcasts going. They have a community of, uh, what is it over 50,000 members. Uh, and, you know, that takes a lot of engagement and a lot of, you know, interacting with the audience and providing them with value. Uh, and you know, they, they have a ton of videos. They have, you know, it's just, it's just nonstop with them anywhere you turn they're offering and, and they even do events, right? Like they do live events, they do webinars all the time. Um, you know, I can't think of, of a form of inbound that they're, that they're not doing <laugh>.

Kathleen (40:00):

Yeah. They are a great example. And they get mentioned a lot on this show. So, you know, if I had to count kind of, if I had a, if I had a leader board of the companies that get mentioned the most that's right up there, for sure.

Tom (40:12):

Yeah, yeah. For good reason. Impressive what they're doing. Yeah.

Kathleen (40:14):

All right. Well, we're at the end of our time. And so Tom, if somebody wants to learn more about you or has a question, or, and I didn't mention this earlier, you have a couple books you've written, um, you know, what's the best way for them to, to do that.

Tom (40:28):

Yeah. So, uh, you can certainly find me at my agency, Stratabeat.com. Uh, and, uh, also I have a personal website, Tomshapiro.com. That's where you can find out about my books and speaking also. Uh, so my two books Rethink Your Marketing and Rethink Lead Generation. They're both on Amazon. So if you just go on Amazon and for instance, you type in rethink lead generation, you'll find it right away. Um, and, and rethink lead generation does do a deep dive on how creativity impacts your lead generation, your marketing and, and your results. Um, and then also, if anyone just had a personal question, uh, if you can contact me, uh, on Twitter or you can contact me on LinkedIn on Twitter is just twitter.com/tomshapiro. Uh, so very straightforward <laugh> and, uh, uh, on LinkedIn. Yeah. Just feel free to ask me any questions. Um, and if you mentioned the inbound success podcast, you know, I will get back to you right away.

Kathleen (41:22):

<laugh> awesome. All right. Well, as always, I'll put all those links in the show notes, which are available at kathleen-booth.com. And, um, if you are listening and you know, somebody else who's doing great inbound marketing work, send me a tweet at @Kathleenlbooth and I would love to have them as my next guest. In the meantime, thank you so much for joining me, Tom. This was a lot of fun and I, I definitely feel better about the possibilities of me becoming more creative in the future. <laugh>

Tom (41:50):

Awesome. It it's been such a good time. Thank you so much, Kathleen.