Inbound Strategies For Helpful, Integrated Marketing with Dan Moyle

For anybody in business, whether you’re an entrepreneur or work in someone’s company, marketing can make or break your success. Marketing strategist, Dan Moyle, known as The Inbound Evangelist, distinguishes between engaging marketing and interruptive advertising. Dan prefers and promotes “engaging” marketing as it is actually helpful to a business. Having moved into marketing from the TV news business, he brings a wealth of knowledge to many aspects of marketing: from writing and video production to multimedia content creation. Dan shares the many pivots – or iterations – of his marketing career and experience, including his perspective that he’d much rather help someone reach 50 ideal customers than 5,000 passive viewers. Dan shares insights about this and many other elements of his inbound strategy, including content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine results, video marketing, and podcast interview marketing.

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Inbound Strategies For Helpful, Integrated Marketing with Dan Moyle

I am feeling very grateful in this moment. I’m blessed that it is a new day and new days have lots of incredible things. Sometimes it’s sunny and everything’s going your way and some days not so sunny and not everything’s going your way. It’s a funny thing because I find that sometimes my energy, if it’s one of those days where there are more challenges than normal or new challenges or things I didn’t expect, then I find myself leaning in that direction of being, “This isn’t so great. I’m not so happy in this moment.” I see my mood change. That’s the case mostly for everybody, but I have a reminder for myself. I have a tool which always brings me back to something that feels more truthful. That is by taking a deep breath even when I’m feeling stressed and appreciating the fact that I’m able to take that deep breath, whereas there are lots of people that would like to and can’t. They didn’t get up this morning. They didn’t make it from yesterday to now kind of thing, I’m able to get back to a place that feels truthful to me and that is that it’s all a blessing.

Despite a challenge or whether it’s rainy or it’s sunny or things go on my way or not, this moment is special. I would love to collectively, as we all are reading this right now, take a deep breath together and appreciate our lives in this moment. Appreciate anything and everything that’s going on as being perfect and required and a blessing. It’s a gift. Thank you for doing that. Thank you for taking that breath. What an incredible thing it is just to be able to breathe together. The image of that makes me smile. I’ve got a great guest for all of you. We’re going to talk about marketing, which is near and dear to all of our hearts. Anybody in business and the entrepreneurs, even if you’re in a job working for somebody else, marketing is such a big deal. This person has had many iterations in his marketing experience and career and a very interesting life. He’s going to share some of those pivots, stories with us. His name is Dan Moyle. He prefers and promotes helpful engaging marketing over interrupted advertising. Coming to marketing from the TV news business, he brings a wealth of knowledge from writing to video production to multimedia content creation.

He says, “I’d rather help someone reach 50 ideal customers, than 5,000 passive viewers.” As the inbound evangelist, he spreads the word about helpful integrated marketing to help businesses grow, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine results, video marketing and podcast interview marketing all fall into Dan’s inbound strategy. He is also a believer in servant leadership. Dan has worked behind the scenes and worked with organizations like Honor Flight, Habitat for Humanity, Waterfront Film Festival, and Cat Nap Lodge, a kitten rescue, serving and lifting others up with respect and a strong work ethic. It is a blessing and a privilege to have you on the show, Dan. Thanks for being here.

Thanks, Adam. I love the idea of taking that breath and being grateful for it. That’s a such an incredible picture and also a great way to start the day.

Integrated Marketing: Marketing is the simple idea of starting a conversation with your ideal customer.

This is a beautiful bio. I loved reading it and I’m sure there’s a lot that’s not in here that you’d love people to know about you. What’s one thing that’s not written in this bio that you’d like folks to know?

That’s all the professional stuff. That’s been my career. That’s what I do for a living, but who I am and my art is a family guy. I have a blended family. I’m a husband and a dad of two girls and I just love life. It’s such a beautiful thing to be able to interact with other people and do stuff in life and take care of my family. That’s who I am at my core. I’m a husband and a blended family dad.

I don’t ever believe there’s an accident. There are no accidents in the universe so the people who are attracted to our community are people who love life. If you don’t love life, you’re not willing to be somehow prodded and convinced to love your life somehow, then our message isn’t going to resonate to many people. Thanks for bringing that to the table. What’s one thing right now that you are grateful for?

I’m in Southwest Michigan and it feels like winter just never wanted to let go. Now, I’m grateful for spring because I’m also a biker. I love my motorcycle and riding as much as I can. It’s been about a two-week stretch here of ride and quite a bit.

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Let’s dig into some of the essences of what you’re up to and how you’ve pivoted in your business career. Folks are fascinated by the topic of marketing. They’re also frustrated in many ways because it’s changing so quickly and there are a lot of folks who want to do better at it and don’t exactly know how. I’d love for us to create some actionable things for people that potentially they can do differently in their marketing. New ways to look at it or pivot their mindset around marketing and all that thing. Lead us in if you could.

Marketing’s become a bit of a topic that everybody seems to be talking about and there is like this alchemy behind the scenes that some people don’t want you to see or we’re going to magically bring you customers. That’s a bunch of BS. Because I’m a simple guy, marketing is a simple idea of starting a conversation with your ideal customer. I stole that a little bit from Tom Schwab, the Founder of Interview Valet. He says that quite a bit and I’ve come to believe that, in that nice concise package of that’s what marketing is. I’ve always thought that, but that package is his thing. I like that idea though. It’s beginning the conversation with your ideal customer. How do you do that is what we start to think about. The strategy comes into play when you think about who your buyers are and who the ideal people that you want to talk to. Where are they hanging out? How do you reach them? What do they want to know? It’s not just trying to create the next Tesla commercial. Elon Musk has a great product so that’s sexy to be able to market a Tesla. 99% of us don’t have a business as quite that shiny, new and beautiful. What do we do? If we just help others and have that conversation with them, that’s so much better. I like the idea of helpful rather than trying to wow people and convince them. Zig Ziglar said, “If you want to get what you want, you help more people get what they want.” A rising tide lifts all boats. That to me is the idea of inbound marketing is helpful.

Tom and I, we had a conversation about this some time ago that was very aligned. We talked about relationships that we focus on not trying to close people into a deal. We’re not closing sales, but opening relationships. If we’re going to close anything, you want to close the gap between us to create that connection and to create that relationship. You’re using that word conversation. Start a conversation with your ideal client or your ideal customer. That’s a great running definition for the purpose of marketing. Now, people will say, “Great.” Let’s assume that we’re on board with that. That we want to start that conversation. What are some of the ways in which people can do that? Do you see people doing it in the wrong way? Are you seeing things in the marketplace that disturb you, that you think people are wasting their time, wasting their money or being misled by some of the self-proclaimed marketing gurus out there? They are using terms like funnels, tripwires, lead magnets and all this kind of language which feels manipulative and frankly is on some level manipulative. It’s certainly not transparent. Any thoughts on that?

I definitely talk about things like offers, calls to actions and lead magnet. I don’t want to use the term lead magnet, but I get it. You want to bring people to you. You want to magnetize what you have to bring them to you. I like how HubSpot, the marketing and sales and communication software company, they look at it as a magnet and every piece of content you put out there draws people in. I do like the idea of that, but you’re right. If I’m trying to trick people into doing business with me, that’s not the right way to do it. Things like lead magnets and tripwires and popups and all these things, I don’t like those. What I like is bringing people to you with that engaging content when they’re ready. For me, especially the digital realm, it goes back to things like SEO. If I’m going to go searching, whether I’m asking for a recommendation on Facebook, I want people to easily be able to share my brand, whatever that is. I have to make sure that I’m on Facebook then. I have a company page and I’ve got a little bit of a reach and I talk about it as the executive of Interview Valet or as a founder of a company or as the evangelist of a brand. I need to be able to talk about it personally because my business page is not going to reach enough people. I know that, but I had to have a business page so people can make that recommendation there or an SEO.

Integrated Marketing: Be helpful rather than try to wow people and convince them.

You’ve got to make sure that search engine optimization is all dialed in technically so that people can find you when they’re ready. I’ve heard this talked about in the last six months or so of, marketing’s job isn’t to be there when they’re ready, is to convince them before they even know that you’re there. I don’t like that. I don’t think that that’s the case because that feels more like spam to me, especially as a consumer myself. We’re all consumers besides entrepreneurs, executives and business people. We’re consumers, too. As a consumer, if I don’t think that I have a certain problem that needs to be solved or I get an email or I get an ad somewhere or I drive by a billboard and I see something that doesn’t speak to me, that’s just noise. I don’t need more noise in my life. Let’s say as I’m listening to a podcast, something like The Conscious PIVOT let’s say, and you’re talking to somebody about a specific need that I have and I’m thinking, “I want to hear more from that person.” Now, all of a sudden I’m listening on a conversation and as a businessperson that’s there, I’m reaching people who are ready. To me, that’s a much better way to operate in marketing and business than to do those other things and just try to interrupt people’s days.

It’s attraction versus force. It’s a very different energy, to begin with. To be in the convincing businesses is an awful business to be in. You’ve got to get paid a lot of money to spend your time as a professional convincer, arguing all the time for something. For folks that are reading this, you don’t need to be coming from a necessarily of wanting to track and trap your prey. That’s not what marketing is about. It’s about how it is that you position your service or your product in the world so that people who are ready and are wanting to access that tool, access that solution can do it easily. Don’t make it difficult for them. Make it easy for them to find it. Make it easy for them to find out about it, which is in part, what is great about podcasting as an example. You mentioned SEO. I don’t know that we’re doing everything in the best way possible because if I said that, then there’d be no room for us to grow.

One thing we are doing well is taking every podcast and using it for SEO purposes and anybody can do this. You are transcribing your podcast and turning it into a blog that’s at least 1,200 words or more which is something that we’ve been told is a good number in terms of what will give us credibility with search engines. The lift in terms of those keywords and keyword phrases and things like that are valuable to the domain authority of a website. It’s good for business to cascade these messages through the podcast itself, but then through a blog and through other things. Does that seem like a good strategy for most people to be doing if they haven’t gotten a podcast? If they are podcasting but are not using it for SEO purposes? Do you recommend that?

Yes, for sure. When a client comes to us, they don’t always have a podcast and that’s fine. Because we tell them, don’t start a podcast just yet. I don’t know how much work goes into this for you, Adam. I know that you’ve got a team and you put in hours. It takes a lot of work. Anybody who says it’s easy either hasn’t done it or hasn’t done it well. We tell our clients, “Don’t start one yet, go be a guest and you can start one eventually if you want.” On either side of that coin, take that experience and turning it into a blog article or maybe multiple blog articles. You may be on a podcast that has two different subjects or something like that and you can split it into two articles but at least one. Then you can take quotes out of that and create social media memes. There are different software companies, Audiogram is one of them that I’ve heard of that you can take and create an audio snippet.

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We use Audiogram. You take an audio snippet out of that podcast and it puts together a meme that you throw up on social media.

You use that central thing to create a web of marketing and web of content that you can use again and again. You can repurpose and use it differently. If you have an amazing interview, turn it into an infographic or a website. It’s funny because everybody says, “Not another eBook. We don’t want more PDS in the world.” Instead, they’re creating more interactive web pages. It’s more than a blog article, but a little bit different so you can do that. There’s so much you can do.

It’s repurposing and that’s what I love about it. You used the word alchemy and to me, I love the term alchemy. It’s turning something into something else, turning lead into gold. What it means for me is that nothing goes to waste. I love the idea that all of these things can be repurposed and used in various ways so that they don’t go to waste. Not only don’t they go to waste, but they have multiple uses out of them, multiple opportunities through different platforms and channels to be able to cascade your message. People can find out what you’re up to, what good work you’re doing. There are people listening to this right now going, “I never thought about a podcast this way,” and would love to find out. We love working with people who are after that. We work with your company. When people want to get on podcasts, Interview Valet is a great option for them to get on shows when they don’t know how to begin getting on shows.

Repurposing is a beautiful pivot in and of itself. It’s this idea of how it is that we use things to evolve. That’s the pivot principle. You’ve not been a marketer your whole life, I’m guessing you weren’t eight years old in marketing. I’m waiting for somebody to say, “I was dreaming to be an Internet marketer when I was eight years old.” The truth is, probably ten years from now, we’re going to find that there’ll be twenty-something and 30 something-year-olds who are killing it in the marketing space and that’s all they wanted to do when they were eight. There are YouTubers out there who have millions of subscribers and millions of views on their YouTube channel who’ve been doing it since they were eight or nine or ten years old. Take us back to an earlier time in your life and give us the pivots that led you to the place that you’re at now.

Integrated Marketing: You can’t think of yourself and your product as the hero; you are the guide.

Like a lot of people, I started off in the restaurant industry at sixteen years old, bussing tables, being a host and eventually waiting tables and becoming an assistant manager. I knew that wasn’t going to be my life. I wanted to do something in a career rather than a job. I knew that my life wasn’t going to be at restaurants. My first pivot was to realize that I needed to do something different. I’ve got a huge passion for music. I love music, but I can’t sing. You don’t want me to do that. I don’t have a natural talent for playing any instruments. It would take a lot of work. I knew that I couldn’t play music or sing, but I want to be involved. I found this school near Detroit, Michigan, and it was for radio and TV broadcast arts. Now it’s a media art school or whatever. I thought, “Maybe I can get into radio. Someday I can maybe produce records or I can make connections with artists or whatever. This is going to be amazing.” The town that I’m in is just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Kalamazoo is halfway between Detroit and Chicago. It used to be that we’d get a lot of acts through here and they’d be on the radio and stuff like that. It all made sense in my head.

I made the pivot from just being in a job to going to school to try and make a career out of it. That was my first real pivot. I learned a ton at Specs Howard School. I ended up getting a job in radio and one on TV and began to craft this life of, “What am I going to do?” Unfortunately, my idea of getting in the music industry through that channel didn’t work, which is the downside of pivots. That’s not all success. Radio in Kalamazoo at the time was starting to not be quite as thriving. Grand Rapids, Michigan is about an hour North of there and they get all the acts now because they’re a bigger city. They have better venues right now. Aerosmith wasn’t coming through town or Kid Rock or somebody up and coming at the time. I got into TV instead and that pivot then took me into journalism because I’m a writer at heart. I started working my way up from the bottom of a PA, production assistant, running scripts, teleprompters, cameras, or whatever I could do to becoming a videotape editor. Then an associate producer where I would edit and write and then I became a producer where I was writing the newscast. That was my back to back pivots that got me into this idea of writing and storytelling and media.

It’s the storytelling thing or a part of it that you’re in love with, is that right?

Absolutely.

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This is an area that a lot of people don’t even realize has business value. They love to tell stories or they have stories to tell and they don’t know what to do with them and they’re valuable, would you say?

Absolutely and so often we think, “My story must be my product. I’m going to tell you about my widget or my service or my product,” and the story is how does that help me as the possible consumer? Tell me that story through the success of another customer.

Let’s play with this because you’ve become an expert in the inbound marketing space. You’ve been doing it a lot of years and you’ve spoken on some of the biggest stages. You spoke at the INBOUND marketing event and that’s a massive event that’s done once a year in Boston with HubSpot. You’ve spoken there two or three times. How is it that a person who has a story and is confusing, let’s say that they are confusing their storytelling with their product, what advice would you give them? Is there some way that they can utilize some of what you’ve learned, give them something strategic and actionable even at this moment?

Think of yourself not as the hero of the story. Think of yourself as the person who’s going to guide the hero. I stole that a little bit from Donald Miller’s Building a StoryBrand. He is a great strategist. I learned from him and from others, you can’t think of yourself and your product as the hero. You are the guide. If you are Luke Skywalker, then you’re helping Rey. You’re not the Luke Skywalker of the ‘70s movies. You’re the new Luke Skywalker being that guide to them. You’ve got to make that pivot of you’re not the hero. This isn’t all about you. Founder stories can be cool. I’m listening right now to Rand Fishkin’s book Lost and Founder. I love his story, but that wasn’t what got me to do business with the company, to begin with. It was seeing myself as the hero that I knew their product could help me and then eventually, I became much more interested in his story but not right away. I don’t necessarily care as I’m looking to be successful in my marketing and my SEO world. I don’t necessarily care that he started his business with his mom for ten years before. I want to know that they’re going to help me find the links that I need to bear down on. They’re going help me increase my SEO presence and all these things. He positioned this so that I was going to be the hero by using their service. That’s the pivot I need to make.

This is probably a radio station that a lot of people are familiar with already, but I’ll say it anyway, WIIFM. We all know that one. What’s in it for me? That’s the radio station that’s playing in people’s heads all the time and that’s not a bad thing. That’s just something to recognize when you’re telling your story. Let’s say that your marketing is your story. Marketing is starting a conversation with your ideal customer. If that conversation is about, “Me, me, me, I, I, I,” you’ve lost people. You’ve lost them quickly. When we work with speakers, it’s a separate paradigm, but it’s related because all speaking is a form of marketing anyway. It’s a form of conversation. If the conversation is about you, people will tune out. They will be bored. You will not be effective at seizing the opportunity in front of you to transform someone’s life.

It’s not about me is what we often are training our speakers to recognize. It’s not about me, it’s about we, it’s about this connection. It’s about bridging that gap or closing the gap between us and letting that audience and those listeners and the readers, the people you’re in conversation with know that you genuinely care about them. If you are in fact telling a story, you have to check in and let them know that it is about them. Even though I’m sharing a piece of experience or wisdom or guidance, however it is, it’s embedded in my story, but the story is going to be for your benefit. Ultimately, it benefits them to be paying attention and leaning in and wanting to know more. That’s an important distinction so I appreciate that. Donald Miller’s Building A Storybrand is a great book. The other book you mentioned Rand Fishkin, what’s that book that you’re reading?

Lost and Founder. It just came out. That’s one of the things that I do every day, one of my traditions is to read. The more stories you read and take in, the better storyteller you’ll be in general.

My final question with all of our guests is always about your rituals. These are the things that you do in a way that’s very intentional, let’s say. There’s no religious context for that, but it is sacred on some level because you do them regularly and intentionally. What are some of those things that you do in that way to keep you growing?

It’s to read, that’s one of the biggest things. I started being very intentional about it. I’ve always been a reader, but I find myself in the last few years I get to the end of my day and I’m tired or I’m checked out or I’m busy with my family or I want to go for a motorcycle ride or I want to play on my phone. My guilty pleasure is phone games or texting people or social media kind of stuff. I find myself not reading, I’m taking in media and in stories and noise, but I’m not being intentional about the reading and I’ve come to realize that all leaders are readers. Very successful CEOs, founders, and executives of any kind, they read. The more information you take in, the more ideas, the more you learn, is so vital. I start every morning. I started getting up at 5:00 AM rather than sleeping until 6:00 or 6:30. I get up at 5:00. I get out of bed even if I don’t want to. I start with my faith. I start with some Bible study, devotion, prayer and meditation and just being grateful for that morning. That’s a good fifteen to 30 minutes.

The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

Then I grab a book, I’ve got a stack of books over here to my left of books that I’m borrowing or that I’ve bought or that I’ve been given that I want to get through in the next three months and I want to read a book every week. They’re not long books. This is The Obstacle Is The Way from Ryan Holiday and it’s not an epic. It’s 150 pages or 200 pages. It’s not unheard of to get through that in a week. As I’m reading, I’m going out to mow my yard, I’m going to listen to a book, an audible. That’s where I’m listening to Rand Fishkin so I can take in these things. That’s one of my biggest rituals is to read every morning and then to find podcasts like The Conscious PIVOT to take in other information and ideas, opinions, strategies, or whatever it is rather than just entertainment.

I’m friends with one of the co-founders of HubSpot and I asked him, I said, “How is it you’re taking in content these days?” One of the two ways he mentioned was podcasts. Podcasts are a great way to receive that information. I, like you, have a morning ritual where I get up and I have time for my stillness practice and my connection with the Source and with God. It’s the word I would use for myself. Then I do want to look at what are the other ways that I can build the bank, the brain bank. I’m keeping my brain active and absorbing good stuff because we’re taking in a lot of noise. Getting on our phones, picking up the phone and following different threads in social media and articles and things like that is all good on some level. When you said it, I questioned to myself, “How much time are people spending just absorbing noise? Things that are interesting but not necessarily going to be useful to them in some way.”

I believe that everything is connected. The art and science of living successfully is about how you connect the dots so that you never see things as being random. You’re never the victim of anything. It’s always very much for our development and growth, even though it doesn’t always feel that way to us. At the same time, I’m thinking there’s also a lot of noise and how it is that we invite noise into our lives which makes us busy. We might feel like we’re productive or we feel like we’re productive because we’re so busy and yet we’re just absorbing a lot of noise and not gaining a lot of clarity as a result of it. Dan, I appreciate the clarity of your message and the way that you conveyed that you were in conversation with myself and with our entire community. Thank you for being a guest on the show.

It is a privilege. I appreciate my time here in The Conscious PIVOT. It’s been a lot of fun.

For everybody out there, I want to leave you with a few parting remarks always. I recommend that if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please, if you haven’t subscribed, go ahead and do that. Leave us a comment too at AdamMarkel.com/Podcasts, or you can leave a review on iTunes, which we so appreciate. Our Facebook Community, for those of you that dig Facebook, that community is thriving. It’s called Start my PIVOT community on Facebook. The shortcut URL is PivotFB.com. You can also follow us on Instagram and Twitter, all the usual places. I want to leave us in a place of gratitude as we began in gratitude. My form of gratitude will be in a prayer. The prayer that I have for myself, for all of you, for all of your families, for everybody who’s listening to this and for the whole world, even though we know this is not going to be the case. For as far as this message will go, I wish, hope and pray that everybody gets to wake up tomorrow. We got to wake up now, that’s how you were able to read this because you woke up. It may have been an easy day and it may have been a difficult day. It could be that you’re consuming this in a state where right now it was just perfectly timed. I always find that when I listen to something or read something. It’s the perfect time. Hopefully, this was perfectly timed for you.

Either way, my gratitude is in advance that we get to wake up again tomorrow and that when we do wake up again tomorrow, that’s step one. Step two is that we are a little more aware and a little more awake tomorrow than we are now. It’s a metaphor as well as the physical waking. In that moment that we realized we’ve been given another day, that there is another assignment for us, at least for that day, that we’re grateful for it. We’re grateful for that opportunity that we are willing to receive that gratitude and receive the challenge of the day and the opportunity to expand and develop abilities that are equal to that opportunity that lies ahead. That step two, be in gratitude. Step three, if you’re willing to say it out loud from the bed or when your feet hit the floor, you can say these words, “I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.” Until we come across each other again, I’ll say, ciao for now. Have a blessed and the beautiful day. Dan, thank you so much for being a guest on the show.

My pleasure

Take care.

Important Links:

• Audiogram
• INBOUND
• Building a StoryBrand
• Lost and Founder
• The Obstacle Is The Way
• http://TheInboundEvangelist.org/
• InterviewValet.com
• https://www.Linkedin.com/in/DanielMoyle/
• https://Twitter.com/DanMoyle
• https://www.Facebook.com/Daniel.A.Moyle

About Dan Moyle