In this episode of the Executive Connect Podcast, host Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Corey Morris, award-winning marketer and CEO of Voltage Digital, to break down why most companies waste money on tactics without a true growth plan.

Corey shares how misaligned content, unclear metrics, and scattered execution lead to unsubscribes, burnout, and lost prospects. He introduces his START planning framework and explains how leaders can align marketing, sales, and operations around real business outcomes.

From AI and automation to authentic communication and human-centered branding, this conversation delivers a practical blueprint for building marketing systems that scale profitably.

If you want marketing that works, converts, and supports long-term growth, this episode is essential listening.

Chapters:

(00:00) Why irrelevant content kills engagement
(01:03) Corey’s journey into digital strategy
(02:12) The ROI lesson that changed everything
(03:41) Building a system that delivered 2300 percent ROI
(05:18) Strategy vs tactics in marketing
(06:45) Why marketing must be treated as an investment
(08:25) Defining success across departments
(10:57) The START planning framework explained
(12:56) Turning strategy into execution
(15:42) Avoiding burnout through focused planning
(17:25) Review, reporting, and real attribution
(19:03) Building systems that survive leadership changes
(21:29) Staying agile in fast-changing markets
(24:51) Using AI the right way in marketing
(27:31) Why personalization beats mass automation
(30:07) Creating content people actually read
(33:31) Testing instead of following outdated best practices
(36:44) The power of authenticity in branding
(40:50) Final advice and where to connect

Corey

(0:00) Just scaling okay content or even the right content, but in the wrong moment or the right or wrong psychographic of what my pain point is in the moment just creates more noise, gets me unsubscribed, probably loses my chance with some right fit prospects just because I didn’t take care with how I communicate with them or where it’s just indifferent to your point. (0:21) Just keep scrolling. (0:22) I just keep deleting.

(0:22) Maybe I didn’t unsubscribe to just judge it by two words, delete, delete, delete, delete.

Melissa

(0:28) Is your digital marketing plan more hope and pray than strategy and ROI? (0:34) Then it’s time to level up on today’s executive connect podcast. (0:39) We’re joined by Corey Morris, award-winning marketer, founder of digital marketing success plan and CEO of voltage digital ad agency.

(0:51) He’s here to help you stop guessing, start planning and turn clicks into real business results from SEO to AI. (1:00) He’s got your blueprint. (1:01) Let’s plug in.

(1:03) Welcome Corey. (1:05) Yeah.

Corey

(1:05) Thanks for having me.

Melissa

(1:07) You’ve built an award-winning career leading national brands and launching your own agency. (1:15) What inspired you to focus on digital strategy and talk to me a little bit about how did your journey lead to creating the digital marketing success plan?

Corey

(1:27) Yeah. (1:28) A lot of things happened organically or by accident. (1:32) I wish I could say I’d planned them out and I probably would have shaved a decade off of my career as to where I got to, had I been more intentional about that.

(1:42) That’s career advice to have a three-year, five-year, 10-year career map. (1:48) It’s not too late, even if you’re a couple of decades in like me, to map that if you feel like you’ve been just kind of following the zigzag path like I did. (2:01) There’s a couple of quick stories that come to mind.

(2:03) One is early in the first agency I was working in when I just moved into SEO, a digital agency, and I was working with one of my first clients. (2:12) Three months in, I’m excited. (2:14) Back then, that was before online dashboards.

(2:16) I’ve got my paper report all printed out with all the graphs ready to go. (2:22) He’s an attorney. (2:23) I’ve got everything up and to the right.

(2:26) Everything’s green, rankings, traffic, and even I’m showing up about 20 conversions through his website. (2:33) I’m excited to present this to him. (2:35) Sit down, go through it all.

(2:37) I don’t shut up because I’m so excited to the end. (2:40) He quietly pushes it back toward the middle of the table and says, Corey, that’s great, but I didn’t get a single new case from this. (2:46) He’s like, I can see all that activity.

(2:47) I can validate that my team had phone calls and followed up with all those leads, but they didn’t move the needle for me. (2:55) That was like the stomach drop, gut punch moment. (2:58) I don’t know how to recover from this.

(3:01) I’m just a few years into my career. (3:04) Thankfully, I was given a second chance and an opportunity to go deeper into what happens after those marketing KPIs or those digital marketing or SEO KPIs and what happens to get to a business outcome. (3:17) That was a huge moment for me.

(3:19) It allowed me, fast forward eight or 10 years later, working with a national or global logistics company to have what I probably consider the first time I ever did the process and framework that I now have in my book and can articulate in a linear way versus a scattered way. (3:41) Over about 18 months working with that client, I was able to get to a wild 2,300% ROI, seven figures on their five-figure spend in terms of revenue to spend. (3:59) I did it the hard way over 18 months of getting their systems in place, working through their CRM, being the expert in their CRM because no one internally in a 3,000 person company was, and getting sales and marketing to work together and quit fighting.

(4:15) All the things we had to do to unlock that, I didn’t realize was one of my favorite stories because that unlocked a lot of wins and aha moments that came together in my framework now.

Melissa

(4:29) Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser? (4:33) On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence. (4:40) Hit the subscribe button now.

(4:42) Don’t just watch, act. (4:44) I love what you said about ROI. (4:49) Let’s talk a little bit about that and why defining a plan with ROI actually matters in the world today.

(4:57) I know one of your core messages is that digital marketing should be seen as an investment, not actually as an expense. (5:07) Why is that so critical for companies to have a clear defined and ROI connected plan before they actually dive into the execution part of marketing?

Corey

(5:18) We can spend a lot of time and a lot of money on tactics and call it a strategy. (5:25) The strategy is not the checklist of what we do. (5:29) That’s at the heart of the article.

(5:32) I’m a contributor to Search Engine Land, the article I just submitted last night for my monthly there. (5:37) But the checklist isn’t the plan. (5:39) The tactics aren’t the plan.

(5:40) They’re not the strategy. (5:42) They might all be good and right things to do. (5:45) But without the context of how we make money as a business, we can get a long ways out into investing in those things or in people to do those things and then find that we never made our money back or we weren’t tracking it from the beginning.

(5:58) So there’s a lot of assumptions or guesses on whether it was working or not. (6:03) And Google will take your money. (6:05) Facebook will take your money, whether it’s working or not.

(6:08) Agencies will take your money and get paid or the staff that you’re paying in-house will get their salary, whether it’s working or not. (6:16) So you want to have confidence in that. (6:18) I’m not saying you want to be ruthless, but much like if you are investing in any type of asset with a financial advisor, you expect a return on investment or you’re going to stop investing or stop working with that advisor.

(6:34) Similarly, marketing should be looked at as an investment and not just a big line item or expense or the first thing that gets cut or this fluffy thing that’s nebulous so we can’t ever know if it’s working or not. (6:45) If it ever feels that way, that’s big time evidence that we don’t have a clear strategy or our plan isn’t well enough to find of what we’re implementing connected to that strategy and those goals.

Melissa

(6:59) Now, I love that. (7:01) And as a salesperson who thinks marketing is fantastic and nothing but an asset to everything that I do, I find exactly what you said is so funny. (7:12) A lot of times I feel like people are like, we’re just going to buy this tool and this tool is going to bring us in all these leads.

(7:20) And then the sales people blame marketing that they’re not getting the leads or they blame marketing that they don’t have the content that they need done. (7:29) And so I find it really unique from my lens as a salesperson, because I don’t think that marketing is responsible for driving sales. (7:41) What I think marketing is responsible supporting sales.

(7:46) And so when you have the right ROI plan and everybody understands we’re pulling to the same metrics, everybody wins and everybody collects. (7:55) So let’s define what success actually means as it relates to marketing. (8:03) So every brand out there that I know of throws around success, but your book actually pushes companies to define what success is clearly.

(8:14) Can you walk us through how shaping that definition helps organizations, companies, people to build better marketing strategies?

Corey

(8:25) Yeah. (8:26) As you can imagine from what I just talked about strategy versus tactics a minute ago in my five-step process, that’s called START. (8:34) It’s an acronym.

(8:35) Strategy is the first step. (8:37) And defining success is critical upfront. (8:41) I’ve worked with companies that have a staff who no one’s been there less than 15 years of their all functional areas where I’ve got a CFO, CEO, head of sales, marketing, product, customer service, IT sitting there, and they’re all using the same inside baseball language, but they have different definitions.

(9:00) Or to your point, you’d mentioned the lens. (9:02) They’re looking through their own lens of how they look at it. (9:05) So different KPIs, even they can look at the same dashboard and interpret 15 things from that dashboard or that report.

(9:12) And getting people aligned on what that looks like is super important because if we can’t agree on what our growth goal is, or our goal is, or end goal for marketing is, then we’re guessing and it’s just left to chance. (9:26) And if we can’t map it out all the way to a business outcome, whether that is contracted projects or profit from those projects or lifetime value and the things that aren’t necessarily part of the KPI stack for digital marketer. (9:43) And I had to learn the hard way as an SEO to get comfortable with having conversations of what happens after I drive the lead beyond the things I can control.

(9:52) But if everybody’s not talking about it and defining it, then it’s going to be like trying to hit a moving target constantly. (9:59) And we’re going to react to when we don’t hit something that wasn’t defined versus all knowing we’re going in this direction, we have a North star. (10:07) And if we get distracted by something or the market changes, how do we come back together and pivot that or change that goal or that expectation?

Melissa

(10:16) That was so good. (10:18) I’m just going to take a breath because it’s so, so, so, so true. (10:23) I know as a salesperson, I have a sales number.

(10:28) Marketing has an intent or a different metrics or clicks or however marketing measures it. (10:36) Everybody’s different. (10:38) And IT has a completely different metric along with the CEO who’s talking dollars, right?

(10:43) And so you’re so spot on. (10:45) Everybody’s looking at different lenses. (10:48) And since you mentioned the smart planning process, let’s dive into your smart planning framework.

(10:57) What are all the letters? (10:59) What’s the five steps and how do they work together to build a successful digital strategy for companies?

Corey

(11:07) Yeah. (11:07) So it’s start. (11:09) So five phases.

(11:11) So strategy being the first phase and getting to the biggest chunk, as we just talked about, there’s getting to the defined goal. (11:18) If we don’t, if we can’t get through that and we realize in some cases, it’s good that we’re going through this process before finding it on an expensive way down the road of creating a bunch of content or, or spending a bunch of ad dollars and then be like, okay, we’re not getting the leads we want or not getting the traffic or the e-commerce sales or whatever it is that we want. (11:37) We might have a brand problem.

(11:40) And that’s what happens often at the very end, in the bottom of the funnel, when the sales team’s like, why is everybody beating me up on price? (11:47) Well, cause we put ourselves in a commodity bucket. (11:49) We didn’t sell on any, anything along the way to differentiate and set ourselves apart and make ourselves the only person that they’re talking to versus the competition.

(11:59) So, so this is where we can figure out brand product development, even you know, sales process, marketing assets that we have, all those things. (12:11) So we start with auditing and understanding what we have, what’s working well, but getting to what that ultimate goal is and understanding what’s realistic. (12:18) Is it realistic for us to grow 30% year over year?

(12:21) Is our, is the market there for it? (12:23) Is the, can we get that market share? (12:25) So we move then into tactics when we know what that goal is.

(12:29) We can test a lot of that against tactics for digital marketing specifically. (12:33) Is it even reasonable to find 30% more people in Google, in Facebook, in LinkedIn, (12:38) wherever they might be on to build our email list to that point, to be able to put those (12:43) tactics together again, without having to just go test it and find out this is doing the research (12:49) and some of the leading tools or even the platform specific tools to see if the audience is there (12:53) and what it’s going to cost and what it’s going to take to go get them.

(12:56) So strategy tactics, the A in start is application. (13:01) This is the layer where now this starts to flow faster. (13:04) We know who we’re reaching, what our goal is, where we’re, how we’re going to reach them, what, through what tactics, which channels platforms.

(13:11) Now we can analyze what assets we need. (13:13) Are we really good at producing content? (13:15) We just need to fine tune it.

(13:17) Great. (13:17) Do we not have that muscle developed yet? (13:20) And we got to, we’re going to have to fuel the effort with a lot of content.

(13:23) Who’s going to create that content? (13:25) What’s it going to look like? (13:26) Do we need to create new ads?

(13:28) Do we need to update our website? (13:29) Our biggest asset typically is our website. (13:31) Does it need an overhaul before we’re ready to invite people to the party?

(13:36) So understanding that and not having that be a surprise down the road where it’s like, cool, we got our plan ready to go. (13:42) And then we don’t have any assets. (13:43) We can’t launch it.

Melissa

(13:45) I got to stop you really quick because I, the, those two letters are so interesting to me, like assets. (13:50) It has never been easier to create content and assets since I’ve been in the workforce. (13:57) I feel like I think back to the early days of my marketing career.

(14:02) And like, we would sit on an asset for like months to figure out, okay, this is the right colors with the right message. (14:08) The word’s right. (14:10) Somebody else has to review it.

(14:11) We’re going to send it out to an agency. (14:13) I feel like AI helps us all as far as the assets. (14:17) So like that one should be semi and maybe I’m wrong here.

(14:21) You also tell me as you go to the next letters, that one I feel like is semi easier to do than it used to be. (14:26) But the tactics part you mentioned, this is the funny part. (14:29) I love this letter because like you were alluding to at the beginning, like the delivery teams are like, we just got to sell more stuff so we can deliver more stuff because we have people sitting on the bench.

(14:41) And you know, one side of the company wants to go to this trade show. (14:46) The other wants to do a marketing campaign. (14:48) This one wants to do BDR activity.

(14:51) So everybody’s kind of pulling like their own different strategy based on their knowledge. (14:57) And so I love that you, the T is so important. (15:00) If we don’t have a plan or a tactic or a strategy, like how can we really achieve anything if we’re trying 80 different conferences with no actual leads?

Corey

(15:11) And to that point too, you just reminded me of something from an article I just wrote as well that was painful for me to write because, and again, for anybody listening, please know that if it sounds like I have answers, this doesn’t come from an arrogant or I have it all figured out place. (15:28) I’ve made pretty much every one of these mistakes and learned from them. (15:32) So if it sounds like I’m preaching in a way, I’m not.

(15:35) So that’s why I keep pointing to myself as I say this, because there’s a story connected to every one of these learnings or things I’m sharing. (15:42) But it was, I just wrote about how there’s a temptation and how typically when we’re not getting the results or the pipeline feels a little light or empty to go just double down on effort, do more, do more of the things. (15:59) And if they’re not the right things or they’re scattered, then we get to burnout and we’d spend even more money or more time and attention or floating around.

(16:08) And that is what’s so hard if we don’t have that foundation right from the beginning to use as our barometer or compass or whatever you want to call it all the way through.

Melissa

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(17:04) And I love, I love that comment because you’re right. (17:07) Like you’re showing up in a place cause you’ve been there. (17:10) You’ve done the wrong things.

(17:12) You’ve made the mistake and you’re out on the other end that says, don’t do this. (17:16) Build a plan. (17:17) What assets are we doing?

(17:19) Clean up. (17:19) You have the blueprint, right? (17:22) So let’s continue with the letters.

(17:24) Yeah.

Corey

(17:25) So the R is review. (17:28) I don’t call it reporting. (17:30) Reporting is a big piece of this, but reporting out of the box makes you think of Google Analytics or GA4 or CRM or something.

(17:37) All these platforms out of the box leave a lot to be desired. (17:42) So I call it review because there’s a cadence to it. (17:44) There’s more business intelligence that you’re connecting because again, as I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to track this through to a business outcome.

(17:53) So we have to have systems talking to each other. (17:55) Often if you don’t capture this data from the start, you can’t go recover it or get it back. (18:00) And this world is getting harder, not easier, even though attribution has been one of the…

(18:05) I feel like 2014 and 15 was when it was the thing that everybody went to every marketing conference wanting to solve. (18:14) It got easier for a minute and then it’s gotten harder again with all the privacy laws and changes and AI and everything else. (18:21) But if we don’t capture it, then how are we going to know and get that source of truth, right?

(18:26) So this is defining marketing connected to specific business outcomes and results and knowing with confidence that if I’m the marketer or CMO sitting next to the CEO, I’m not guessing or saying I think in any answer about a number. (18:42) We all know around the table what those numbers are. (18:44) We’re not having to redo our math and our methodology or cannibalizing and figure out again, introducing another fight of, well, that was a trade show.

(18:51) I’ve met that person at a trade show. (18:52) That wasn’t a marketing lead, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. (18:55) And it’s like, that’s not where we want to live.

(18:56) We want to live in territory where we’re advancing the company and not arguing over things like that. (19:03) And then the second T in the final phase is what I call transformation. (19:07) That’s where all this comes together.

(19:08) That’s where it doesn’t stick in somebody’s head who can go leave and go to another company and your whole plan walked out the door. (19:15) It’s not in somebody’s head or too personal, close to their heart, where if, and if somebody challenges part of it, it’s personal, it’s a personal attack that you would challenge what we’re doing in marketing or whoever’s role or an IT or sales or wherever it’s on paper. (19:31) And when, if we, when we get distracted or things get busy and it goes on the shelf.

(19:38) And again, I say paper, it could be digital paper. (19:40) It could be slides, whatever it is. (19:42) I have a sample outline in the book, but it’s just a sample.

(19:45) This can take on whatever shape you want it to look like, but it has to be objective. (19:49) So that way we can say time out. (19:52) How is that new thing going to impact the priority of our investment and time and everything in what we’d already planned?

(19:59) Do we need to go back and revisit the plan for a minute? (20:01) Do we need to go find new budget, reallocate budget, reallocate resources? (20:06) Okay.

(20:06) Our web developer is going out on parental leave for the next three months. (20:11) Do we have a backup resource? (20:12) How are we going to change around the plan?

(20:14) Or our content person is, is leaving the company, whatever it might be to be able to plan for those things. (20:20) And those things could be people related. (20:22) They could be resource related.

(20:24) They could be competitive things. (20:25) A new competitor enters the marketplace. (20:27) It could be the disruption of AI or the newest thing out there or whatever geopolitical thing happens.

(20:34) How are we going to account for those and not have it just blow up the plan and then marketing loses the expectations of investment that we had for it?

Melissa

(20:43) Yeah. (20:43) Let’s, I want to unpack that a little more. (20:48) Balancing planning and agility is so key.

(20:51) I feel like get, you know, we know this, a plan is key, like work your plan, but in the digital landscape that’s constantly moving, technology’s changing, AI is moving at a pace none of us can keep up with. (21:06) How do, how do marketing companies, marketers, anybody with that function really stay nimble and adapt without throwing the whole strategy out the window? (21:18) Like to build a plan, it takes time to execute a plan, it takes time, but technology’s like going faster than we can do it.

(21:25) So how do, how do they adapt, stay nimble? (21:27) Talk to me a little bit about that.

Corey

(21:29) Yeah. (21:30) So I give away the full process of going through the start planning process in the book for self-implementation or to take parts and pieces to plug in if there’s something new that you learned from it that you can plug into your existing framework. (21:43) For clients that we take through it in my agency, it typically takes 60 to 90 days to get in and out of the planning process.

(21:49) And that gives us enough room to breathe in there and be confident in what we’re building and ready for. (21:54) You could take all of your time and do this and implement this in a week if you wanted to, if you can make all the decisions, you wear enough of the hats and whatnot. (22:03) But what you come out of that with typically are sprints, whether those are, and you have your own opportunity to set those up as 30 day sprints, 90 day sprints.

(22:13) I don’t know anyone in now, nowadays to your point who would do a one year sprint, but if that’s the pace of your industry and maybe you’re really locked down and regulated and everything else, then maybe that’s possible based on the speed of your organization, your industry. (22:28) But whether it’s sprints or you look at them as ongoing with reporting cycles and whatnot and review cycles, if you don’t have a plan, maybe a POV coming out here that I’m not calling anybody out, but it feels lazy to me to have no plan and reckless. (22:48) I get it.

(22:49) The nature of Google ads or search engine optimization or optimizing for results in AI, LLMs, it’s optimization. (22:57) It’s in it. (22:58) We’re going to iterate and iterate and learn, test and learn, but testing and learning can be really expensive.

(23:04) I think some of these things happen because agencies, again, I’ve learned this the hard way. (23:09) A client comes in and says, I want to do Google ads. (23:11) I get really excited.

(23:13) I say, we do Google ads. (23:14) We’re a Google partner. (23:15) I’ve got bucket, a bag of money on the table, excited.

(23:20) Let’s run and jump into it and start too quickly without taking a timeout and saying, okay, let’s put our best guesses, do the research and understand and make sure that we’re not missing something before we launch. (23:32) But on the back end of that, we’ve got to find the balance of not having it planned out and we just run the plan blindly, whether it’s working or not. (23:40) That’s where I like sprints, but whether it’s sprints or milestones that you have built in, build agility into it.

(23:48) It’s the right balance of having a plan, but being able to pivot in the plan and not lose time or sink too much cost into something that didn’t play out or got disrupted along the way.

Melissa

(24:00) And I don’t know who said this, but a goal without a plan is just a wish and really plans are nothing, but planning is everything because we all need to know what we’re moving toward, what we’re pulling towards. (24:13) And I always use this quote, I think clarity is kind or I think Brene Brown said it, but it’s so important. (24:22) And so I want to pivot to kind of, I touched on it a little bit, but AI is, I feel like AI is really changing marketing.

(24:31) And so I want to get with all the shifts in it and the AI tools, the audience behaviors, what’s the strategy on how marketers foolproof their strategy? (24:46) What’s next in the digital landscape as it relates to AI and technology?

Corey

(24:51) Yeah, it’s so misunderstood. (24:53) So make sure that you’re defining as a team, even a marketing team, who’s using the same tools and sharing them, that you’re talking about AI in the same way. (25:01) Are you talking about AI being how you use an LLM, a chat GPT, whatever other tools you’re using to do your work and find efficiencies or find scale?

(25:12) Or are you talking about it built into software that you use every day, like creative software or research software? (25:19) Or are you talking about very custom implementations of product and what your customer might be using or your client might be using? (25:30) And so getting on the same page there is very important in an organization or even in a small team.

(25:35) So those two letters aren’t really confusing. (25:38) But personally, as a marketer, and because I do the marketing for Voltage and for Digital Marketing Success Plan, which are two companies that share a lot of assets, my criteria personally right now is anything I don’t want to do, don’t have time to do, or don’t know how to do, I’m going to go to AI to use those in my testing time. (26:01) I also am a tech nerd.

(26:03) So if I go unchecked, I’ll just go spend all day in the clouds testing things and playing with things and ignoring what works today. (26:12) I know I have friends and colleagues who are on the other side of it, where they’re so slammed and their schedule is so full of what works today, what they have to get done today or this week, that they have the intention to test AI or try a new thing, but they run out a day or a week. (26:28) So one way or another, for me, I have to put guardrails around it.

(26:33) And for others, I encourage them to schedule time to spend in it because it has changed so much in the now nearly two years that it’s upended our lives. (26:48) On the approach side of it, and when we talk about our clients, our customers, or our target audience, naturally in SEO, we’re seeing less clicks through, which is putting more emphasis on quality, which I’m good with. (27:04) It should have been on quality the whole time, but it allows us to think more one-to-one to the target audience.

(27:10) And we have to make sure that we’re really talking to them. (27:12) So it takes away some of the noise. (27:14) You don’t have to just throw stuff out there to the masses or generic personas and hope that it sticks and they find us.

(27:20) We can get more personal knowing that we’re working with less traffic, but hopefully the right quality of traffic, again, depending on more than we’ll get into in this episode about what the strategy is. (27:31) So there’s a big need for some of the things that might’ve gotten shortcut the past decade related to brand, like we talked about earlier, or messaging and how we communicate and the personal touch of how we reach someone. (27:43) That’s what’s really going to stand out.

(27:45) It already does. (27:46) And we’ll continue to, while we get bombarded and hit with the spam cannons from all angles in our inboxes and things that we clearly see were written by bots or robots or easy to forget because there’s no brand and human touch and real connection tied to it.

Melissa

(28:02) Looking to get paid speaking gigs, but you don’t know where to start? (28:06) The Speaker Lab has helped thousands of people build real profitable speaking careers with their proven system. (28:13) Right now you can grab their free one-page speaker success blueprint.

(28:18) It lays out exactly how to launch your speaking career and start booking gigs that pay today. (28:24) Plus, you’ll get invited to a live masterclass where Dan Ervin shares the three secrets top speakers use to earn an average of $16,000 plus per gig. (28:35) Get your free blueprint at thespeakerlab.com slash executive connect. (28:43) I love that you just said that because I’m like on information overload. (28:52) And I wonder, I’ve been wondering this about myself and pondering this. (28:57) So I’m glad you said that because I’m like, why am I not engaging on this stuff anymore?

(29:02) And I think you’re spot on. (29:03) It’s because it’s all written by AI and I’m not connecting with it. (29:07) Like I would somebody that wrote it.

(29:09) And it just actually just now occurred to me that that’s the reason I’m like, I opened some newsletters or different things and it’s like, you know, em dash bullets, em dash, you know, like, and so let’s, let’s unpack that a little more. (29:26) Like everybody needs to understand like SEO is important. (29:29) That’s how we get people to see our stuff.

(29:31) People’s attention spans are shorter. (29:35) Which is hard to like, if you’re a company trying to market whatever your widget is, like you can’t do like a two hour podcast or an hour presentation and expect people to listen the whole time. (29:48) So you really got to get like clear and clean and concise.

(29:53) So let’s like unpack that one more level. (29:56) Like how does one do that without like putting everything in AI and then spinning up that to their clients and sending it across the bow?

Corey

(30:07) Yeah. (30:07) And that is one option. (30:09) And it’s a good one if you’re willing to invest in training AI, right.

(30:13) And making it yours and able to replicate and repeat you, but you can’t put it on autopilot. (30:19) Right. (30:20) LinkedIn is still a great source for things.

(30:23) Email still, these channels still work, but just, just scaling. (30:29) Okay. (30:30) Content or even the right content, but in the wrong moment or the right or wrong psychographic of what my pain point is in the moment just creates more noise, gets me unsubscribed.

(30:41) It probably loses my chance with some right fit prospects, just because I didn’t take, I didn’t take care with how I communicate with them or were, or, or it’s just indifferent to your point. (30:52) Just keep scrolling or I just keep deleting. (30:54) Maybe I didn’t unsubscribe, but my brain is now trained to not to, to just judge it by two words, delete, delete, delete, delete.

Melissa

(31:03) I’m the guilty one. (31:04) So to all my fellow newsletter people that send me the same newsletter, but just like a different tag. (31:10) Like I, I’ve been subscribing to some, I’m like, I have no idea how I got on this subscribe list.

(31:16) None of this is relevant. (31:18) It’s the same. (31:19) Like, I feel like I’m reading a lot of the same stuff right now.

(31:22) I don’t know if it’s just me or like what’s coming in, but it seems like a lot of the same content. (31:29) So how does somebody take, okay, I’m going to, as a human write this paragraph, leverage AI. (31:36) Like I love, like I’ve only used a couple of times co-pilot to rewrite emails.

(31:41) Cause I’m like that person that likes to leave errors in her email on purpose. (31:45) So people know it’s, I’m like actually writing it versus the AI. (31:49) It’s so like, I’ll spell words wrong.

(31:52) By the way, it’s on purpose. (31:55) How do you still have that? (31:57) Like, like I’m guilty of like combining and doing run on sentences and people just know, like, that’s the way I am.

(32:04) Like, but now like I’m perfecting my writing cause I’m using like co-pilot to help me rewrite it. (32:10) So how do we like, what’s the right formula? (32:13) Like one authentic paragraph blended in with one, one AI sentence.

(32:19) Like, is there like a right formula right now?

Corey

(32:22) It really does. (32:23) And I’m not, I’m not working through giving you a nothing answer here. (32:27) I promise.

(32:27) But I think, I think what’s the intent of that email. (32:31) I’m going to, you know, I’m going to, and I say, I’m going to put myself in this. (32:35) What is the intent of what I’m saying in that email?

(32:37) What is the high value piece? (32:39) What is what people care about? (32:40) Or am I just adding fluff?

(32:42) I’m an overthinker. (32:43) I’m a strategist. (32:44) I’m a perfectionist.

(32:45) So I’m going to give you all the information in a complete start to finish way. (32:50) And instead of the thing that you want in that moment or that that format calls for. (32:55) And so there’s just a lot of testing for us to do before we turn it over to automation or systems.

(33:02) And I think we still have to have a lot of intervention. (33:06) I’m not saying we have to manually craft every word, but at the same time, we can’t just leave it unchecked for three months or six months. (33:13) And that goes back maybe to the sprints too.

(33:15) You don’t want to change it every single message, because then you can’t test against what works and not, you can’t variable test anything. (33:21) But at the same time, I don’t want to create all this content for a year and get no engagement from it or have it just be ignored. (33:29) That’s a wasted activity too.

(33:31) One of the things that kills me is when I come in to an organization and I’m like, well, why do you write these five blog posts a month and these 17 social media posts a week? (33:40) It’s because somebody said that’s a best practice or a competitor’s doing it, or that’s the worst one. (33:45) That’s what we’ve done for the last 10 years.

(33:47) We just do that. (33:48) And I’m like, okay, you can keep doing it if it feels wrong to stop, but let’s start testing within it and let’s get more efficient. (33:57) So we’re not, marketing isn’t just doing the things, but it’s what we learned from it and we’re closer to that action.

(34:02) And so again, I may be slightly avoiding giving you a very direct answer here, but I think it depends when it comes to like, what are we creating? (34:11) Why? (34:12) What does our audience want in this format?

(34:14) Who can we ask? (34:15) Can we just be open and upfront and ask? (34:18) And some of that’s going to show that a human wrote this, because an AI is not going to ask you, ask your audience in an email, do you want to keep getting this monthly?

(34:26) Do you want to keep getting this? (34:28) Do you want to get this weekly daily? (34:30) Do you like this tack?

(34:31) Do you hate it? (34:32) Am I stupid?

Melissa

(34:34) Well, it’s funny. (34:35) I like, I love emojis. (34:37) Like I am one of those people that just likes emojis.

(34:41) And so I always do my LinkedIn posts with emojis. (34:44) And I had a number of people that are like, everybody knows your post is like AI. (34:49) Cause you have all these emojis.

(34:50) And I’m like, no, I talk in emoji all the time. (34:55) And so I feel like we’re wrapping like everything in AI. (34:59) Like, I’m like, okay, maybe I’ll use like five emojis.

(35:02) And then you’ll know versus like one at the beginning and at the whole first line. (35:08) Yeah. (35:08) Whole first line.

(35:09) I’m just going to tell you everything via emojis. (35:11) And I do this to my husband all the time. (35:13) He’s like, okay, is that a go?

(35:16) But I feel like it’s just, maybe that was the wrong way to ask it, but I’m just thinking like, maybe the email example was the right thing. (35:25) Wrong thing, because I’m thinking more like newsletters than emails, like emails. (35:32) You’re right.

(35:32) Like we need to get clear of what we’re asking, what we want, but like all these, I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one that’s getting all these long, like newsletters that I used to read like snippets. (35:45) Now they’re like, I’m like, is it AI that’s driving this? (35:48) Because I feel like we’re losing our audience when we have like a mini book inside a newsletter.

(35:55) Is it just me? (35:56) Or like, tell me the marketing spin on that.

Corey

(35:58) I feel like we, and I say we, I’m calling myself out in this too, because I don’t think I’m doing the level of testing personally that I used to. (36:06) Like 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I was setting up an A and B version when tools were less sophisticated and I couldn’t just fire it off. (36:15) And I was putting more thought into each message I’m creating and whatever technology at the time, doing an A and B version, or I’m testing one month, I’m doing it one way and one another, how I segment, how I look at my audience in list building.

(36:27) It’s gotten so fast and easy to deploy. (36:29) And our frequencies have gotten so much, so much faster in terms of how much content we’re putting out and we can put out that maybe it’s time for us to go back to some of those key metrics, whether it’s email or look at engagement on posts. (36:44) And a great example of something I realized I need to do more is, for example, put personal stuff into LinkedIn.

(36:52) I’m not a robot. (36:54) And people will assume it’s probably all AI if it seems robotic, because I’m coming to you each, I’m not engaging with you. (37:01) I’m not engaging.

(37:02) I’m not, if I’m not even engaging with the comments on an article I posted and people are saying nice things about it, or even if they’re arguing with me, if I’m not engaging with them, it looks like I’m just a billboard walking by throwing content out there. (37:14) And that’s not what this is about. (37:16) And that doesn’t, it’s not memorable to people, of you being a real person, or if I don’t post something like some of the posts, it’s blown my mind when I get like the weekly recap from like LinkedIn, it says how much engagement you got your posts got the week before.

(37:31) Astronomical, anytime I say something about my family, I post a picture of my wife and I were on vacation, and just noted something from that. (37:40) And it was like, we’re human. (37:42) And the human thing is what disrupts the scroll.

(37:46) And it’s not not that I have to be educating or teaching. (37:49) It’s like, you probably are going to tune out if you think I’m just a robot or a know it all. (37:55) And you don’t get to hear any part of like my story and authenticity of how I screwed up so many times.

Melissa

(38:00) Oh, God, I love that. (38:02) I love that. (38:03) So I had like that.

(38:05) Oh, my gosh, moment two years ago. (38:08) Actually, maybe it was the first time was four years ago. (38:11) When somebody said you have kids.

(38:13) I’m like, Oh, clearly, I’m not like sharing that enough. (38:18) And then so I let that go. (38:20) And then two years ago, people are like, Oh, my God, you have a son.

(38:24) And I realized exactly what you said, I was showing up so much as Melissa, the executive, the business, all forward facing business. (38:36) And I failed to talk about like the human side of me, or, you know, that I to get tired, I to have bad days, I to have, you know, this, that and the other. (38:48) So I did, I think it was two years ago, maybe even more than two years ago, I started posting things about my family and similar people like, Oh, my gosh, that’s amazing.

(39:01) And I had more engagement and more outreach. (39:05) And then I’m like, I’m gonna put on my profile that I’m a mom of four just because and there was so much like, I can’t believe you do that. (39:14) Like, why would you put that?

(39:16) I can’t like, people, you’re not gonna get a job. (39:20) And I’m like, if people don’t want me, because I have children, it’s not the job for me, I can assure you. (39:26) Secondly, if I’m going to be judged, because I had a bad, bad hair day on my post, I don’t want them following me anyway.

(39:34) And so I love that you said that, because I think the beauty of that is we all have something to teach somebody. (39:41) And we all have the opportunity to show our authentic self through these channels. (39:47) And I started to do it.

(39:50) And it’s amazing how my social channels have blown up just by being authentic. (39:55) And, you know, posting a funny picture of my husband or whatever I’m posting about.

Corey

(40:00) Yeah, I mean, we want to be entertained. (40:03) We want to be able to connect with people on a more personal level, because there’s so much volume of just information that it gets boring. (40:13) And it’s so true.

(40:14) And if I if I need to cut down how many people I follow, I’m going to follow the ones that I feel like I can get a more rounded experience out of or relatable thing from or that I just trust. (40:27) Because they’re again, not not here giving me automated information of here’s all the right things. (40:32) And I don’t know where it comes from, or what they’re not sourcing it.

(40:35) Yeah, if they’re a real person that I then I know that I can probably trust them because they’re there’s some level of humility or they’ve messed up and they’re sharing with with care versus sharing for whatever motive otherwise.

Melissa

(40:50) I love that you said that Corey, you’re a rock star, your powerhouse, all the words, all the things, tell, maybe the first question is anything that you want to leave with our with our listeners? (41:03) Question one that we haven’t talked about? (41:05) Question two, where can our listeners best connect with you and voltage?

(41:11) What’s the best way?

Corey

(41:12) Yeah, so I will just hit on this one more time. (41:15) But the most directly if you’re doing marketing activities or tactics or posting or emailing or optimizing any of it, and you have any question, whether it’s working or driving ROI or not, I think you need a plan. (41:32) And so that’s why I point you to my book, if you don’t have a framework or to dig back into your process.

(41:38) And if I’m not here to sell you a book, so if you don’t want to pay the 10 or 20 bucks for the book, reach out to me, I’ll make sure you have a book in your hand. (41:47) I’m not that’s not my motive here. (41:50) But I want you to have a plan and not waste or lose money.

(41:53) So to find the book, it’s called the digital marketing success plan. (41:57) That’s a long title. (41:58) So I’ve shortened it to the dmsp.com.

(42:02) You can find the start planning process, there’s tools, and it’ll have a link over to Amazon, you can go straight to Amazon to find it. (42:10) And if you want to reach out to me, you can do so there. (42:15) Find me on LinkedIn, or if my agency could be of any help, it’s voltage.

(42:19) And that’s voltage.digital. And you can reach out to us there as well. (42:23) No sales pitch, no salespeople on my team. (42:26) No offense to salespeople, Melissa, but we will not come subscribe you to stuff and spam you.

(42:36) We’re just here to help.

Melissa

(42:37) I love it. (42:38) And for the record, I don’t identify as a salesperson. (42:41) I identify as a problem solver.

(42:43) Sales just happens to be part of the problem solving. (42:47) And for the record, I need a side copy of your book. (42:51) So count me in for one of your books.

(42:52) But thank you. (42:54) Thank you. (42:54) Thank you for being here for sharing your knowledge, your authentic leadership with our listeners.

(43:00) That’s the executive connect podcast.