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How to secure guest spots on other people’s podcasts

How to secure guest spots on other people’s podcasts

Let's look at a near-perfect Google Ad

December 17, 2024

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Welcome back!

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill, former British Prime Minister

Today’s LOWDOWN: 😎 10.5-minute read time

🦾 How to secure guest spots on other people’s podcasts
🤳 Bou's Near-Perfect Google ad
💰 Issue Trees
🤖 Marketing Tool Spotlight: Simplified's Repurpose AI
🎧 Key Takeaways from the 2024 OASB Report
📲 From Fuzzy’s TikTok Library

🦾 How to secure guest spots on other people’s podcasts

@courtney..johnson
How to secure guest spots on other people’s podcasts #personalbrand #pr #personalbrandtips

🤳Bou's Near-Perfect Google ad

Ten years ago Dave Trott drew a triangle on a flipchat and said “every ad needs three things”.

- Impact: “You've got to get noticed”

- Communication: “You've got to tell me what”

- Persuasion: “You've got to tell me why”

Most ads just do the “communication” part.

- “We're a brand agency”

- “No s***. I just googled that”

Look what happens when you do all three.

Jesse from Bou tells me it's their best performing ad.— Harry

💰Issue Trees – What Are They and How Do You Use Them?

Issue trees are useful for breaking down a problem statement into component parts that can more easily be acted upon. Consulting teams often do it in the first couple of weeks of a project. It enables the team to structure the project so that people can be assigned to specific “workstreams” and that the team can align their hypotheses to make predictions about which elements might have the most significant impact.

I like the definition that McKinsey Mind uses for issue trees:

The issue tree, a species of logic tree in which each branch of the tree is an issue or question, bridges the gap between structure and hypothesis. Every issue generated by a framework will likely be reducible to sub issues, and these in turn may break down further. An issue tree is simply the laying out of issues and subissues into a MECE visual progression. By answering the questions in the issue tree, you can very quickly determine the validity of your hypothesis.

The simplest way of thinking about an issue tree is to break down a complex problem into many possible explanations of what is going wrong.

What Do They Look Like, And How Do You Use Them?

Issue trees are often created visually in PowerPoint but can also be in the form of financial models. The type of issue tree we are concerned about is the one that helps us structure our central problem or mission. For example, most companies are focused on increasing profitability. We might frame this “problem” as a question, “Company profitability is declining; what are the ways to improve it?”

We can then start to brainstorm different ways to increase profitability. At the higher levels, you want to be as broad as possible to break the tree down further and get more specific the deeper you go. Our initial issue tree might look like this:

From there, we can go deeper. What are the different ways we can increase revenue? It’s best to start listing ideas and then start thinking about how to synthesize and organize them.

You might develop the next leg of your tree:

This tree is not perfect, and the answers at the lowest level are not collectively exhaustive for all the possibilities for increasing revenue and decreasing costs. However, for a specific company, these may be the relevant issues, meaning that they are the ones that you can invest money on, and tweak, and that might have a positive impact.

The next step is to develop analyses or experiments that you can perform to validate or quantify how much impact can be generated by focusing on each of these areas

How Issue Trees Are Linked With Problem-Solving

We are fans of the SCQA process to define problems and develop hypotheses. This approach enables us to have a rigorous problem-solving approach to business problems instead of starting with the solution in mind from the beginning. This approach works best when you are open-minded and flexible. The first test of the issue tree is when you do the initial research and analysis after structuring the problem. This is step two of the consulting process:

At this point, you will likely get some quick feedback on your initial problem statement, such as:

Have we defined the problem appropriately, or are there deeper issues?
Have we identified the relevant issues and areas where we can make a difference?
What kind of initial tests have we designed to confirm if the problems and questions are correct?

This is a frustrating, iterative process, and within a consulting team, you often revisit the issue tree and problem statement repeatedly throughout a project.

How To Use This In Your Company

It would be best if you understood the “levers” that help your company continue to grow, increase its profitability, and improve over time. Spend long enough in any company, and you start to realize that there is a narrow set of metrics everyone makes decisions around. Unless you’ve mapped this out explicitly, there will likely be many definitions and interpretations of what you are optimizing for.

Using a template like the following and coming up with the high-level issues and areas within the business you are focusing on can be clarifying. You can also add specific types of analyses and information that you use to help you solve or improve in these areas:

This can also be rolled out across your org chart. Let’s imagine a company realizes it has no room to lower costs and wants to focus exclusively on increasing revenue. They can do this in two ways (assuming they aren’t adding new products). They can increase the price per order, or they can increase volume. They may when want to break this down into different sub-issues.

In reality, you’d want to collect data and verify that the way you are breaking things down is correct. The numbers often surprise companies. They realize that an area of focus (increasing # of customers, for example) does not have as big of an impact on the bottom line as other areas.

The only way to figure this out is to map out all of the possibilities of your issues and then validate them with accurate data.

This is the same thing that consulting teams do when they work for companies.

🤖Marketing Tool Spotlight: Simplified's Repurpose AI

Simplified's Repurpose AI is an advanced tool designed to transform long-form videos into engaging, platform-ready short clips, streamlining content repurposing for creators and marketers.

Key Features:

Automated Clip Generation: Upload your video, and Repurpose AI analyzes it to identify key moments, automatically generating short clips optimized for platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
Speaker Detection and Subtitles: The tool detects speaker changes and generates unique subtitles for each clip, enhancing accessibility and engagement.
Virality Score: Repurpose AI provides a virality score, predicting how well your clips might perform on social media by analyzing factors like content trends and engagement potential.
Customization Options: Customize subtitles, add personal branding, and select aspect ratios to ensure your content aligns with your brand identity and platform requirements.
Multi-Language Support: The tool supports multiple languages, enabling creators to cater to a diverse, global audience.

Benefits:

Time Efficiency: Repurpose AI significantly reduces editing time by automating the clipping and captioning process, allowing you to focus on other creative aspects.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Generate clips in sizes and formats optimized for various social media platforms, facilitating seamless content distribution.
Enhanced Engagement: By creating platform-specific, engaging short clips, you can boost social media engagement and reach a wider audience.

Usage:

Upload Video: Upload a video file (up to 500 MB) or provide a YouTube or Google Drive link.
Set Preferences: Select the language spoken, choose the aspect ratio, and set the desired clip length.
Generate Clips: Click "Generate Clips," and the AI will process the video, creating short clips based on your settings.
Review and Edit: Once processed, review the generated clips, edit subtitles, adjust branding elements, and make any necessary refinements.
Export and Share: After finalizing the clips, export them in your preferred resolution and share them across your social media platforms.

Simplified's Repurpose AI offers a comprehensive solution for efficiently transforming long-form videos into engaging short clips, enhancing your content strategy and expanding your reach across multiple platforms.

🎧 Cracking the Code: Capital Formation Insights for Startup Founders in 2025

Cracking the Code: Capital Formation Insights for Startup Founders in 2025 | Boost Your Fundraising with Expert Marketing Strategies

Quote of the Week 🤔

📲 From Fuzzy’s TikTok Library

@venzelwenzel
We discuss the importance of marketing in a successful equity crowdfunding campaign. The key is to focus on building your brand, outreach,... See more