Who is the hero of your company’s story? Spoiler alert: It shouldn’t be you. Our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working With Cam Marston” was Stephanie Greenwood, president of Mobile-based IMMIX Strategic. And she says successful marketing is about telling a story. Steve Jobs learned that when he found himself out at Apple and spent time working at Pixar. He then returned to Apple ready to sell the MacIntosh by telling stories — and putting the customer at the center of them. He did it with the tag line “Think different.” “He was inviting people into an opportunity… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, What's Working with Cam MarstonWe all know digital marketing is important for your business. But have you thought about how you’re marketing yourself? Where do you start? Our guest in the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston” maintains that it’s best to use what he calls an inside-out approach. Gayle Rogers is the founder and self-described Chief Happiness Officer at The Atomic Agency, a Birmingham-based digital marketing firm. He describes the concept of inside-marketing like this: “We’re big advocates of starting with the things that are closest to you, that you have the most control over, and fixing those first, and then… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, What's Working with Cam MarstonDoctors and surgeons, by the nature of their profession, need to stay on the cutting edge of technology. For an orthopedic surgeon like Dr. Matt Barber of Mobile, that means taking advantage of robotics, 3D modeling, and even artificial intelligence and augmented reality. As Barber told us in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” this technology is making procedures like the knee and hip replacements in which he specializes more efficient, less invasive and resulting in better outcomes. Doctors and surgeons, like people in many other professions, are also finding that keeping up with a different type… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, Podcast, What's Working with Cam MarstonIf you follow social media trends, you probably already know that Facebook is not the place to reach millennials and Generation Z. But did you know that Google is not the primary search engine for many of them, as well? Our guest in the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston” was Tim Dozier, CEO of Hummingbird Ideas, a full-service advertising agency in Mobile. Part of his job is getting his clients’ messages in front of the audiences they’re trying to reach. If those audiences are in the younger generations, that’s increasingly in places like TikTok and YouTube. Dozier… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, Generation Y / Millennials, Generations, iGen, Podcast, What's Working with Cam MarstonThis image may not mean a lot to you but it does to me. This is the web traffic on John Shell’s site TheEagleReef.com. He was my guest on last week’s show discussing his Eagle Scout badge pursuit and I mentioned his site a few times on the show to try to send listeners there to support his very worthy project. You can see it worked. The site visits spiked the day the podcast was released and all the accompanying social media posts were sent out to announce the show. He got 15 – 20 new orders during the week… Read More
Categories: Advertising, What's Working with Cam MarstonA small dream came true this past Saturday when I had a book signing at Fairhope’s Page & Palette book store for my new book, What Works. Sales were brisk for only brief moments of time but the event itself was what I was after. Behind me on the table are books by authors I’ve always admired (Rick Bragg, Watt Key, Winston Groome, are but a few) and to be sitting next to them with a book of my own was very special for me. Friends and family came by to check on me, buy a book, and visit for a… Read More
Categories: Advertising, What's Working with Cam MarstonDr. David Bronner wasn’t the first choice to lead the Retirement Systems of Alabama when the job was last open back in 1973. He wasn’t the second or third choice. He wasn’t even the 100th choice. But he was the right choice. Bronner, who grew up in Minnesota before coming to Alabama for law school, ended up running the state’s retirement system because neither of the two most powerful men in the state at that time – Gov. George Wallace and Paul Hubbert, then head of the Alabama Education Association – knew who he was. And therefore, after about 160… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Blog, Financial Services, Podcast, Real Estate, Succession Planning, What's Working with Cam MarstonWant to feed millennials? Here’s what you need to know. Forbes recently published a list of food-related trends for millennials, and if you’re a restauranteur or grocer who wants to stay in business, it’s probably advice worth heeding. Millennials not only represent the largest sector of the workforce now, they represent the largest sector of adults. These are your customers. You’d better know what they want. So what do they want? For starters, less sugar. Many of us, actually – not just millennials — are looking for any and all ways to cut it out of our diets for reasons… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Generation Y / MillennialsIn this age of instantaneous and global communication, where a lie or a bad review can travel, as they say, halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on, how does a business control its own message? Our guest in this episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston” is Kinnon Phillips, an accredited public relations professional who is experienced with crisis communications and what to do when the weight of the world – and the worldwide web – is crashing down on your business’ reputation. Social media is now our “town square,” Phillips says, and “word of mouth” takes… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Entrepreneurship, PodcastSo apparently Business Insider isn’t the only outlet obsessed with blaming millennials for the demise of pretty much any product that’s seeing a slip in sales. Quartz published a piece recently blaming millennials for what it termed the death of the classic novel. In making this claim, writer Ajinomoh Ozovehe Caleb compared sales of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye upon its release in 1951 with a newer critically acclaimed work, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, which sold only half as many copies per year as Salinger’s masterpiece. Caleb further noted that it’s almost unheard of now for… Read More
Categories: Advertising, Downloadable Media, Generation Y / Millennials