MarketingSherpa Blog

At MarketingSherpa, we bring you the ideas and inspiration to help you come up with your next great marketing idea. We do that through our marketing case study articles, our data charts, and our How I Made It In Marketing podcast discussions.

The idea is – you are the hero of your own journey, sometimes you just need a little inspirational grit to build your next great pearl of wisdom around.

That’s usually great. Marketers are ideas people always looking for that next game-changing idea.

Of course, sometimes you just want something done for you. So today, we’re bringing you a bunch of tools built on MeclabsAI (MarketingSherpa’s parent company) leveraging not only MarketingSherpa’s 25 years of business journalism, but also Meclabs Institute’s patented marketing methodology.

No need to think. Just click and get something done for you. And MeclabsAI is free to try, you don’t even have to register to get started (although you will get additional free interactions if you do register).

Here’s a quick look at some of the 14 apps in MeclabsAI, along with a small piece of the outputs they gave me when I tried to get help on MarketingSherpa’s homepage.

Value Prop Analyzer

MeclabsAI CEO Flint McGlaughlin has taught extensively on value proposition, and he has built that methodology into this app.

Just give this app your homepage URL, paste in the contents of your homepage, or share the core of your value proposition and it will apply the Value Proposition Ranking Criterion, empowering you to identify and leverage your brand’s unique strengths while pinpointing areas ripe for optimization.

For example, when I paste in the MarketingSherpa homepage URL, it gives me…

Let’s delve into the Value Prop Ranking Criterion to assess your value proposition’s power across four dimensions: Appeal, Exclusivity, Clarity, and Credibility.

Your value proposition ranks as High on our scale, indicating a significant strength in attracting and retaining your target market’s interest. It suggests your offering is well-received yet harbors potential for enriched distinctiveness and trust-building efforts.

Try Value Prop Analyzer

Competitor Analyzer

“Know thy self, know they enemy,” Sun Tzu said. Competitor Analyzer can help outsmart the competition.

Just give it the URL for your website and a competitor and let the insights roll in.

First, I put in the URLs for MarketingSherpa and The Wall Street Journal, but the Competitor Analyzer called me out on that – “The websites you’ve provided are not typically direct competitors, as one specializes in marketing research and insights (MarketingSherpa), and the other is a comprehensive news outlet with a strong emphasis on financial and business news (The Wall Street Journal).”

So then I tried MarketingSherpa and MarketingProfs, and here is a part of the response…

Website Components Comparison

Try Competitor Analyzer

Chat Transcript Analyzer

Zoom sessions are harder to present on than in-person speaking, at least for me. I have a harder time connecting with the audience.

So I love the chat feature because I can get a little feedback, and tweak what I’m talking about to better serve the audience.

That’s a little easier to do when there is another speaker on the Zoom as well. Then I can read through the chat while that person is speaking.

If it’s only me, it’s hard to walk and chew gum, and often the best I can do is read the chat after. But it can be a lot of info to take in.

Chat Transcript Analyzer does a nice job summarizing it all for me. For example, I spoke on the AI Guild main session about process-level value prop and AI last week, pasted in the chat transcript, and here is part of the analysis I got…

Mathematical Analysis:

I’m glad to see that humor was used effectively. I love stand-up comedy. And I always love to infuse a bit of that ethos every time I speak.

Try Chat Transcript Analyzer

Webpages Analyzer

Just past in your URL. Here is part of the analysis I got for MarketingSherpa…

Try Webpages Analyzer

CTA (Call to Action) Builder

This app aligns with Micro Yes #7 (Yes, I will trade) and Micro Yes #8 (Yes, I will finish) in Meclabs Micro Yes Architecture approach to creating effective marketing.

When I pasted in MarketingSherpa’s homepage URL (and you can use landing pages as well), I like this point from MeclabsAI…

Value:

1. • Emphasizing immediate access to valuable resources, a CTA might read, “Gain Free Instant Access to Exclusive Marketing Insights,” showcasing the value exchange—action for knowledge.

Nowhere on the homepage do we say that MarketingSherpa’s case study articles, data charts, and interviews are free (they didn’t use to be).

Try CTA Builder

Headline Builder

This app aligns with Micro Yes #1 (Yes, I will pay attention) and Micro Yes #2 (Yes, I will engage deeper).

When I pasted in the homepage URL, part of what it gave me was a breakdown of the nouns, verbs, and adjectives I was using, which is a great start to playing with different headline options.

Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives Analysis

Try Headline Builder

Appeal Builder

This app ties into Micro Yes #5 (Yes, I want this now).

If you want a new message crafted, provide it details about your product or service.

If you want an existing message analyzed, share the current message along with specific objectives or concerns.

Here’s a sentence I liked from what Appeal Builder gave me, “Unearth practical case studies, research, and training designed not just to inform but to transform.”

Try Appeal Builder

Conversion Index Analyzer

Just paste in a landing page or homepage URL, and this app will use Meclabs well-known Conversion Sequence Heuristic – C=4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a – to provide an analysis.

For example, when I pasted in the MarketingSherpa homepage URL, I like how it summed up what we’re trying to do to tap into the motivation of our visitors – “The homepage of MarketingSherpa offers a broad scope of resources, including articles, videos, podcasts, and free resources, that align well with the intrinsic motivations of marketers seeking research-based insights and actionable marketing strategies.”

Conversion Index Analyzer

Article Analyzer

When I posted in the URL for a recent MarketingSherpa article – Strategic Foundations of Niche Launch Success: B2C marketing examples with results – It has this nice summary in the FAQ…

1. What is the main advice for competing against big brands in a niche market?
   • The main advice is to focus on smaller, overlooked opportunities where larger brands might not be active, leveraging SEO, and using AI for content creation to establish a presence in niche markets.

Article Analyzer

Video Transcripts Analyzer

When I pasted in the transcript from the most recent episode of How I Made It In Marketing – an interview with Nicole Sumner, Brand Director, Ollie – it produced an FAQ that included this key hard-won lesson from Sumner’s career journey:

Q: What was a key takeaway from Nicole’s missed job opportunity?
A: The key takeaway is the importance of explicitly communicating your career ambitions and interests to be considered for opportunities.

So even though this app is called Video Transcripts Analyzer, it works with audio-only content like our podcast as well.

Video Transcripts Analyzer

Related resources

Customer-First Objectives: Discover a 3-part formula for focusing your webpage message

Website Wireframes: 8 psychological elements that impact marketing conversion rates

Website Wireframes: See real webpages optimized for marketing conversion

In the AI Guild, I conduct a lot of group coaching of landing pages, emails, and other marketing. And I’ve found myself uttering the same phrase over and over…

Help, don’t hype

Think of it this way. Take off your hat as a marketing professional or business owner just for a moment and put on your customer hat.

You have a goal you’d like to achieve. Or perhaps a pain point you want to overcome. You go on a journey to meet that goal or overcome that pain point. That journey begins by not even understanding what options there are to meet your goal or stop your pain, and it ends by making a commitment, sometimes an expensive commitment (in not just money, but also, time and trust) with a specific company to buy a project or service.

What would you prefer along that journey? To be sold to? Or to be helped?

Anti-marketing sentiment

Tell someone at a dinner party you work in marketing. Or are heavily involved in marketing as a business owner.

You likely won’t get the same reaction as a doctor or teacher.

Why?

Read more…

Ever wondered what truly drives a customer to choose your product over another? Last week, I examined six powerful factors in a webinar for SCORE’s Jacksonville chapter that can transform your marketing strategy and boost conversions.

We discussed marketing strategy, conversion optimization, value proposition, and what every creator of lead gen forms and online shopping carts can learn from the Chik-Fil-A drive-through.

Entrepreneurs and marketers discovered the factors influencing decisions in marketing, business, and even their personal lives. Our discussion was guided by the patented Meclabs Conversion Sequence heuristic developed by Flint McGlaughlin, CEO, MeclabsAI (MarketingSherpa’s parent organization). Participants learned to steer outcomes towards ‘yes.’

I’ve gotten a lot of requests for the slides, so I figured I would do one better, and just give you the full replay. The video is below, and here are the slides. Read more…

This blog post is radically different than any other blog post I’ve ever written.

Because I had an idea. It’s an idea I just can’t let go of. It’s an idea that you can take part in to make something magical and (not to sound crass but) profit from.

It was the early days of MelcabsAI (parent organization of MarketingSherpa). I was on a call with Flint McGlaughlin, and he showed me something he was working on for a company in the MeclabsAI pilot program. He quickly built an AI Expert based on a company’s founder in MeclabsAI. Just took some of the founder’s writing and pasted it into the Engineering Console of MeclabsAI. And now his team was using that AI Expert to help write emails.

I’d heard and seen yadda, yadda, yadda about AI up until this point. Everybody’s ‘mind was blown’ every other day on YouTube by something AI could supposedly do. Eye roll. Yeah whatever. I’m a skeptic.

But this. This was something different to me.

Because it wasn’t about what AI could do. It’s about what you could do.

Read more…

Action Box: Optimize your marketing with MeclabsAI – affordable, instant, expert help

At Meclabs Institute (MarketingSherpa’s parent organization), we offered (expensive) conversion marketing services.

Thanks to AI advances, we put our patented methodology derived from 10,000 marketing experiments into MeclabsAI. It’s inexpensive (free to start), offers instant help, and will even train you (using the Marketing Professor expert).

There are 6 days left until the official launch of the full-featured MeclabsAI.

Start optimizing with MeclabsAI for free (until June 17)

At MarketingSherpa, I craft in-depth marketing case studies and data-driven articles. And I host the How I Made It In Marketing podcast.

I would fail miserably at these endeavors without sources.

Our focus is primary sources, the actual people and companies doing the work, who researched the data, or who lived that career journey.

For a long time, I used a service called Help A Reporter Out, also known by its acronym – HARO.

But HARO was shut down/rebranded/replatformed earlier this year. And while there are many older posts on the best HARO alternatives that were written while HARO existed, ironically, I’ve seen very little press about what to do now that HARO no longer exists.

Also, most posts about HARO are from the perspective of pitching to get into an article, often for SEO reasons and link building.

I’ve found a lot less info out there for journalists, reporters, and content marketers to help them find primary sources now that HARO no longer exists.

So here are some places to find primary sources for articles, blog posts, podcast interview, and the like, along with my personal experience with them. If you know of any good places to find sources that I have overlooked, or simply have different opinions or experiences on any of the below, just email me at Daniel.Burstein@Meclabs.com. I intend this to be an on-going resource for all reporters and content marketers. Also, these are only my opinions and others likely have different ideas or experiences. Read more…

This blog post was distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter.

Although the straightforward use of AI-generated content is not awarded by Google, significant performance benefits can be gained by digital marketers leveraging AI in a responsible and professional manner.

Here are some effective strategies for applying generative AI expertise to escalate one’s performance in SEO and other domains of digital content creation.

I have tried ranking more than 100 template landing pages and blogs with pure AI content, and my experience shows that trying to rank purely AI-based content does not work. The text gets indexed and then deindexed by Google the next day; we did not receive any traffic gains.

But artificial intelligence can assist with content creation. What is received from AI needs to be developed, reviewed and improved to be unique and valuable. Using this approach, I’ve ranked at least 10 blog posts and landing pages for keywords ranked from 20 to 45 competitiveness by the Mangools SERPChecker.

In this article, I’ll show you my process. For this example, I use MeclabsAI (from MarketingSherpa’s parent organization).

But first, let’s review what Google has publicly said about artificial intelligence and content.

Read more…

“I’ve put my kids through college with just my ideas.”

A friend of mine who owns an agency told me this over a beer one night. And I think it’s an apt description of a career in marketing.

But here’s the rub – it’s hard to come up with ideas. Day after day. Month after month. Especially if you’ve worked at the same brand for any length of time.

So I’m always looking for ways to get unstuck. And I stumbled across one recently while leading MEC300: Develop Your Creative, an education offering within the AI Guild.

I hesitate to call it a ‘course’ or ‘training’ per se, because I focus the time we have together on interactivity. There’s plenty of content people can dive into between sessions, but during the sessions we review their work building their marketing funnels and – back to that word – help them get unstuck.

While coaching a participant, my co-leader for this track – Dhruv Patel, Chief Product Officer, MeclabsAI (Meclabs is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa) – shared an expansive visual. He took many different concepts he’s learned throughout his career and made one, overarching image that could spur even the most perplexed marketer or entrepreneur to get unstuck.

I’ll show you the visual and then we’ll dive into some of the concepts behind it.

Read more…

I’ve been writing about A/B testing for 15 years at Meclabs (MarketingSherpa is part of Meclabs, as is MarketingExperiments). And one of the most common challenges I’ve heard is – ‘what do I test next?’

Because A/B testing isn’t all that hard to get the hang of. And once you catch the bug and see how it can move the needle and help you learn about and better serve customers – marketers and entrepreneurs want to keep testing.

But we’re only human. And eventually the well runs dry. ‘So what the heck should I test next?’

Enter the biggest marketing buzzword of 2024 (and 2023 as well) – artificial intelligence.

But unlike a buzzword that covers up for vaporware, AI is legit when it comes to test ideation. Because unlike me and you, it isn’t human (sorry bots reading this post, you are not part of my target audience).

So AI is a never-ending font of ideas. Are they all amazingly good? No.

But Paul McCartney originally sang “Scrambled Eggs” instead of “Yesterday,” “The Breakfast Club” was going to be called “The Lunch Bunch,” and Jane Austen came up with the title “First Impressions” before she settled on “Pride and Prejudice.”

Brilliance isn’t obvious at first. It takes a lot of ideas to get there.

Which, again, AI has. So the next time you’re struggling with a test idea, give it a shot.

Here’s an example. I’m co-teaching ‘MEC 300: Develop Your Creative’ in the AI Guild. This isn’t just meant to be training; it’s meant to guide you to build your own funnel. So between each class there is a ‘Build Your SuperFunnel’ activity (I didn’t want to call it ‘homework,’ after all, these are all adult professionals).

Read more…

I categorize effective content into Stephen Covey’s quadrants – specifically Quadrant I (urgent and important) and Quadrant II (not urgent but important).

For example, MarketingSherpa helps you with the urgent and important by publishing marketing case study articles. If you have an urgent and important need, you can quickly search the MarketingSherpa library and find specific marketing examples with results to give you ideas within a few minutes.

For those challenges and opportunities that are not urgent but are important – your long-term brand strategy, team management, career path, etc. – there’s the How I Made It In Marketing podcast. You can listen in your downtime – on the train, in the car, going for a run – and get ideas from these roughly hour-long discussions with marketing leaders.

Well, until now.

We have a new, free tool that transition these long-form in-depth interviews from into content that can help with your immediate, important challenges. It can analyze How I Made It In Marketing, or any other audio or video transcript, and help you with urgent and important problems in just a few minutes. This tool is the Video Transcript Analyst expert assistant in MECLABS AI (MECLABS is the parent organization of MarketingSherpa).

MECLABS AI is totally free to use, for now. Here’s where you can find Video Transcript Analyst in MECLABS AI…

For me personally, when I’m looking for a quick solution, I jump past video and audio results in a search engine. I don’t have the time to linearly watch and listen. I want text I can quickly scan. And that is exactly what Video Transcripts Analyst can give you.

Here’s an example. In one of the early episodes of how I Made It In Marketing, I interviewed Aron North, Chief Marketing Officer and Commercial Owner, Mint Mobile. So I figured I’d take a walk down memory lane and take a closer look at that episode. Plus, test out how well Video Transcript Analyst works on an audio-only format like a podcast.

I simply pasted the transcript into MECLABS AI, and it gave me the below result (in fairness to MECLABS AI, there are no timestamps in the transcript, so that part was just an AI hallucination, but if you use a transcript with time stamps, it can include that info in a table as seen below):

Summary Paragraph:

Aron North, the Chief Marketing Officer at Mint Mobile, shares invigorating insights into the potent mix of creativity, customer focus, and willingness to embrace failure that has driven explosive growth for Mint Mobile in a saturated market. Starting from ground zero, Mint learned to leverage creative prowess over hefty production budgets, transforming perceived customer skepticism of their low prices into a compelling narrative of value. The conversation with Daniel Burstein threads through Aron’s career trajectory, lessons in pushing the creative envelope, fostering a dynamic marketing culture of immediacy (epitomized through a rapid response to a tweet from Dave Foley), and building a brand that earnestly listens and adapts to its customers and employees alike. This journey underscores the agility, audacity, and human-centered approach fundamental to breaking through traditional marketing confines and resonating genuinely with both customers and team members.

Segmented Overview with Timestamps:

FAQ for the Video:

1. What is the key to Mint Mobile’s marketing success?
   • Creativity over production, leveraging insights, and willingness to take risks.
2. How does Aron North view failure in marketing?
   • As an essential part of the learning process and a driver for innovation.
3. What strategy did Mint use to address skepticism regarding its low pricing?
   • Enhancing perceived value by creatively presenting the offer and educating about the benefits.
4. What is “fastertizing” and how did Mint Mobile utilize it?
   • Fast, responsive marketing, exampled by engaging with a tweet from Dave Foley and rapidly producing an ad.
5. What cultural principle does Aron North emphasize within the team?
   • “Free Beer, No Asshole” to ensure a rewarding and inclusive work environment.
6. How does Mint Mobile engage with customers for feedback?
   • Through active participation and monitoring on platforms like Reddit for real-time insights.

Flashcards for Key Concepts:

1. Creative Over Production:
   • Focus on creativity and human insight to make impactful campaigns over spending on high production.
2. Embracing Failure:
   • Viewing failure as a step towards innovation and learning.
3. Fastertizing:
   • The practice of rapid, responsive advertising to stay relevant and engaging.
4. FBNA Principle:
   • “Free Beer, No Assholes” principle that underlies the importance of reward and a positive team culture.
5. Customer Engagement:
   • Actively listening and adapting based on customer feedback, utilizing platforms like Reddit.
6. Human Insight in Marketing:
   • The foundational role of universal human truths in creating resonant marketing messages.
7. Key Qualities of a Marketer:
   • Creativity, tenacity, good listening skills, and self-awareness.

Do you have any specific questions about video or marketing insights shared?

I then asked Video Transcript Messaging Analyst, “Any ideas from this episode that could help me with the launch of MECLABS AI?” and it responded…

The insights and strategies shared in the conversation with Aron North, particularly those pertaining to fostering creativity, embracing risk, and deeply understanding customer needs, can be instrumental in launching MECLABS AI successfully. Engaging with these principles through a critical lens rooted in MECLABS methodologies, let’s delineate actionable insights that can power your launch strategy:

1. Leverage Creativity Over Production (“Creative is Greater Than Production”):

• Application: For MECLABS AI, utilize creative storytelling and straightforward communication to connect with your target audience instead of focusing on high-cost productions. Emphasize the unique capabilities and benefits of MECLABS AI in addressing complex analytical needs through simple, compelling narratives.

2. Embrace and Learn from Failure:

• Application: Advance MECLABS AI through a culture of experimentation, embracing the potential growth that stems from risks and failures. Adopt a test-and-learn approach in your launch strategy, where each phase of the campaign is iterated upon based on real-world feedback and performance data.

3. Fastertizing – Swift, Relevant Marketing:

• Application: Utilize the concept of fastertizing to keep MECLABS AI’s communications timely and highly relevant to evolving market needs and conversations. This might involve creating content and campaigns that respond to current trends in data analysis, AI advancements, or industry-specific challenges, thereby positioning MECLABS AI as a timely and responsive solution.

4. FBNA Principle (Free Beer, No Assholes) – Cultivating a Positive Culture:

• Application: Build an internal culture for MECLABS AI that rewards creativity, innovation, and collaboration, ensuring that all team members feel valued and motivated. This positive internal culture will reflect externally, fostering trust and loyalty among your prospective users.

5. Actively Engage with and Listen to Your Audience:

• Application: Engage your potential and existing users in genuine conversations about their needs, challenges, and expectations from an AI-powered analytical tool like MECLABS AI. Platforms such as LinkedIn, Reddit, or industry forums can provide rich insights, helping to refine MECLABS AI’s offerings and messaging.

6. Highlight Human Insight and Value Proposition:

• Application: Ground your messaging in clear, human-centric value propositions that resonate with your target market’s core challenges and goals. Illustrate how MECLABS AI can transform their analytical processes, enabling more profound insights, saving time, and driving strategic decisions.

7. Encourage Tenacity and Creativity in Marketing Efforts:

• Application: Empower your marketing team to pursue innovative strategies and channels for promoting MECLABS AI, encouraging bold ideas and resilience in the face of challenges. This could involve innovative partnership models, community-building efforts, or novel content formats that captivate attention.

To gauge the effectiveness of these strategies and refine your approach, it’s essential to continually analyze feedback, performance metrics, and marketplace dynamics. By synthesizing these insights with the aforementioned principles, MECLABS AI can forge a compelling launch that resonates with your audience and distinguishes the product in the competitive landscape of AI and analytics solutions.

These responses don’t have the depth you get from listening to the entire episode, but the episode was 70 minutes long and the above interaction took about five minutes. So it’s a great way to take long-form audio and video content, and delve into it to brainstorm your ideas.

Or simply run the transcript of that content through this AI analyst, see if any of the responses pique your interest, and only then decide to dive in and listen to the full episode. In an era of endless content to choose from, it can help you narrow in on what deserves your deeper attention and is most helpful and relevant to you.

Related resources

MECLABS AI – Get free (for now) expert help from the only AI unit build from the discoveries of 10,000 conversion marketing experiments

Unlocking Your Inner Copywriter: A non-wizard’s guide to spellbinding headlines

AI-powered Problem-solving Strategies: An interview with MECLABS AI’s Problem Solver expert assistant

Personification is the intimate companion of imagination.

Which is why so many great artists use it. For example, Jack London wrote, “But the plummet of his hearing brought nothing to him save the moaning of wind through invisible trees and the rustling of leaves on swaying branches.”

You may have seen this tactic used so often that you wouldn’t even notice the personification if I hadn’t specifically italicized it in the above sentence. I know I would overlook it. But moan literally means, ‘a long, low sound made by a person.’

London could have written, ‘the gusty wind’ but it wouldn’t have hit me in the chest the same way. I can feel that wind moaning.

Or in a much more obvious example: “The sea was angry that day, my friends – like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli” written by Larry David, Ron Hauge, and Jerry Seinfeld in the comedian’s eponymous hit TV series.

Personification isn’t just for literature and television. If you want to make effective use of AI for brainstorming, it helps to think of chatting with an artificial intelligence machine like you’re chatting with a real, live person. So in this MarketingSherpa blog post, here is an interview with the Problem Solver expert assistant from MECLABS AI as if it were a person.

First, here’s where you can find Problem Solver in MECLABS AI. It’s totally free to use (for now).

And here’s a look at what Problem Solver had to say in our conversation…my attempt to converse with the future that’s already here today.

Overview of Problem Solver AI expert assistant

Can you give us a brief overview of what a Problem Solver AI Expert Assistant is and how it works?

The Problem Solver AI Expert Assistant is a digital tool designed to assist users in methodically approaching and solving problems. It utilizes a structured framework akin to the i4 Success Framework developed by Flint McGlaughlin. This framework encourages users to identify their true objectives, explore effective strategies, design and execute tests, and refine their approach based on insights.

Inspiration Behind the Problem Solver AI

What inspired the development of this technology, and what specific problems is it designed to address?

Read more…