Cracking the Code of Digital Marketing - Insights from Strategic Pete

Introduction to the Guest: Strategic Pete
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Jim Banks: [00:00:00] So on this episode of Digital Marketing Stories, I have, probably my most enigmatic guest so far. it's Peter Murphy Lewis, who is also known as Strategic Pete. Do we call you Pete Peter, Peter Ma, Peter Murphy, or Strategic Pete? Which would you prefer?

Peter Murphy Lewis: any of those are better than what my wife calls me certain nights, so, I I don't, you can call me whatever you like, Jim. my clients call me Pete. my mom calls me Peter. whatever. Whatever's good for you,

Jim Banks: I always say that, the only people that call me James are police, doctors and bank managers, and everyone else calls me Jim. So you're probably the same like Pete or Pete. Pete. I'll stick with Pete.

Peter Murphy Lewis: okay.

Pete's Journey: From Kansas to Chile
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Jim Banks: 

So, Pete, you are a fractional CMO, you, you, your route to where you are now.

Jim Banks: so you started life in Kansas and you've worked in Boston and now I believe you're in Chile. Is that right? Is it Chile or Chile? I dunno. But.

Peter Murphy Lewis: I. Chi Chile, Chile, or Chile either's fine. So I spent 15 years full-time in Chile. I currently go to Chile every year. I still have a home in Chile, but I [00:01:00] have an 8-year-old son who goes to school most part-time of the year here in Wichita, Kansas. So my second home where I reside mostly is in the middle of the United States.

Jim Banks: And you, Definitely take the biscuit in terms of, like most marketers I talk to, they really struggle to talk about themselves. I think, you've done a phenomenal job, certainly when I was looking at your website to do some research here. you've done a great job of, of packaging up the, the strategic Pete sort of solution.

so tell me a little bit about the business. What, what made you decide to set that business up?

The Birth of Strategic Pete
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Peter Murphy Lewis: 

Strategic. Pete was born organically out of two big transitions, so I. When I moved back to the us, I didn't have the network, that most marketers would have. Given I'd spent 15 years outside the country. My first project was like a scaling project for a client who went from like one marketer to five and needed to two x its revenue.

Peter Murphy Lewis: We built that project and after about [00:02:00] six months, we decided to disengage and they kept me on doing strategy and my next gig so that that was kinda like my first kind of retainer client from a strategy point of view. My next client. was a turnaround private equity project, so the private equity bought a distressed asset and they asked me to help rebrand it, turn it around, and sell it.

We did that and while I was doing those two projects, I figured out kind of three things. One is I love. Solving problems. So I don't want that ongoing retainer of doing the same thing every six months, whether I like solve problems and then if my team wants to pass it off and handle as retainer. The second thing is I like working with my same team of people as operators.

So at Strategic Pete, there's 15 of us. The majority of them start as interns with me. 13 out of 15 were interns with me. And then the, the last item is I like to make people a lot of money. And as a. As a [00:03:00] fractional chief marketing officer, you have a runway of six to 18 months to help people make a lot of money, and then you usually disengage.

And those three things lined up from that first gig and strategy to the second gig and the turnaround. And I realized I liked this revolving door of me having to replace myself and make someone money and then get out.

Jim Banks: Yeah. Yeah. Funny. I, I had a, a guest on,previously Ben Hoehn, who's, who's,he, he was, Fractional, CMO and he said that he definitely liked the climbing up the ascent rather than actually reaching the summit for him. That, that all the excitement was in getting to the summit, not the actual summit itself, all that sort of stuff.

Bored him. Right. Are you like in, in the same boat? Sounds like you are.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Similar, sticking to the, the, the summit, metaphor. same thing when I ran a marathon five years ago and then ran an ultra marathon, that was about a hundred K four and a half years ago. I enjoyed the journey. When I won both of those races, I was like, oh, this is boring. I had to [00:04:00] go find something else.

I, I, I, if they would've added 10 more kilometers at the end of the race, I think I would probably enjoyed the race more.

Jim Banks: So you, you feel you need to push yourself to the limit and then beyond the limit to really get the full value. 

Challenges and Insights in Digital Marketing
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Jim Banks: So what, what are the biggest challenges? I mean, one of the things I, I, again, I really enjoy the research process of kind of guests as much as anything. So one of the things I really enjoyed, like reading, reading your profile, you, like I said, Chile figured in, in, in the profile.

but it also said you lived in a zoo or, or in a, was it a zoo? I mean, I, I couldn't quite work out what that.

Peter Murphy Lewis: You're speaking to me right now in the middle of a zoo, there are zebras, about 15 zebras that are 20 meters behind me, and there are about 20 cheetahs that are about 50 meters in front of me right now.

Jim Banks: I hope they're in cages.

Peter Murphy Lewis: They are in cages. there's a, there's a movie out of Hollywood probably 10 or 15 years ago called I Bought a Zoo, and I believe the main character was, Oh, I can't think of, Matt Damon. So I always tell [00:05:00] people I'm the fat version of Matt Damon without the $5 million to drop on a zoo. I.

Jim Banks: It's funny when you're talking about the, the, I'm, I'm the, the, this person of that, the, the one that always makes me laugh is, I've got a friend who we, we sat in the bar at, a conference, I think it was Traffic in Conversion Summit. She says, Jim, I've known you for like 15 years. I have no idea what you do.

and I tried to explain to her and I said to her a bit, bit like yourself. I'm, I'm,I'm a bit of a troubleshooter. I said, I go in, I fix problems. So usually people come to me when they've got kicked outta Google or kicked outta Facebook, need some help, needs some, needs some, some, somebody to kinda like, send something up the flagpole to try and get something sorted out.

so I said I, I'm, I'm basically a, a problem solver, a fixer. she said, so you, you are sort of like Ray Donovan, right? And having watched Ray Donovan, right. I dunno if you've ever watched it, but, it's, it's a, he, he's a, a Los Angeles based fixer. but. I said, yeah, I'm sort of like the digital marketing Ray Donovan, but without the baseball bat.

Right? So I don't tend to kinda like, use violence to [00:06:00] get my, get, get my resolutions. But, yeah, I mean it's, and, and again, I, I'm, I'm like yourself. That's one of the things I really enjoy, right? I enjoy the execution side of things. On the marketing side of things, I'm, I'm probably less, less interested in the strategic side of things.

I, I prefer. People to come to me with the problem having, they've gone through that sort of strategic process. but, but on the execution side of things, that's where I really I, I feel I am, I keep, I always say I put more money on the table than I'll ever take off it, right.

So for me it's never about, people will never go, I don't really think I particularly good value for money because the money that was there is incremental to what they have. And, and I'm stunned at how many. Businesses, even seven, eight figure businesses that are still leaving so much money on the table.

What are the biggest kind of things that you see,companies that probably should know better, making mistakes doing?

Peter Murphy Lewis: Ooh. I was hoping you were gonna gimme a moment to mention that I could have met Ray Donovan at the Traffic and Conversion Convention.

Jim Banks: They could have met me.

Peter Murphy Lewis: you hit me with a harder, [00:07:00] I would say the, well, the most common mistake that I see from in my role as a fractional CMO is executives and CEOs hiring agencies without a strategy. Now, I believe that nine out of 10 agencies, if they have case studies on their website, they specialize in your niche and they fo and they stay in their lane and they do one to three things.

Great. I. They're gonna be good at it. I know 10, but they're gonna be good at the things that they're good at, not at necessarily what you hire them for, what your business goal is. So the number one mistake I see is hiring agencies without a strategy and not making sure that what the agency's great at lines up with your business objectives.

I walk into so many clients who have three to seven agencies. That shouldn't have been hired because they don't have anything to do with the quarterly or annual goals that the executives hired them for all the time. Yeah.

Jim Banks: I think it's, it's quite interesting. I, I've always, maintained [00:08:00] that, that, agencies get hired for expertise or utility, right? And the ones that get hired for utility are the ones that usually don't last very long. Right? If you have an expertise, as you say, somebody's got a specialist skill in, paid search or email marketing,inboxing.

certainly if you, if you're working in some verticals where, you've got restricted products, you've got, there's definitely some challenges in terms of getting your product to market. the the agencies that can come with the expertise of knowing what, what buttons to press, who, which people to talk to, to move the, the chains.

I mean, that's definitely, gonna be one of those things where people will, will add value immensely because you're hiring them for their expertise. but you know, I think, again, I think a lot of agencies make the mistake of. Saying that they can do things that they really can't do, right?

So everyone says, oh yeah, we can do everything right. And the reality obvious is they, they might do two things really well, and the other seven things that you'll get asked to do, you do them in a really mediocre way [00:09:00] or even badly, right? And I think that's one of the challenges that sometimes, again, it's, it's very easy for an agency to walk away, but they just leave the, the, the pile of shit that they've left with a client, right?

With a client. And the client then goes, goes down the route of. The next agency that they talk to, they make them to blame for the previous agency. So I, I've always gone, I, I try and look to see how many agencies have preceded us when looking at pro, possibly taking on a piece of business.

'cause if they had six. Agencies beforehand, and they've all bombed right? Then there's every likelihood that no matter how good I think we are, we are probably gonna bomb as well. Right? Because I think sometimes the, the client doesn't allow you the, the freedom to be able to o speak openly, and solve the problems that, that they they're asking you to solve.

Right. they go, I want you to solve this problem. I want you to do it this way, this way, this way, this way. And it's like, doesn't work that way. Right? you've gotta give me the autonomy to be able to get on and do it.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Yeah, I, I thought of something else. 

The Importance of Data in Marketing
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Peter Murphy Lewis: feel like [00:10:00] this might be changing, but a huge mistake that I see Jim is, non-marketing executives, usually the CEO, focused on attribution and attribution, at least in the B2B world, is so broken right now, across so many different channels, and they, they, they want to tie every marketing.

Movement to a dollar. And you can do that at the quarterly level. You could even do it at the, at, maybe at the monthly. But trying to figure out where every single lead comes from in this world where, that people are talking in Slack channels and Facebook channels and discord, and that traffic and conversion summits, attribution isn't as clean as it was five years ago.

Jim Banks: And I, I've always maintained that the, the business is only as good as the data that the, the people that are actually handling the leads is, is feeding back, right? I mean, as, as much as [00:11:00] anything as an agency, I, I thrive on, on feedback, right? I mean, I. As much as anything, I just want the salespeople to be able to say to me, Jim, the leads you're generating are great.

Get me more of them. Or, Jim, the leads are not great and these are the reasons why very specifically, whether it's out of area, not, not the right qualification, right? 'cause there's things we can do in terms of the ad copy and things like that, but equally right, even though the, the kind of the, on the advertising side of things, it's typically, lead generations.

It's ones and zeros, it's. You generated a lead or you did, didn't generate your lead. Ultimately the business doesn't want leads, they want sales, right? So they want the leads to qualify and, and then want them to have the salespeople work them through a system. ultimately at the other end as a converted lead that turns into a dollar amount that they can then sort of tie back to the original point of entry.

Right? And, and I think that's where I think a lot of businesses. Do a poor job. They don't have the ability to feed that back in, right in the way that they ought to, to help [00:12:00] the agency do better. The ad platforms that are sending the traffic to train their algorithms better. but equally, it's not just the ones that converted, the ones that didn't convert, why didn't they convert?

And, you, you can do a lot more with that.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Yeah, and, and, and especially at, the higher, higher tier types of services, at least for me and my clients, LinkedIn is so critical right now in organic LinkedIn. And the only way you're gonna capture that is if, if your SDR or your sales team says, Had you met somebody on our team?

Have you been following us? Right? Like everything that you're trying to pull over from a tech point of view is never gonna say, I've been watching Jim post on LinkedIn for the last week, right? It's gonna tell me, it's gonna tell me some ad or some webpage or some lead magnet or some webinar and it's, there's some extra layers on top of the already existing marketing channels or marketing motion that that might be the extra reason they booked a call with you.

Jim Banks: I've, I've always maintained that,that there's a big, a big discussion that usually takes [00:13:00] place with brands to say, I don't wanna bid on my brand. I don't wanna give Google money for my brand and stuff like that. Because they go, if somebody's typed in my brand, they know who I am. Right. And I, I've always maintained that, if you've got good social media activity going on organically, and, and I noticed that you are an expert at organic and I'm, I.

I wanna talk to you a little bit about that, but you know, if you, if you are good at sort of generating visibility on social media platforms organically, the logical next step for a lot of people, once they've been to say Facebook or Instagram or whatever it might be, is to then go to Google and type in the brand.

They don't know anything about your brand, right? They've been exposed to. It may have been exposed to a video or a meme or something like that, but they know nothing about your brand in terms of who you are, what sort of services you offer, pricing, none of that, right? So when they actually get to Google and type in your brand, right, they're completely. An unknown entity, right? And the brands that don't bid on their own brand name, right? 'cause they don't wanna give Google money, are leaving so much money on the table [00:14:00] because of that, right? Because again, you can say, if it's an existing customer, you can have them in a specific audience, right? And you can target them based on the fact that they know who you are because you've got them in a database.

You've got the CRM data feed that to Google. Say, these are my existing customers. If they type a brand search, right? They're probably looking for, Again, it could be, they're looking to, to download the product that they bought from you before. Let's say it was an ebook. They got an ebook from you before they know they've got it, they can't remember where it, where, where they filed it in their, email system, right?

So they go, oh, just go and request another one. Right? So you should be able to know that that's, that person's been to you before and offer them a different experience when they search for your brand. Than somebody who's never known. Come, come into contact with your brand before. and it's amazing 

Peter Murphy Lewis: Jim, it happened to me last night. Yeah, last night. I, when my wife goes to bed. Earlier than I, I like to go down rabbit holes on what is the next camper van that I'm gonna purchase. Don't tell her this. Hopefully she [00:15:00] doesn't listen to this podcast. but you know, like, so nine o'clock at night last night, I watched this video of a person who had decked out their new Ford pickup with a.

like a, a, a rooftop tint on it and all these side panels and all these extra, awnings and so forth. And it did exactly what you just described. I googled the name of all of the third party accessories that went on top of this truck, and I went through their webpage, looked at, subscribed to their newsletters and so forth.

That person is going to think that it was straight up Google. If they didn't pay for an ad. If they paid for an ad, they're gonna think it's straight up. the ad, they probably need to make sure that they're thinking about SEO and the ad, but it was their work that they did with some partnership on YouTube.

That's gonna be really hard for them to ever figure out until they talk to me and ask me.

Jim Banks: I, I think we've almost gone a, a full 360. I think when we, when we first started doing digital marketing, money was moving from tv, radio, and [00:16:00] print into it because it was so much. More trackable accountable than tv, radio, and print, right? So yes, I spent money on TV advertising, but I don't really know how many of the sales I generated came from that or came from a radio station or whatever it might be. And, and with digital stuff you could say exactly which keyword, what, what search term, how much it costs. You could do ROI calculations,for B2B you can see exactly how much a lead cost because you knew exactly where it came from, what the keyword was and everything else.

Right. But it's almost like we are going full circle. Right? So you are into the, the realms now where. Influencer marketing is much more prevalent. Right. And, and ultimately, an influencer could put, put something out there and you'll generate a bunch of sales, but you don't know if it was, say you have five influencers doing some work for you.

You don't know which one of those five it was, it could be because you had five of them, that that could be what sort of got it over the line. Right? So, and then there's the kind of the dark social where you know you have the halo effect of people sharing things, right? So they get it posted [00:17:00] on, they've got an fb ca ID that kind of comes from somebody posting something from Facebook.

They grab the URL, send it to a friend. And it gets credited to this, the original click, which might be me, but you've then got it, you may send it to another three or four friends. Everything gets credited to me rather than to, to you. Right. So, and I, and I'm amazed at how much, how much data is Captured there, but so many businesses just lose it. Right. And I, I was really interested to, to talk to you, 'cause you are a data-driven marketer, right. Which to me is like, that's my kind of holy grail. I love, I love data-driven marketers because I've always been about the data. That's, that's what I've sort of thrived on is data. So, so what are your thoughts in terms of, the, the data that people should be catching that they're not?

Peter Murphy Lewis: I guess to answer it, I, I usually walk into those types of calls or relationships or prospects trying to figure out how much data they have already lined up in a more sophisticated client who's further [00:18:00] down, the market, their marketing maturation or, or, or evolution. I try to think about what are some of the more, The more, I'm trying to think of the word. It's not gray, it's not some of the more, between the cracks metrics. So I will look at, sales cycles or, I will think about how many touches and with a, with, with a prospected we have to talk to before they talk to a sales person or before they jump on a demo type of thing.

For clients who are. I, I, I, I have a significant amount of clients whose first two months is setting up a marketing scorecard and they, they don't realize that they would've never needed to talk to me if they would've had a marketing scorecard. What happens is they get a new website that I design, a new website, or.

They change CRMs or they do something on to [00:19:00] SEO and all of their metrics start to tank. But they didn't have a marketing scorecard. So they didn't see that their traffic was dropping 20% monthly, or they didn't see that their MQ LS six months ago moved from, 300 a month, down to two 50 down to 200.

And if they would've had these simple scorecards, they would've had leading indicators to let them know that this quarter they were gonna be destroyed from a revenue point of view and they wouldn't need me. That, that's the gamut that I see of the metrics that I'm, I'm asking my clients to put together or that I have to string together for them.

Do you have any insight into what you're seeing?

Jim Banks: I mean, it, it always amazes me when people say, for, for no apparent reason. And you're like, well, you're not looking at the data properly because there's lots of apparent reasons. Right? I mean, I, I used to sell insurance for a living. That was one of the thing things I. Did when I sort of first started working, I mean, I, I did six years working for the police, and then I sold insurance for a living, knocking on doors and cold calling and everything else.

Right? And I've always came, maintained. I mean, I did it for six years. I was good at selling. [00:20:00] Then I moved on to sales management. And I've always maintained as a sales manager, the only thing you can manage is the. The, the input of, of, the, the appointments that people do. So it's, if, if you wanted to close four pieces of business a week, right?

You needed to probably do five or six fact finds. So you had to sit down and ask people to explain what their situation was in terms of retirement and, when they had life insurance, that sort of thing. and in order to get those six,face-to-face. Per, per, questionnaires, you probably needed to make about 15 appointments, right?

And in order to get the 15 appointments, you needed to have about 50 prospects to call. Right? So if I started the week with anything less than 50 prospects, right? I could guarantee the snowball effect would be my fif. If I only had 40 people to call, my sort of 15 appointments would probably be more like 10, right?

My six. Fact five would probably be more like three, and I'd end up with two pieces of business. So, in, in most sort of sales [00:21:00] situations, you can always say, the only thing I can manage is, is the activity. I can't necessarily manage the output, right? So, but if the activity was solid and the.

Output wasn't right then, you have probably a training issue. If the activity's not there, then you have a kind of, I guess a, a kind of,people are just probably lazy or, or whatever, right. So I, I think it's, When you look at sort of data in the, the digital marketing sphere, right?

You're absolutely right. I mean, I think we we're at the point now where, people have just seen the cost of Facebook traffic increase. on the search side of things, you've seen more and more search being not done on. Sort of search engines in the traditional way that they've been done.

more and more people are now using chat, GPT perplexity, they, they're getting to this, to the same answer as they may have got to before, but they're not doing it in the traditional 10 blue links Right. That they used to do it for and they've done it for, for donkeys years.

Right. So I think that that's, that's something that I think a lot of businesses are not. They haven't sort of [00:22:00] set up their dashboards now for understanding how AI is, is impacting the, the leads that are coming in. Right? So they're just saying, our traffic's down. 

Understanding Traffic and Lead Volume
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Jim Banks: Right. but it might be that the traffic that in the traditional sense of where it's normally come from is down.

Right. But. If the lead volume's not down, then it's probably because people found you in an alternative way than the way that, that you may have been measuring in the past. Right. So, you need to say, well now we need to try and find a different way of measuring that. And there's, again, there's so many people who come out with, Looker Studio reports that will do that sort of thing, where they'll kind of look, look more about the,the, the GPT based sort of search results that have come through.

I know that Will Reynolds is doing a lot of stuff on that. Rand Fishkins doing a lot of stuff on that. But again, I think it's just understanding. I mean, I've always said that, as, as a marketer, you need to be looking ahead so that when you come back to where you are now, right, you can be coming in with kind of ideas and solutions for what, what's to come rather than what's happened in the past.

Right? Because once it's gone, it's gone, right? You can't really change it.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Hmm. 

Exploring AI Tools for Marketing
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Peter Murphy Lewis: Yeah, I've [00:23:00] been, Been playing around with best ways to position my clients into the different AI tools out there. and I, when, when I start testing it a new playbook or a new strategy, I always do it in-house first. So like my traffic and my word of mouth and my growth is strong enough offline from giving keynotes and, and all the press that we get that.

I can play with our variables or I can play with our marketing, tactics and it won't have an impact. But it's really interesting to see what's happening right now on the AI tools and what, how it understands who I am and where I'm showing up, whether it be fractional CMO or documentary or TV stuff or agency things, and they vary from one to another.

So now my team is setting up, yeah, I think there's five different SEO or five different. L-L-M-S-E-O trackers that we're now using that send us a report once a week. how many [00:24:00] times have you been mentioned? What's bringing it in now? Try to figure out how we structure that information in a way that gets into the LLMs is, like our next, our next goal that we have to figure out so then we can help with clients.

The Role of SEO and LLMs
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Jim Banks: I think that's the thing is that, that, certainly when you, you read around the, the sort of subject,there is, there is so much known about LNS now, right? In terms of how you get the information in there that, again, it, it's almost like the, the, the good old days of SEO from the, the sort of the early two thousands, late nineties, two thousands.

Where you can like completely manipulate the way in which the results are presented. Right. I don't necessarily know that you'd get the same sort of outcome here, but you know, you may, I, I don't know. I mean, it's, it's funny,

Peter Murphy Lewis: with Reddit.

Jim Banks: yeah, yeah. Red Reddit exactly

the 

Peter Murphy Lewis: Sorry, sorry, sorry, I interrupted you.

Jim Banks: No, that's okay. yeah, I mean the, so, absolutely. I mean, red Reddit is, is one of those things where, the people that have done well with Reddit, and maybe, maybe you could even throw core in there as well, right? I know a lot of people that have done incredibly well, right?

Just basically going into core and people have asked a question, [00:25:00] right? And they'll go over to YouTube, shoot a video and say, Hey, I've created a video response to that, to that question, right? And if the question kind of comes, comes up. More often than not, right? Then you can say, okay, well maybe I can provide a solution to that standard question that lots and lots of people have, right?

So the more people upvote the question, the more likely it is that every everyone is experiencing the same challenge, headache, problem, whatever. Whatever it is. I.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Yeah.

Organic Social vs. Paid Advertising
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Jim Banks: 

So your your, one of the things that I read was that you are very into kind of organic social rather than paid. I mean, I've always been a paid advertising guy. So talk to me a little bit about the organic social landscape as it stands now.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Yeah, so it's changing,coming from what you and I were talking about with SEO and now with AI tools. there are things that I do from an organic point of view that then I move over to PPC, so I really enjoy. Taking what works best on LinkedIn or [00:26:00] TikTok or anything on meta, and then I will find a way to then spend money on it.

so the way that we're doing that is. 

Leveraging LinkedIn and Other Platforms
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Peter Murphy Lewis: Just straight up LinkedIn. We'll figure out what are the best engagements, what's trending. We'll try to figure out what is the emotional reason that that worked or what is the copy that worked. It might not be, might not translate to another platform. if we move that over to PPC on meta, but we can fi, we could take on nuances.

Another thing that I do, there's a very simple tool that's been around, I don't know, probably for 10 years called Q Promote, Q promote. I think it's 50 or a hundred dollars a month. And it allows you to push out your organic content, the content on your website, out to everyone who is trying to manage their social media handles, and they wanna push out content that's helpful to their ICP.

Make sure their, their, their handles are active and you can figure out what are the titles of the content that you're pushing from your blog over to Q promote that's [00:27:00] been, been pushed out onto. X and meta and LinkedIn and your image. And that will help you determine how much money you, you should, where you should put your money on PPC.

And I think that that's my favorite low hanging fruit for anyone who has a budget over I. $10,000 a month. I am testing there first for $50 and I'm seeing things get shared. my top trending article just from last quarter from Q4, had 1,997 shares. From a blog that I pushed out. So then I just find the context of that blog.

I think about the image and the title, and then I put that on PPC. But I do a video about it, and then I put it also on YouTube. And YouTube. I'm not paying for it, but it's telling me what I should be doing from a video content point of view.

Jim Banks: Yeah, so I'm, again, I'm, I'm amazed at, how you know, some of the things that you can learn on one platform. Can transfer so well onto other platforms, but people are just not doing it right. I mean, the, the YouTube algorithm ecosystem, the, all the [00:28:00] people that kind of, the content creators on YouTube, they really understand how the YouTube algorithm works.

Again, I, I understand sort of. To a certain point how the PPC algorithms work and how, how the traffic gets delivered and everything else. But it's, it's amazing how many people that do organic just won't do paid at all. Right. So I'm, I'm pleased that you are, you are like the guy that will saddle, straddle both because, it's, it's amazing how many people don't, they go, I need your organic social, and that's it.

Right. And I, I feel like they, they're leaving so much on so much. On the table because of that. Right. There's so many, as you say, if you've tested organically, something that works really well, right? The, the rocket fuel is the paid search that you can apply to that because you're not having to, it bothers me so much when people say, I'm just gonna spend some money on Facebook ads and test, and test and test.

It's like, I don't wanna be running. Tests. I want to be like doing slam dunks. I want to be taking, free throws from like three feet away from the hoop above it. Right? I don't want to even think about missing a shot, right? I don't wanna be spending a thousand [00:29:00] dollars on, on a test I want to, or 10,000, whatever it is, right?

'cause it's like the only people that benefit from that. Facebook or Google, right? They're the only ones that benefit from Detesting all the time, right? So I want to to use the tools available to me to enable me to kind of like have to eliminate all those sort of testing sort of environments because you've done something organically.

If it works well organically, there's every reason why it would work. On the pay side of things as well. Plus you can use the, the kind of the, the social proof that you've got on the organic post to like really do the amplification. You're, you're not starting from a 0, 0, 0. You're starting from, in your case 2000 shares.

It's like that proves that the,that what was in there was resonating with an audience enough for them to go, this is, this is shareworthy.

Peter Murphy Lewis: This is, this is Gary V's. New favorite topic. He just published a book around how do you get people's attention and his, his kind of playbook is do it organically and then you can move over to PPC and you can save a lot of lot of money and how you get people's attention on different channels.[00:30:00] 

I mean, no matter where you stand politically speaking, the person who's fantastic at doing this organically and then moving over is Trump. Right. Like he, he throws spaghetti at the wall on every type of social channel that he can, on ev, on legacy media, on new media, on podcasts, and then he can figure out what's getting traction and then he'll put that into ads, or he'll just turn that into one of his talking points.

And, and it's, we're in a new era for marketing when it comes to that. and you can see it even at the political level.

Jim Banks: I, I did some, some analysis of, the amount of money that the, that both Trump and Harris were spending in the rut to the election. I mean, again, I thinking. Why don't, why don't I do political advertising? But again, it would be the, the last thing I'd want to do. But,but the, the amount of money that was being spent was eye watering.

Right. But, again, I think, Harris was probably outspending Trump on ads by probably seven or $8 to one. Right. So, but, but I think as you say, he, he had probably done [00:31:00] his homework and his research and spread it around so that the dollars that he was spending were much more strategic and tactical rather than just spray and pray.

The Power of Podcasts for CEOs
---

Jim Banks: So, so, so in, in terms of the, the, the kind of the challenges that you see, I, I think one of the things I saw on your social, you posted that all CEOs should have a podcast. What, what is it about podcasts that you think, CEOs should embrace? I.

Peter Murphy Lewis: I, I get, I might have come in a little bit heavy on that, but I do believe that the majority of CEOs who are in the B2B space that. Their audience, their clientele, or their prospects are on LinkedIn. I think that it's a perfect place for you to create content where you can show off what is unique about you as a human being, and people like to follow people more than they do brands.

So you can grow revenue for your. Company by using your personal brand. And it's a perfect place for you to, you might not even have to be the smartest person in the room. Like Jim, you might be technical. So you, you, you [00:32:00] might be the smartest person in the room when it comes to being technical. but when it comes to marketing or sales or customer service, maybe not.

So that gives you a chance to be the nicest person in the room. And I, I ran a podcast for the private equity turnaround project that I did for about three years. And I wasn't the smartest person in the room. I wasn't even close to my ITP, but it gave me the opportunity to be the nicest, most inquisitive, curious person as a podcast host, and therefore make my ICP look spectacular, which then got me invited to a bunch of trade shows and a bunch of keynotes.

So I think that it is. A one-to-one situation, a podcast like we have right now, that a CEO, who might be an introvert or might have limited time, can then amplify their voice. Even if they are extroverted, it's gonna allow them to amplify their voice to every other platform with that content from a podcast.

I just think that it's low hanging fruit. Now, one thing that I see [00:33:00] people overplaying is I. Non-marketing CEOs don't realize that podcasts are not very discoverable, right? So if, if I've never met, never met Maria, and she's a great podcast host and she has a great podcast, there's a chance that Spotify and Apple and so forth is never gonna push it to me.

But you know who will? LinkedIn will push it to you and so will YouTube shorts. They'll push it to you, so don't just sit on your hands and do a podcast. Go to the channels that will then push that out to your ICP so they can see what you're great at.

Jim Banks: Yeah. 'cause I think, Spotify have, have they've tried to push the whole video podcasting, the clips. Right. But again, they're just trying to steal from other people that have done that already. Right. So, I, I I was reading that, on, on YouTube filter today that,YouTube now has over a billion users per month that consume podcasts on.

The YouTube platform, right, which completely dwarfs what's happening on, on,Spotify and [00:34:00] Apple and all they're doing is, yeah. Well, if it's not a, if, if, if it's video, then it's not a podcast. It's like who says, right? I mean, who are we to say whether it's video or audio, and whether one's a podcast and or not, right?

I mean, ultimately I try and cover off all, all bases, right? So audio and video, right? So not audio only in, in, as I know a lot of people are doing at the moment.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Well, I mean, to your point, one of the reasons that I moved to. Listening to, to podcasts on YouTube in the last two weeks actually, is because I don't like the way that Spotify, helps me discover new episodes and new podcasts. I feel like I get stuck and listen to the same fi 15 podcasts that are I'm subscribed to, and, and Spotify doesn't know how to push me new material.

And because I like the way that YouTube pushes me new material, I'm testing them for podcasts.

Jim Banks: Definitely on the, the sort of short shelf, right? If you're on a desktop in the short shelf. Although it, it, there's definitely some, some big, big players on there. They always include [00:35:00] sort of, shorts from. New people with like new channels, hardly any subscribers. Right? Again, I've seen some of my, my shorts get like next to no views at all.

Right? But I've seen others that get like seven, 800, which again, you might think, well, in the scheme of things, that's not a big deal. Right? Certainly compared to, these people that are jumping ropes and jumping in puddles and things like that. But, that's not, that's not my audience. I don't care.

I, I wanna see the, the 700 people, if they're relevant to my. Kind of niche then. Great. That's, that's I know that I've, I've achieved my objective in, in, in that regard. So, but, 

Peter Murphy Lewis: Go. Going back to your. Going to back to your point, Jim, about why podcasts are helpful for CEOs or at least some type of customer facing executive on the team is. the impact of long form storytelling in somebody's ear has so much bigger impact than an influencer post for 60 seconds or two minutes.

Or three minutes, right? So if I listen to Jim three times, I. For [00:36:00] 30 minutes and he comes off this sincere, authentic, friendly, asks good questions, he stays in his lane, he tells me what he is smart at, what he is not. He asks a good question, that has a huge impact on the way that I trust your brand, as opposed to if I just consume, a 62nd clip or even a two minute clip, or even an ad that's pushed to my face, it just makes me trust you and remember you.

Jim Banks: Yeah, it's funny, I, I think, you, you mentioned there about LinkedIn and I think one of the, the, the biggest success. That LinkedIn has that they don't, probably, a lot of people don't even realize it exists is that video reels shelf that kind of like appears on LinkedIn. and again, there's, there's so many people I know are doing incredibly well on the back of having content on that video shelf, right?

Because video, video is being pushed. Really hard by LinkedIn now, right? Far, probably far more so than, than, the carousels and the, the kind of text based stuff, they're definitely trying to push the video because more and more people are [00:37:00] consuming content that way. Right. That's what they're looking for.

They're looking for the videos, but, we'll, we'll give you the behind the scenes or the, that type of information. Right. Because again, it's, it's, it's taking you to places where you. Yes, we can all read the, the kind of the 10 Q and see exactly what's going on, the safe harbor statements, all that sort of stuff that doesn't really personalize the business.

Whereas if you put the person in front of a camera right, or in front of a microphone and they talk to people, again, it doesn't necessarily need to be them talking all the time. They could be doing what we are doing. We could be interview. Like I, I, I've really enjoyed this podcasting journey because I'm meeting people that I don't know.

In some cases, people I do know already. Fine. Right. But, but equally I'm learning about things that I'm,taking the outside of my comfort zone. I know, I know all the stuff I know about really well, but I'm learning so much from the guests that I've had. So in some respects it's almost like I'm, I'm, that's for me, I'm the biggest fan of my own podcast 'cause I'm learning so much as from the guests that I've had, including yourself.

Right. It's, it's, it's been a phenomenal journey for me. [00:38:00] Right. And I'm sure that most CEOs would probably have the same. experience if they took the time to invest in, in, a microphone, lights, cameras, and just sitting down and talking, right? Because, initially when you first start, nobody's gonna see it anyway, right?

So who cares, right? But, if you, if you're good at it and you come across well, then you can really do well to, to put yourself in a, in a position that's different from where your competitors are.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Hmm. Yeah. When I, to that point of, speaking to your ICP and also putting yourself in a different position. When I started my podcast, I, before I hit record, I would tell my guests, I would say, Hey, during the podcast, you feel free to pitch. Promote yourself as much as possible.

I did my research. I know that you're good. I know that you're trustworthy. There's good reviews about you online. What you're gonna say is if you share your opinion, whether it's about yourself or someone else, my audience gonna find my audience gonna find it's valuable. So make sure that you do that. And then I say at the [00:39:00] end.

As I work for this ex client, and this is the product we serve. You're in this space. When we turn off record, do you mind if I ask you three or four questions about how you solve this pain point? And I wasn't selling them something. They already worked with one of my competitors. 99% of the time, I would ask them, what, what are the things that they need next year so I can improve my product?

how do they go about making decisions from a budgetary point of view? if they, if for some reason they were unable to work with their current competitor, how would they go about, or with my current competitor, how would they go about, finding who is the next solution? So who they would talk to, who they would trust, what were the budgetary things, and that would help me.

And as, and I said that before we started the interview, so that gave them. 45 minutes, where then I'm now ha talking to them as friendly relationship. They trust me, they know I'm not gonna send some type of sales development rep on top of them. I was trying to, generally trying to understand them and we build up that rapport over the last 45 minutes where I made them look like a rock.

Jim Banks: I love that. That's great. I, I, I might steal that for, for future preference, [00:40:00] but yeah, I mean it, like, honestly, like for me, I've, I've achieved a lot, but in some regards, the, the podcast has been such a breath of fresh air for me. In terms of my journey, in terms of where I am. Right. And I, again, I've, I've helped, I hope, I, I hope I've helped some, some of the people that have, been on the, on the podcast as a guest to kind of like amplify their stories, right?

Because again, it's not about me, it's not my stories, it's about them and their stories, right? And what they're trying to achieve in, in their specific, realm. 

Promoting Diversity in the Industry
---

Jim Banks: again, I, I've been very, I. Forceful in trying to make sure that I have a mixture of, women and men, seniority and, and people are like brand new.

again, I'm trying, I, I've tried, I've been trying ever since I got into the industry. 'cause I've got, like, daughters that work in the industry. I've been really trying to help, put. More women in positions of authority and seniority in, in the companies that they work in.

Right. By giving them a, like a leg up. And it's not that I don't think that they would get up, get up there on their own. It's just like sometimes I can just move things outta the [00:41:00] way and, and help put them in, in the position, right? Knowing that they, they're gonna do a phenomenal job when they get the opportunity to kinda speak.

Right? So, And I, I just think that that's, that's helped the industry to become more balanced. Right? When I first started doing it, I mean, it was like completely, like probably 98% men, 2% women, right. and the 2% women were probably the ones that could drink everyone under the table at the networking events and, and everything else.

but, but I think it's, it's evolved and changed, right? We've, again, in the affiliate industry, we've gone away from Booth Babes and, Sexualizing trade shows and things like that, right. To make it much more professional. and, and again, I think it was long overdue. Glad it happened and,but it, it continues to evolve and it will only continue to evolve.

if you help sort of, put, put people up on a pedestal to give 'em the opportunity to tell their story and, and, tell, tell people what they're all about. 

Conclusion and Contact Information
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Jim Banks: So, Pete, this has been phenomenal. I'd be, I've loved, having you on as a guest today. if people did want to kinda reach out to you, what would be the, the best place [00:42:00] for them to get hold of you?

Peter Murphy Lewis: LinkedIn is the best. I believe that I am the only Peter Murphy Lewis on LinkedIn. so connect with me there. Tell me that you love Jim's podcast and what you found value about the conversation. if, if I can help you in any way, you can find me on my website, strategic pete.com.

Jim Banks: And all of those in all of those links will be available in the show notes, which should be available after we finish the, the show and get it up into the wide, big, wide world. Only remains for me to say thank you so much for being a phenomenal guest, love meeting you. And, hopefully at some point in time if, if I find myself in Kansas or in Chile that, that you happen to be crossing paths or if you're ever in the uk, let me know.

I'd love to sit down and, grab a drink with you.

Peter Murphy Lewis: Love it. Love it. I go over to the UK at least once a year for our clients, so I'll see you there.

Jim Banks: Marvelous. Thanks a lot.

Good.