In this episode of On The Same Landing Page, we speak to Jamar Jones, author, public speaker, hip-hop artist and owner of Foureva Media. Jamar walks us through how non-profits can spread their message through branded entertainment and use podcasting to increase their organisation’s reach.
Jason
Welcome to Episode 13 2023 on the same landing page and I’m joined this episode by Jamar Jones, owner of Foureva Media. Foureva Media is a branding and media agency which connects companies to diverse communities to help with recruitment company culture and amplifying brands. Now I’ve got a lot of introduction I’m going to get through here. He’s a national speaker, talks on how to connect with diverse communities in style.He’s an author of the book. Change Your Circle, Change Your Life. He’s also booked out an arena as a small business owner, as the first African American small business owner to do so. And he was a hip hop artist for 11 years, performing to thousands, booked alongside Major artists like T.I., Snoop Dogg, Common, Bone Thugs and harmony and many more in the Midwest and East Coast regions.He’s worked with VaynerX, Versity and BMW amongst many more. Welcome to the podcast, Jamar.
Jamar
Thank you. Thank you for having me. That was actually pretty good. That was a good intro. Thank you.
Jason
And of course, we’re joined by my co-host, Astra.
Astra
Hello. Hello. Quite an interesting. We’re not going to run out of things to talk about with you Jamar
Jamar
Yeah, my background is kind of crazy, you know? Yeah.
Jason
I mean, there’s loads of stuff there. Like, we’re on this, on this podcast, we’re going to focus on probably the most boring parts of it. We’re not going to talk about any of the hip hop, any of the music, but.
Jamar
That’s all good.
Jason
Well, we’re trying to focus on this, particularly in the new year, is how nonprofits and charities are doing things and changing the world and, you know, sharing their mission and raising funds to do so. And we asked you one, particularly, Jamar, because we wanted to see what the perspective is like from America. And also, this is quite a big part of what you guys do.
This is an example with the Versity. I hope I’m saying it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Versity in particular. Can you tell me about what you guys do when it comes to helping charities and non-profits and then maybe a little of the work you’ve done with the Versity Case Study?
Jamar
Yeah, for sure. So we work with non-profits in different stages of their of where they’re at. So one stage is, you know, particularly with a little bit of smaller nonprofits, when you get going, you get you know, you get all guns blazing on your mission. And a lot of oftentimes you haven’t really got the foundational things set yet. So if that is foundational branding your your mission values, putting that together all in a brand deck so everybody knows how to interact with your brand internally and externally. Also, a sponsorship kit is also a must have.
There’s so many nonprofits that are operating today that don’t have a sponsorship kit or a way to say, Hey, how do I interact? How do I donate? What does that look like for me? They just kind of keeps telling their story over and over again, so they need some kind of material to help with that. So in that sense, you help us a lot of foundational branding within that, then there’s another stage where if a non-profit is a little bit further along or they’re just focussed on a certain initiative, we help with amplifying their brand. So if that’s within a campaign or promotion to help with fundraising, different, unique fundraising ideas and also in tandem, we help build brand at the same time. And then also if, if there’s, if there’s a need where a non-profit needs to kind of get connected with different and diverse communities, we are able to kind of tap into our networks and our strategies to be able to do so.
So for instance, like with VERSITY, they’re a bigger non-profit, but they had an issue with getting into diverse communities when it came to diverse blood donation. So we put together our brains to be able to give them some strategies and some techniques which we call branded entertainment. That’s actually the kind of the name of the marketing style that we do. And really branded entertainment means that it’s non-traditional way of marketing.
So traditionals, advertising, you kind of pop up in front of whatever somebody is doing and, you know, just get in front of their day and they have to see your brand and you’re like, Oh, come on, man, I want to see this. You press skip and you just move on.So Brand Entertainment is more about like that feeling that you get when you’re watching your favourite TV show or a movie, or you went to a concert, you want to be there, you want to engage with the brand, you want to interact with the brand. That is right there in front of you. And you’re glued. I mean, you’re glued to every word.You’re really soaked into it. So that is branded entertainment as we use entertainment as a form of marketing.
Jason
Awesome. So what did you do for them and with them? What kind of branded entertainment did they then release and what did they look like? Am I picturing something that has a bit of a storyline to it and some kind of drama involved? Or is that not it?
Jamar
So first I kidnapped the CEO.That’s some drama for you. I’m just kidding. Yeah. So what we did for them is we created well, first we put together an entire strategy as far as for the mission. And we created a podcast. So we recommend that they put together a podcast, but not only just put together a podcast, but how do you actually distribute it? How do you get it out there into the market and then how do you brand it correctly?
A lot of people start a podcast and then, you know, it’s bare bones, you know that they’re doing just what they can. You know, versity really wanted to make sure that their brand was represented in the right way. It looked a little different. It felt a little different. So this podcast actually had some some kind of entertainment elements around it. And then we also source all the guests. So the guests that they were getting on their podcast were different than kind of their traditional, you know, doctors and and other people within the medical field getting on their podcast because they had done that a little bit before, but not in the way of like an entertaining podcast that was more like just purely educational. So this was more of like, Hey, let’s grab some different people, different stories, different attachments to blood donation and to sickle cell disease where, you know, people can tell their story or tell how what they’re doing impacts the community. And also, we kind of targeted the guests to also represent what the podcast stands for. So it stand from stand out from the inside podcast.
And so we wanted people that kind of came from a diverse background, you know, from typical what they, what they typically kind of were doing. And then we took the main episode of that and put it into tons of different snackable size clips as far as from from the concept perspective and then spread that across all channels. So every single season we’re pumping out well over 70 plus pieces of content that is getting pushed through all channels. And so from that, from very short, so reels, YouTube, shorts and Instagram, but also going down to kind of what I call your kind of your pillar or your foundational content from your YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. And then of course, you have like the full piece on YouTube and we put that out there and then also they have their microsite. So if anybody wants is curious about the podcast, they land on their microsite to learn more about the podcast, but also what are the call to actions well the call to actions are start a blood drive, donate, get involved. And so we can track those metrics as well through there. And so through the podcast we really found that they were getting a little bit more attention and more and more interest than normal when it came down to their diversity initiatives.
So that’s like just a snapshot of what we done. But we’ve also now moved, moved over to an overarching strategy as well, where we’re tapping into strategic partnerships, how to use ESports to connect with people, how to use like kind of micro events as well. So instead of like big companies kind of think of just we got to throw this huge, you know, gala every single time, you know, because that’s what’s got to be and spend a ton of money. Yeah, you can do some micro events just with the community and help impact and help influence with inside the community. So we’re getting into some bigger activations now, which is pretty exciting.
Jason
That’s awesome. And so if I’m a charity, if i work for a charity or a non-profit of small, medium or large size, I might think that I don’t know if I can do a podcast and I don’t know if I can. Maybe I’m really good in terms of I know my mission, I know what I’m trying to get to happen, but does it require a certain type of person to be able to do that, find entertainment? How much does it do? Can you meet them like halfway? And do you help them with the ideas? Because the first the first challenge, I guess, for them is they’re like, well, what does that mean? I’m not trained for this. Like, I haven’t been like media trained that I didn’t know how to like create all of this entertainment and excitement around it.
Even though I know how passionate I am, that doesn’t mean it will come across as entertaining. How do you how do you help them with that?
Jamar
Yeah. So we help them through that whole process. So first, like, you know, I started off, you know, that’s what that’s where the strategy kind of comes into place. First, we determine who is the right guest. I mean, who’s the right host host for the podcast because, you know, typically it’s going to be somebody in the organisation. Of course, you know, we’ve got a teeter with the idea of having somebody from our team also be a host, but we’re not the most knowledgeable about the day to day ins and outs of the company.
They can kind of talk about their stories, talk about timely things, and we would just be glossing over, you know, what we know. So we would identify a host and typically it’s somebody that just is outgoing, loves to, loves that kind of talk, loves to be kind of an ambassador of of what they’re doing. And then we can work with them from there. You know, we kind of teach them how to ask the questions, how to interact, how to put their guard down and look. So we have a client that is the CTO of a tech organisation, and if anybody knows anything about the technology world, sometimes they are a little bit less outgoing.
But you know, the brain is more into the to the technical specs, the details, you know, analytics, you know, the numbers. That’s that’s how kind of how their brain works. So when you put them on a podcast, you know, some of them just just freeze. So we have a client where he’s a CTO there, and at first he was very timid. He was very timid. I mean, just like kind of sitting there asking his questions, getting through, man. But by the time it’s sounds, it’s episode 30. He is laughing and he’s having a great time. He’s asking questions. Personality is just just came out. I mean, it’s it’s fantastic. So people can kind of evolve through the role of of being a host. And as far as getting started with the podcast, yeah, we go from the idea of, of the name or what are they going to be talking about, what, what are the points that they want to hit for their podcast?
What does it look like? What do we want people to feel? So we go through the entire strategy and the kind of the establishment phase of the podcast.
Astra
When you’re making these podcasts about how does your strategy differ for charities versus like traditional businesses, or does it is it the same?
Jamar
Is it. It doesn’t really differ. No, it doesn’t really differ. You know, each one of them is like creating a show. And, you know, no matter what your show’s about, you got to go through your foundational kind of questions, you know, to to kind of create that show. And and that’s the way we look at it. You know, a podcast is a show is what the the most powerful thing about having a podcast is that you have leverage and you have a platform that is the most powerful thing. If you think about even marketing at its core, you know, what do we try to do? We try to get on other people’s platform to share our story, you know, from a press release or to getting on an article to go in to an event, to paying a lot of money, you know, getting our booth at a trade show, you know, I mean, we’re trying to use somebody else’s platform to tell our story, getting on TV, getting on radio. This is all the same stuff. But the cool thing is when you have a podcast, you actually you’re in control for the first time. You’re in control of the show and you got something that people want to be involved in. And podcasting is still relatively new as far as the creation and getting that content out there where it’s in a space where you don’t necessarily have to have everything buttoned up, you could just start a podcast and. People will people will join, people will follow, like, Oh, I’ll be on your podcast, why not? And you’ll be shocked at the type of people you can get on a podcast. It’s, it’s, it’s phenomenal. And it won’t be like that forever, but I, I think we’re a long ways away from that changing.
Jason
Yeah, absolutely.
Astra
When it comes to nonprofits in particular, how do you show like a return on investment of that podcast? Because as particularly charities and nonprofits are, every penny is like ringfenced for something, or it’s from a donor and has to be spent on a specific cause. Firstly, how do you prove the ROI? And secondly, what’s your style? How do you make them think
Okay, a podcast. It doesn’t seem like a traditional way of marketing, but it could be really, really good for helping boost your mission. Two part question.
Jamar
Yeah, yeah, that is those two questions are deep. So the first one the first one is, you know, we make sure that everything is tracked and everything is measured. Well, two things you’re trying to build with the podcast. One is you’re trying to you got your hard metrics, so you got your click through and you got your website visits, you got your views. As far as from the content being posted, you got your engagement, you also got the guests. So the guests, when they come on to the podcast after its released, we then package up that content and give it to the guest. So this is sometimes a misstep from a lot of people that have a podcast. You give that content just a little bit of snippets of it. Couple graphics, so they post it to their audience. So we also kind of measure if they’ve posted it, what does that look like with the activity from that post as well? And then ultimately, you know, there’s some kind of like, you know, metrics of sales, you know, so for a non-profit, it’s really about, hey, are they are they starting a blood drive?
Are they, you know, becoming a donor? Are they getting activated in some way? You know, if it’s if it’s a traditional kind of corporate organisation, it might be a sale, it might be a lead, it might be a business, you know, kind of development opportunity. And so that’s how we track those kind of metrics from from the website to social and also kind of driving through email campaigns and kind of other avenues as well and how this idea kind of comes to this one great sales question.
I love to ask. I love to ask it. So it’s okay. So let’s say you’re just kind of talking with somebody now. They came to you for some reason right there. There’s talking to you about it for some reason. I love to ask the question of: What happens if you just do nothing? What if we just do nothing? You know what I guess? What ideas do you have?
Yeah, you know, to do it in silence.
Astra
Awkward.
Jamar
Yeah. And you just. Yeah, you just have. That awkward silence and you get them to start talking. And what happens is they want to do something different. They want to do something unique. They’ve tried all the traditional ways, and they want to do something a little bit out of the box. And that’s kind of how you find the people that are really serious about it and the people that are kind of like, Yeah, it’s maybe an idea, but I don’t really believe in it.
So you really got to believe in in that structure of it, of the podcast. So and then the other, the other kind of metric point that’s harder to track is brand awareness. It’s, it’s the kind of that like, hey, you know, we have like these gut check points where we say like, hey, do you do you feel that this podcast is really from a brand awareness standpoint? What are some things that have happened that haven’t happened before? It’s a great question to ask because if you didn’t have the podcast, you know, and you would be like, hey, well, what? Where would I be at versus you having the podcast that you’re saying, Hey, this happened, we had this person reach out. I can’t believe that this person contact us all. We had, you know, a press release pushed out from another company that, you know, we had the guest on. And also we’re all in this article. And we’d had no we had no clue that was even going to happen. So there’s other brand awareness type of things that that are harder to measure. But if you ask the right questions, you can kind of measure what those successes are.
And building that brand. And once again, once you have the show, once you have that platform, people then kind of tend to want to come to you. The more you do it, the more that you’re consistent with it. So I always like to just kind of get them get their brain turning a little bit. Yes, the concept is newer, but it’s kind of like, well, what have you tried already? And then let’s let’s go into something different. And then if, if, if all else fails, let’s say the podcast is an absolute dud. Let’s say that nothing works with it. What do you lose? Get and get from it. Let’s see how you get no fundraising. You get no donors. You don’t get any people that are interacting our guys directly, you know, supporting your mission. Well, what else do you get? The views, the contents, the the engagements and the guests and having a platform built from scratch, I think that is kind of worth it. And it’s own. And then you kind of measure it as you as you stay consistent and you look at it and say, you know, how far along do I want to go with this?
Astra
Mm hmm. Yeah, I guess I just. That content waterfall that you’re talking about before I get all of that, like, seventy pieces of snack size content.
Jamar
Assets, you know.
Jason
Even even as marketers, the most common path to creating content is right. Guys, we need to create some content. Okay, cool. You sit there with like a board marker and a whiteboard or, you know, or a piece of paper and you start brainstorming. It will just feels very difficult because you like what hasn’t been done before or what has been done that we can do better or or interesting stories if we got.
And there’s always conflicts in there and you kind of start working on it, you get your bullet points, you start writing it all. Just it is.
Jamar
Much more.
Jason
Work than just this. Having a conversation with someone and saying, What are you passionate about? What are your challenges? Yeah, cool. Okay, this record that is transcribe it. Now, there’s your first bones of a blog and then, as you say, all those different other parts and snippets and segments, you get all of it as well as combining on that.
The networking element is is just takes all of the slog out of it and it becomes like the beating heart and momentum. Because if you, if you set yourself a target of how many you’re going to do it, there’s the momentum that you’ve got of producing content rather than it comes back around the beginning of the next month. Let’s go to two more blogs now or three more blogs or whatever it may be. So, yeah, I’m absolutely with you. This stuff is so powerful in starting actually, and you’re not doing it on your own as well because so often that process is done in a room somewhere with you and your ideas, which is never as good as when you’re collaborating as we are discussing stuff and critiquing things and challenging some of those ideas.
And on that, what’s what has been the biggest change and challenge in the charity third sector since you’ve kind of been working with it? Is there been any new things come up? The kind of that they’re really struggling with and you may be can help them with?
Jamar
Yeah, I think from the charity side, non-profit side, the challenge is always depending on the size. So a lot of times, you know, the non-profit side has kind of set up a lot differently than the corporation side. So the challenge really kind of becomes not too can we do it as it’s more of like who’s going to do it? That’s really the biggest challenge, you know, depending on how large their team is or who’s doing what. A lot of nonprofits, they’re very there’s so many things that have to be happening all at once. You know, someone’s got to be doing the grant writing. Somebody has to do the fulfilment. Somebody has to, you know, be there at the door if they have kind of a brick and mortar store.
So, you know, somebody has to be working on fundraising. Somebody has to be doing the operations of it. Somebody has to be managing the event. Somebody has to I mean, there’s like a constant stream of like different people. And that’s kind of the biggest struggle with doing things. And what I suggest as far as for a solution, it’s not necessarily I mean, we do help since we do, you know, sales of marketing plans, my brain all always is looking at things operationally and a lot of nonprofits are doing way too much, way too much. If you look at kind of everything that’s happening throughout the year, you’ve got to say, what are the things that are kind of benefiting me the most and what are the things that are just a lot of busy work that we’re not getting the same kind of see through as far as for the success of it. And they have to start streamlining and they have to start cutting things off.
So that way they can focus more on the bigger things that are that are helping the mission and driving the fundraising sources and or the brand awareness or, you know, recruitment, you know, for their company. Because a lot of nonprofits get tied into every little thing that they have to do and they get stuck and they get kind of paralysed by that, or they just try to keep maintaining it. And it’s really hard, especially if you’re if you’re a smaller non-profit. So I always suggest to streamline in things, cut it off and just and let’s focus and put that time and energy into promoting the thing that’s really helping you. And then once you get that stuff turning, then you can branch out to others. But that’s something that I always see a kind of across the board, depending on the size. But it’s most non-profits are kind of in that space.
Astra
What you’re going to say. Most nonprofits are not doing enough. I was surprised when you said that. But then I think about how they sort of throw their weight behind every kind of awareness day, not just the kind of within their mission. And yeah, you’ve changed my perspective.
Jamar
Awesome. Yeah, I did.
Jason
That is there’s a danger to doing 20% of everything, isn’t there? You just don’t get anything done. But it’s so hard to say no to a new way of maybe raising funds or, you know, when there’s so many things like that. I know speaking to some people in the in the in like the third sector that they say they will have like maybe one or two days a month where they would look at the marketing and then be firefighting for the rest of the month and then they’ll be like, like, what was I who was speaking to you about that campaign idea? And then come back to it and spend half the time just remembering what it was that they were doing in the first place to get to that point. It’s really interesting. You started with a sponsorship kit as well as something that’s quite a core piece that you offer.
But can you talk to me about why you think why you come up with that and why that’s such an important thing that you guys that you guys offer?
Jamar
Yeah, because, look, people are busy. I mean, people especially in these these days, like people are super busy and they don’t have the time to have like 15 meetings to talk about something. And so if you want to package up what your idea is or what your offer is and you only have a limited amount of time, we’ll put your best foot forward and and create something that you can pass off to somebody. So at least they can get a snapshot of what it’s about. Of course, everybody has a different, like, you know, activation for themself where they say like, oh no, no, this like this is why I’m doing this, because my aunts, you know, sisters cousin, you know, is really impacted by this. And this is this is why I want to do this. That’s different for every person. But have the brand, have exactly what your offer is, how the impact is going to really affect, you know, the community and and what they’re doing and make sure that it’s, you know, it’s tight knit and it’s packaged in a way where you can send it out to anybody and they can at least understand what what you have and what you have to offer and which and what you do.
It’s just so important because a lot of a lot of these nonprofits don’t have that. And so they make it twice as much as work, you know, for them to be able to do that, especially, you know, if you think about the different ways on how they’re fundraising, you know, some of it may come from corporate, you know, organisations, some of it may come from some foundations that want to help. Some of it might be grants, some of it might be, you know, kind of events. And just from from the many basically of of getting, you know, donations through there. And, you know, a lot of the ways on how they’re getting the bigger dollar amounts is through kind of some email or a couple of meeting interaction. So you got to be have kind of the thing in your toolkit to say, hey, here you go, check this out and keep it simple.
Keep it simple. You know, you don’t don’t have that deck. Be 50 pages like nobody got time for that. No one’s got time for it, you know, just make it short and sweet and make make some of the actual, like, ways to get involved. You know, give it a three tier process, you know, three tier, you know, ideas of how to get people involved. And always there’s always a custom, there’s always a custom. But you don’t have to put every single custom way that people can, you know, donate and get involved.
Jason
Absolutely. I think there’s there’s been so many examples as we do more and more work where we are just looking at, well, the conversation is mainly focussed on how we get more attention to this cause and how we can bring traffic and eyeballs and audience to this to this cause. But what they get when they, when they get there is it’s really difficult for them to know what to do.
There’s no donate button. There’s no clear call to action that they don’t know if they should be jumping on the newsletter or if they can visit or like it’s all just it’s a bit convoluted. Basically. I tried to actually donate somewhere the other day and it was a link to PayPal, the PayPal home page. It took me to the home page of PayPal.
And as I said, we have to really work around the blocks and kind of like to get into work.
Jamar
And I mean.
Jason
It is like it seems like simple to to I think as a marketer that seems simple, but there’s so many that just miss it by like a small margin. By just making that journey easier, you’re talking absolute huge amounts more in funds like raised basically says that that work is is incredible. I think that’s why I picked up on the fact that you got that is is probably one of the most common problems so many other really common things that maybe charities overlook that businesses tend not to, um.
Jamar
I mean, not business and charities. I mean, they’re, what they’re doing is a little bit different, but they’re both still running a business. I guess that’s, that’s the other thing. I mean, a lot of nonprofits don’t treat it like a business. They treat it like a hobby. And, you know, you could tell that a lot of times with the smaller ones, you know, that are just treating it like I was kind of getting through this instead of treating it like a business and having a plan and having like, what are you going to be doing?
I think also another common mistake that it doesn’t really go into fully on the marketing side, but if you want to have some of your board have participation, you know, within what your what you’re doing, the best way to get them involved first is by highlighting them and let them know that they care, you know, or that they matter. I meant that they matter. You know, a lot of you know, I’ve seen some nonprofits kind of get, you know, like, oh, man, we got to get new board members. They think that’s going to solve all their problems. You know, let’s get the let’s get the new board members. Let’s get them on board and then, you know, do stuff for us. Go on, let’s go. And, you know, just as much as you’re trying to sell, you know, the ideas and concepts to other people, you also have to do that internally for your board to get them going because they joined the board. It could be partially for the mission, but often times it’s to it’s also to help with their even brand and kind of get them on the next, you know, step of where they’re going to go in their career. And, you know, you have to look at it like if you want to get some participation, the best way first is just to highlight them, you know, and announce that and really get them involved. So they feel like, oh, my God, hey there, just sit it out. You know, there’s a there’s a press release about me. There’s there’s an email campaign.
I’m on the website. You know, I’m on social media. This is great. I mean, they put it out there, new board member, okay, I got to do something. You know, like I’ll get promoted. This is great. You know, and just give give them those board members a little bit of of promotion as well as and honestly it’s going to help anyways because somebody may say, Oh, I didn’t know that person was doing that. I’ll donate, I’ll, I’ll donate to that. I didn’t know that person was involved. That’s, that’s one my good friends. I’ll donate, you know, and you just never know kind of where that’s going to come from.
But oftentimes they’re just spent so much externally. You got to look a little bit internal, especially for the board, because if you want to keep them and keep that board activity high, you got to be able to showcase them as well.
Jason
That’s so important. And there’s like there’s so much so much of what we do takes a long time. You can’t, like, try a podcast or put together a marketing campaign and give it a month or two and then check if it works like it takes. It’s cumulative and it needs momentum. And in order for that momentum to happen, people need to be invested in it for a long time.
So everything you just said is so crucial to keep that interest. And then one guy is after four. Hey, what is it? They’re spending all this time? What? What is it doing? Is they actually giving us anything? Well, yeah, because you went viral last week or, you know, you.
Jamar
You.
Jason
Just got mentioned in the local press, like couple don’t even get to ask that question if that’s what’s happening in the meantime. And making them aware of it is so important to. Right because that’s what kills a lot of this stuff. You might be making progress, but before it really got a chance to bare fruit, someone’s saying, well, you know, the session like looks like is here.
And if we tried this so like just tweaking the that the way of going the crucial point can be the difference between yeah, no, no.
Jamar
And they they do say they do say that it takes like you won’t actually really start getting and I’ve seen it vary but you won’t really start getting real engagement until episode 20 is typically for a podcast. Yeah. So think about that. And most podcasts actually end on episode three. Most people stop doing a podcast episode three because like, you know, like, Oh, where’s the audience?
Where’s where’s all those listeners? No one’s listening. I posted it. I’m getting no like, you know, no one cares, you know of it. But just like getting thing, you got to see it through. You got to, you know, you got to be consistent with it. And depending on how you’re posting each one of those episodes, if you’re just posting a link to a, you know, your main social media channel and that’s it, and then not promoting it any other way, well, you gave it a one shot in, you know, 1,000,002 to even land somewhere. You knows, you got to constantly kind of be putting it out there different ways to promote it. And in most people ended episode three. So, you know, they just they don’t have that stamina. You got to have the stamina to to keep pushing through and stay consistent before you just before you just kill it.
Astra
And if we find ourselves saying as a digital agency, the same thing about SEO, like it’s a long term investment.
Jamar
Oh my gosh, yeah.
I know.
Astra
Which is the Segway into our next section. So that’s another do we ask all of our podcast questions? And they are about traditional digital media advertising methods rather than sort of podcasting and such. But if you had to order the following marketing methods in terms of importance, where would you put them? So we’ve got pay per click, social media, organic and paid email marketing and search engine optimisation.
Which one’s your most important, least important?
Jamar
Oh, that’s tough because it depends on the business, but I’ll I’ll just go in general, I think first and foremost, because it’s free and people generally know how to do it, at least at the very barebones way a method would be. Social media would be the most important because it’s free and it’s easy.
Yeah, just go down.
Astra
I mean.
Jamar
Second, I would say SEO.
Astra
Mm hmm.
Jamar
I mean, it’s just so important that make sure people can find you. And the higher you rank, I mean, you just get free leads. It’s. It’s it’s it’s great. And then I would go to probably email marketing once you build up a good list and they actually are interacting and engaging, you could depending on the business, you can literally print money if you know what you’re doing.
So email marketing is so powerful, it’s still powerful to this day. I think pay per click would be would be the last one than this one.
Astra
No, no. You got them. You got. Okay. Ever speak speaking speaking generally on forever media. How confident on a scale of 1 to 10 are you in your current marketing strategy.
Jamar
For ourselves.
Astra
Yourselves, yeah.
Jamar
Yeah, that’s funny. You know, we do it for everybody else ourselves. I feel like for ourselves. I’m pretty confident. There are areas I think that you’ve mentioned that were I feel like it’d be could be a lot better. And so like SEO wise, I feel like our SEO is not the greatest just because we’re so focussed on the experiential type of marketing, we get a lot of that’s like one of our main channels of kind of how we’re getting that awareness out. So oftentimes like that digital presence, besides social media, we’re great on there, but it’s not getting the same love and attention that like the other areas are. So I do, I’m I would say I’m fairly confident. I, you know, from the outside looking in, of course, I mean, I’m always critical of myself, but from the outside looking in, I mean, people interact with us.
People come to us because they’re like, Man, I see you’re everywhere. That’s always what I hear. So that’s got to be something. Good that’s happening. If they get there, come to us and they they believe, you know, they can trust us with their brand as well.
Astra
That’s fact. Well, my next question was going to be, what do you think is the key to improving that score? But you kind of touched on that just sort of the digital side of.
Jamar
Oh, for sure. And I mean, that’s that’s something. Yeah, got it. Got to focus on it.
Jason
It’s one of those things though, in digital as a digital agency focussing on SEO, it’s a bit of a nightmare because most digital agencies also know how to do SEO or or selling IT or know somebody can do it so that the amount of work is is meant to have to like do so. You can only ever really bank locally anyway.
Most of the stuff is really difficult. We banks locally for the ones we want to, we want to. But trying to do that on a national level, whether you’re facing as we have a guy who’s an expert at it. So it’s really it’s really tough. And that leads us onto the segment, two, which we’re calling hook, line and stinker. A sign is very similar to what we’ve seen in previous episodes where we have a fake facts and you sort of have two truths and a lie. In this case, we’re going to be doing two truths and a lie, but we have hooks for podcasts. So I’m going to name I’m going to read some out. I’m going to share the screen you two are playing against each other on this one. And you got to tell me which one is the is the stinker from these from these. And then we make sure they give the answers away as I share her. So can you see my screen? And obviously I read out from from okay here you guys can see my screen. Okay.
Jamar
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason
And I read these out for the audio and listeners as well. So number one again and one we starting quite like I think the three hooks are why your content is being ignored. The truth about YouTube and competition is the thief of creativity. Which one is the stinker?
Astra
Oh, these are podcast titles, right?
Jason
That’s right.
Astra
Yeah. Okay.
Jason
And they obviously made to be as click-baity as possible.
Astra
Yeah.
Jason
Each one wants you to listen to them because this I oh well I’m.
Astra
One of them’s fake.
Jason
One of them’s fake. You go tell me which ones.
Astra
Okay, Jamar, I’m going to let you guess first because I think I know which one it is because I know how Jason writes. So I want to hear you’re thinking.
Jamar
Has got an advantage a competitive advantage.
Astra
So that’s why I’m giving you the floor.
Jamar
Okay.
Astra
None of them super, super clicky.
Jason
No, this one’s like they get better. Trust me.
Astra
Okay.
Jamar
I think it’s I think it’s competition. It’s the thief of creativity.
Astra
Okay? I also think it’s that one, because one of Jason’s favourite sayings is Competition is the thief of joy. And I think his.
Jason
Comparison is the theif of joy.
Astra
Comparison. Sorry.
Jamar
Yeah, yeah.
Jason
Good, good, good, good shout both of you. You’re both wrong,the fake the stinker was why your content is being ignored. So the other two were from anything Goes By. Emma Chamberlain.
Jamar
Okay.
Jason
Zero zero so far.
Jamar
Oh, okay. These are.
Real. These are real titles.
Jason
Yeah. These, these are all real title was one of them’s one of them is written by me. Okay. Number one. So the childhood lie that’s ruining all of our lives. Victim number two, victimhood and self-sabotage is destroying the world in 2022. And number three, How dieting shortens your life and increases weight gain.
Astra
Well, that went from light to dark real quick. So did that all quite click the childhood lie that’s ruining all of our lives. This has got to be some kind of self-help podcast or something.
Jamar
Yeah.
Astra
I think Victim Hood in Self-sabotage is destroying the world in 2022. You just going too long? Seems too long.
Jamar
Yeah, I was actually going to go with that one too. That thing is super long.
Jason
You’re trying to critique my writing.
Jamar
What do you.
Jason
Mean? You both have zero points still.
Astra
Okay.
Jason
It’s.
Jamar
Don’t say
Is that.
Jason
How dieting shortens your life and increases weight gain was the one created by me so this was now the other two are from Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett and the first one was the childhood lie that’s ruining all of our lives was Gabor Made and Victimhood and Self-sabotage was Africa Brooke that was the guest for that one.
Jamar
Okay. Next.
Astra
So there was a moment between the moment.
Jason
Okay, so how from winning Love Island and Strictly Come Dancing to battling imposter syndrome, number one. Number two, interviewing an exorcism expert possessed possessions is that possessions? No possession?
Jamar
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason
A Ouija board, poltergeists and more.
Jamar
You won’t catch me doing that.
Jason
The the A-Z of the of the world’s best things. So which of those is the stinker?
Jamar
Oh, my God. The last one sucks.
It’s It’s horrible. I.
I I’ll go with the last one. I mean, the first one is so long, but after you just threw that curveball, I think that the last one I just like, what does that even mean? This is the alphabet of the world.
Best things. The best things of what? What are we talking about?
Astra
I think from winning Love Island and Strictly Come Dancing, just because I don’t think anyone who’s won one has also won the other, I could be wrong.
Jason
Well, you got your first point. The first one is this was the stinker, which.
Jamar
Means the A to Z of the.
Jason
World’s best things was a real episode.
Jamar
Let us help you write your titles. Horrible.
Jason
That’s from Jack Mate’s Happy Hour podcast. Okay, we’re in the last the final ones now. Excuse the weird image there. That’s from a template presentation I haven’t got rid of.
Jamar
Yeah.
Jason
Okay, so is it is it number one. Is your parent a narcissist? Number two, why men are trash that you shouldn’t recycle.
Number three, how to rick him into proposing. Which one is the stinker?
Jamar
Oh, I’m just shooting in the dark at this point.
Astra
This sounds like a female-ledd podcast. Yeah, I dont, how to trick him into proposing it feels too off colour.
Jamar
Okay. I feel.
Astra
Too manipulative.
Jason
So you go with that one.
Astra
Yeah, I think that one.
Jason
And Jamar?
Jamar
I’m going to go with why men are trash.
Oh, that means you got that one.
Jason
But so again, one.
Astra
One, one.
Jason
These ones are from The Call Her Daddy podcast by Alex Cooper. And final one then this is this is to win.
Astra
Decider.
Jason
So the hooks are 500K new TikTok followers a week, Amber Turd and Goodfellas number one Penis sizes, Ferris’ Confederate flag and why Cam is moving to the UK to find love and two and Tossing the salad, octopus friends and sex ed with your parents is number three. Which one is the stinker?
Jamar
What are they talking about man…
Astra
None of them make any sense
Jamar
Where are these conversations going?
Astra
I feel like the TikTok one is true because both of those things are like quite big trends. A while ago and then Cam is probably someone on the podcast, so feels like that one is true. I’m going to say the last one is false.
Jamar
I was going to say the last one. Yeah. Octopus friends like what is that? What is that? But I feel like you made that up quick.
Jason
Well it ends a draw then because they were all true, it was a trick question. The last one.
So, yes, horrible hook, line and sinker. I can’t I haven’t got a bonus round to the finish off. So you both you both take the win.
Astra
Both champions this time.
Jamar
Yeah.
Like, like clip art down the bottom.
Jason
And that brings us on to our last segment, which is strategy analogy. Do you want to run this one Astra?
Astra
Yeah. So the concept of this is I will generate a random words in a random generater and then we all have to come up with some sort of marketing analogy to do with the words. So let me generate random words.
Jason
Marketing analogy as it is really good at this requires you to think on your feet. And I just I have died a death to do this in the past. So hopefully I can come back and do better.
Astra
The word is reputation.
Jamar
So we are supposed to think of what? Explain the rules one more time.
Astra
So it’s using the word reputation. Think of some sort of marketing analogy to do with reputation or how marketing is like a reputation.
Jamar
Which I guess. Yeah.
Astra
Is kind of a straight swap, right?
Jamar
Yeah. Yeah. I mean.
So, you know, I think of your brand as your reputation. So you’re, you’re looking at costs like you’re cutting your brand equity that you keep putting kind of coins out there. You say how you how many coins that I put into into the machine for for my brand reputation and, you know, you have to kind of keep putting coins in there because otherwise people are going to forget about your reputation or they’re going to be like, well, I haven’t heard from them in a while. That’s that’s your reputation.
Yeah. They’re not seeing you. So that would be that would be my analogy.
Jason
I would. I think that’s good. I think I’d say that you’re right. You get a reputation for some kind of value or an exhibited a behaviour that you do. Right. So I’ve got a what would be my reputation, I guess my reputation not to look too Insular, but I won’t even go into me actually. But if you’ve got good reputation for being a good person or being honest or being on time, those three things kind of form your principles.
And then from there people may hire you for those things, and it becomes almost an articulation of the values and the things that they expect to continually represent and abide by. So reputation is very similar to marketing and branding because it’s the things that you will consistently do regardless of everything else. That’s how you’re known about your reputation is for you to be providing that service in that way every time.
So it’s very it’s very much a straight, straight swap. Yeah. As you say for branding, right. Is what are you known for? What does someone, when they hear your name, think that guy, he’s a good dude, you know, and he’ll get there on time. I it’s to me than that I promise you I don’t just get.
Jamar
There 5 minutes before he starts.
Jason
But Jason in the corner like.
Jamar
Hey guys, what was keeping you?
Astra
I think so. Marketing like reputations can be accidental successes as well as intentional disasters. So you can, like, go into the world and try and make yourself a reputation as, say, being the early guy and then turn up late every appointment you’ve ever made, which is, you know, all your intentions that you’re like, I want to be an early guy, but my life is just getting in the way of that and it can be end up being a disaster.
Astra
Or you could end up just tweeting something recording a TikTok, putting out there, it goes viral and then all of a sudden your name is made and you didn’t even really try. So that’s my analogy for reputation.
Jason
That’s interesting. I like that. Just because it brings the point of something I saw the other day where someone said that they released one of many videos and it went viral and they said it was the worst thing that happens to them because it was one of those throw away things they didn’t really want to be, didn’t think it would blow up.
Jason
But so now they’ve done some great things that just did nothing. And then they put this this one video out and it went everywhere. And suddenly that’s so that’s all everyone wants from them is just to do that video again. Yeah, it’s variations of it. And they like, oh.
Jamar
That’s the worst, right? Yeah. That, that’s actually my that’s that’s one of my nightmares is. You know, people are like, why don’t you Just like get on these trends, you know, and it’s like it’s yes, you know, I could, but it’s like, do you want to be known as like you know, like if something blows up.
Do you want to be known as the sandwich guy. Or, you know, the yeah. That guy that.
Astra
That’ll be your obituary.
Jamar
Yeah.
Astra
On the news was the thing.
Jamar
So these trends are like just stupid, you know, like, I don’t want to be known as like, I mean, that guy that blew up with the cranberry juice, you know, like he’s on the skateboard. Yeah. And he just drank it. It, you know, I mean.
You’d be known as the cranberry guy for the rest of your life. Yeah. You know, I don’t I don’t know if I want to be known as that, and I guess you could change, but it takes a while.
Jason
Hard, man. You got to be you got to really think twice before as as a as a 33 year old man. I’m not going to be twerking while singing about SEO. And I know it’s dangerous if that.
Jamar
Because that will go viral as well.
You know that it will go viral.
Jason
That concludes segment three. So I guess this is the chance now. You’ve got you’ve got to change your circle, change your life. Just to talk a little bit about what that book is about and and what the why the audience should look into it.
Jamar
You know, I, I wrote this book about a now a year and a half ago. Holy crap. So it’s called Change Your Circle, Change Your Life. It’s the how to Guide to Change Anyone’s Life. And really the book is it’s really all about evaluating your current circle. And then how do you get into new circles? And it’s a lot of my life experiences within the book because I kind of looked back and said, How did I get here? And it was my ability to understand myself from my self-awareness to who I am, what my gifts are, and then how do I get into new circles? So how do you find your way in? How do you discover that? How do you create those ideas of Where do I want to go and have a plan? And then your ability to be able to constantly change your circle and you know, it really is.
Everybody has to go through this. You know, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing in your life, what you have going on, you have to master that ability to change your circle if you want to kind of succeed. And and and this is personal or business, by the way. This is personal or business. And like, not everybody is worth your circle, you know? So you got to, like, know about the barriers and and, you know, how much time are you investing in others just to be in your circle when they’re not investing the time to be in yours and you’re like, keep it in there for like what reason? Especially for family members. I know it’s harder for family members, but you’re you’re constantly going back when it’s like, you know, if they don’t want to save themselves, there’s only so much you can do.
So that’s what that book is all about. It’s helped a lot of people. And I want to help, you know, continue to get it out there in the world. And and I truly believe you if read this book, it’s got 50% mindset, 50% action. So like it literally has action items at end of each chapter that you can apply to right then and there to do that. So if you read this and you actually do what’s in the book, you could you could change your life. There’s no way. There’s no there’s no way possible you couldn’t you know, there’s there’ll be some change.
And there’ll be no way that you can’t. I mean. I would be shocked. I would want to hear the story of somebody did everything in the book and nothing changed, obviously.
Jason
That’s awesome man we will definitely link to the to the to the book in the in the show notes and the details. So you can you can check it out there. And I guess it just falls upon me to say thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a great, great chance to have reached across outside of the UK again on the podcast.
This is really nice to get a different perspective and you’ve got like a ton of experience that we could go into. I mean there’s so many of that intro. I didn’t even get a chance to go into it, but it’s been really nice having you on and a joy to chat to you. So thanks Jamar.
Jamar
Me. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. Really appreciate it. It’s fun. This is probably one of the most fun podcasts I’ve been on. I love the games and stuff at the end, it was it was really good.
Jason
Oh, good. Absolutely. You’re going to use that as a as a testimonial somewhere.
Jamar
Go ahead that’s what it’s for!
