Marketing is all about people. You have to prove you have a market for your product or service.
Once you have that market, you have to find your customer. One of the most important things any CEO needs to know is who their customer or client is. CEOs need to have their pulse on that market and know the words to reach that client base, and this often means having a marketing manager to help them achieve that.
In our recent podcast episode, we sat down with marketing expert and CEO of Redshift Digital Marketing, Jeff Lizik. Lizik has been in the marketing game since college, when he first had his hand at running advertisements for a 1-900 psychic line. As a psychology major in college, Lizik
had studied persuasion. He has worked with major clients, like eBay, to help with their marketing. Lizik created what he calls Digital Marketing Essentialism, which is more about going back to the basics of marketing. It’s about knowing who your customer is inside and out, knowing their empathy map, putting yourself in their shoes, and more. And it's all about how to break your bad marketing habits once and for all!
To Lizik, being not your average CEO means being vulnerable with your clients. He says that
The more vulnerable you are to your story, like sharing yourself with your team and customers, the more you are connected with your brand. Lizik said that most of the time, in sales meetings, he finds that just sharing his story with people is what entices them to want to work with him. It allows others to know who he is as a person, it’s not about trying to sell them. Lizik is especially good at connecting with others, it’s what he is often most known for among his team.
Lizik stressed the importance of not being cookie-cutter, and he advised you to follow your intuition and your heart instead of the textbook. People will try to get you to follow the status quo, but Lizik says to push beyond that. One of the ways that he achieved that was by creating the kind of business that he always wanted to work for. He puts his team first by doing things like creating Redshift holidays to celebrate when a month doesn’t have a 3-day weekend in it. His team finds a holiday to celebrate (like National Hot Dog Day or Cardi B’s birthday). He even makes sure that the company takes off for any days that the local schools have off so that parents don’t have to stress about finding childcare. Lizik’s emphasis as a CEO is on caring for people. He sees his customers and his team as people to connect with.
The relationships are far more important than simply putting money in the pocket of the company.
Learn more from Jeff and Redshift