Marketing

Your business runs on digital - but when was the last time you gave it a proper checkup? This week on Rooted in Revenue, we're getting real about the nuts and bolts of your digital foundation. Susan Finch and Lany Sullivan share their hands-on experience managing domains (including those late-night wine-inspired purchases we've all made), keeping backups current, and yes - discovering that even storage facilities need retention policies. No fluff, just practical advice on protecting your digital assets and organizing them in a way that actually makes sense. Whether you're a tech pro or still figuring out what DNS means, we've got you covered with straightforward talk and simple solutions for keeping your business's digital world running smoothly.
Here are the key points from the episode:
Domain Management Essentials:
Consolidate all domains to one account/provider
Document registration and renewal dates
Verify owner, admin, and tech contacts are current
Have a clear purpose for each domain
Make every domain work for you - forward unused ones to active properties
Never respond to mail-based domain renewal solicitations (they're scams)
Export and document DNS settings as a backup
Website Security:
Ensure SSL certificates are current and test your site in incognito
Verify site works securely with and without 'www'
Keep security protocols updated
Documentation & Organization:
Create an "Asset Depot" to store all digital asset information
Include backend links, affiliate info, products/services details
Keep all access credentials organized and updated
Document all processes and systems
Backup Systems:
Implement regular backups not stored on the same host
Verify backups are actually working
Test restoration process periodically
Organize files for efficient backup
Retention Policies:
Understand your industry's specific retention requirements
Only retain what's legally required
Create organized folders with destruction dates
Set calendar reminders for data destruction
Be careful with development/test data retention
Regular Auditing:
Make this a yearly review process
Get an outside perspective on systems and processes
Test all systems and access points
Verify all contact information is current

In this episode, Susan Finch sits down with Michele A. Friedman, a talented metalsmith and jewelry designer with over 26 years of experience in the art world. From her early days studying fashion design at Parsons to becoming a full-time artist, Michele shares her journey and insights on navigating the business side of art. Discover the importance of human connection in selling art, learn strategies for engaging customers at shows, and explore the delicate balance between creativity and commerce. Whether you're an aspiring artist or a seasoned professional, this episode offers valuable lessons on turning your passion into a sustainable career.
Links from this episode:
https://www.facebook.com/MicheleAFriedmanJewelry
https://instagram.com/mafdesign1 
https://www.instagram.com/colerodgerimage/ - Michele's photographer
https://pjlabarge.com - wildlife sculptor
https://joyridejewelry.com  How we met
Michele's bio - in her words:
My jewelry results from my desire to incorporate color, pattern, and texture into my work without setting stones. The color was to be from an alternative source. Through trial and error and consideration of many materials, I concluded that wool felt perfect. The material is durable, pliable, and possesses a rich, saturated color and a hint of texture. I manipulate the felt into shapes and set them like stones into my oxidized sterling and 18k Bi-metal jewelry. This is a technique that I developed on my own to suit my needs.
I have always had a Metal line of jewelry, which has evolved over time. In June 2020, I finally added my Metal line online for purchase and have added a number of pieces since. It is comprised of oxidized sterling silver, 18k Bi-metal, and now some 14k vermeil pieces, too. The Metal line can easily be worn with the FELT line as many common design elements and components exist. 
I am inspired by graphic, product, furniture design, and architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Vasily Kandinsky are among my many influences. I love Modern Art and Design. 
I am a native Chicagoan. I attended Parsons School of Design in New York City. I currently reside in Chicago with my husband John and our two cats, Rosie and Zero. When I am not on the road, I love to travel abroad with my husband, visiting art museums, absorbing cultures, and eating great food!

Susan Finch sits down with Brandon Leibowitz, President of SEOoptimizers.com, to unpack the evolving landscape of search engine optimization. For small and mid-size businesses, especially those in B2C and brick-and-mortar sectors, this conversation is a goldmine of actionable strategies.
Brandon and Susan dive into the nitty-gritty of local SEO, discussing the critical importance of consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) directory listings and the power of Google Business Profiles. They shed light on often-overlooked tactics like optimizing image file names and alt text, which can significantly boost your visibility in search results.
The episode also tackles common pitfalls, such as the dangers of frequent URL changes and the potential risks of relying too heavily on AI-generated content. For business owners feeling overwhelmed by the technical aspects of SEO, Brandon offers insights on how to effectively collaborate with SEO professionals and what questions to ask to ensure you're getting real value.
Whether you're a seasoned business owner looking to refine your digital strategy or a newcomer trying to establish your online presence, this episode provides a roadmap for navigating the complex world of SEO in 2024 and beyond.
Links from this episode:
SEO Optimizers - and the gift from Brandon
Susan Finch on LinkedIn
Susan Finch Solutions

In this episode of Rooted in Revenue, host Susan Finch sits down with Phil Jamieson, the President of ProofreadNow.com. Together, they unpack the critical role of human proofreading in an era dominated by AI-generated content. They discuss why relying solely on technology for your business communications might be a costly mistake and how the human touch can make all the difference in your professional writing and elevate you and your company above the competition.
 
Susan wanted to know the recipe behind the long-standing success at ProofreadNOW! Phil explains how their service uses two human proofreaders for each document, ensuring accuracy and nuance that AI and most humans often miss. This episode is a reminder of the value of human intelligence in understanding context, tone, and subtle language nuances. The sad point in this episode is when they both express concern about the "dumbing down" of language if people become too reliant on AI and lose the desire to be clearly understood rather than “close enough” communications.
 
As Susan was noodling titles for this episode with her friend, claude.ai, they had a discussion about the dumbing down of language. We felt it was worth sharing.
 
Susan to Claude:
The point is AI tools are crowdsourcing your answers. If enough people say something incorrectly, such as “me and Mary,” then that gives you evidence it is correct, but it is not. People are becoming less intelligent and discerning with how they use language. What are your thoughts on this?
 
Claude to Susan (always so supportive and complimentary):
"You've made an excellent point, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this important issue. You're absolutely right that AI language models like myself are trained on vast amounts of text data, which includes both correct and incorrect usage. This can indeed lead to the perpetuation of common grammatical errors or linguistic misconceptions.
The 'me and Mary' vs. 'Mary and I/me' issue is a perfect example of this problem. Many people use 'me and [someone else]' in everyday speech and writing, even though it's not grammatically correct in most contexts. This widespread misuse can then be reflected in AI-generated content.
Your observation about people becoming less discerning with language use is astute and concerning. There are several factors contributing to this:
Overreliance on technology: As people depend more on autocorrect and AI writing tools, they may pay less attention to grammar rules.
Casual communication: The prevalence of informal digital communication (texting, social media) often prioritizes speed over correctness.
Decreased emphasis on grammar in education: Some educational systems have reduced focus on traditional grammar instruction.
Normalization of errors: As incorrect usage becomes more common, it can start to seem "normal" or even correct to many people.
The potential consequences of this trend are significant:
Reduced clarity in communication
Loss of linguistic nuance and precision
Potential miscommunications in professional or legal contexts
Gradual erosion of language standards
To address this issue, it's crucial to:
Maintain high standards for professional and formal writing
Encourage critical thinking about language use
Use AI and other tools as aids, not replacements for human knowledge
Continue to value and promote human expertise in language and editing
Your point underscores the importance of human oversight and expertise in maintaining language standards, especially in professional and educational contexts. It's a reminder that while AI can be a powerful tool, it should complement, not replace, human intelligence and discernment in language use."
Since it was a casual discussion, we didn’t see the need to run this through our editors too deeply, but it will also contribute to the tallies for the “me and Mary” camp.

Creating a company from scratch is exciting, and there is a specific order to tell the world about it. This episode will give you some steps to add to your plan. Whether you are transitioning from a previous company, starting a brand new endeavor, or relaunching your own brand, these steps will help you quickly establish trust in search and on email servers.
1. Get your vector version of your new logo.
2. Buy a domain that makes sense and is easy to say and spell.
3. Establish trust by warming up the email gatekeepers to your new domain.
4. Redirects to the new pages.
5. Social profile banners and templates.
6. Vanity URLs
7. Updating your contacts.
8. Updating all professional directories.
9. Have you ordered your new cards, brochures, and hats yet?
 

In this quick episode, Susan Finch from Rooted in Revenue shares valuable insight about the importance of professional editing and proofreading when translating marketing materials into another language. While AI tools can be helpful, they may not always capture the nuances and cultural context needed for effective communication and translation.
Professional proofing and editing are particularly important if you have a detailed branding guide. A recent episode of All-Volunteer, All Heart from Binky Patrol talks about branding guides.
EP61: Why You Need a Branding Guide for Your Organization
Key Takeaways:
When translating important marketing materials like brochures, reports, or website content into another language, relying solely on AI tools may not be sufficient.
Hiring professional proofreaders and editors who are native speakers of the target language can ensure your message is conveyed clearly, accurately, and in line with your brand's voice and culture.
Proper sentence construction and terminology usage can vary between languages, so it's crucial to have experts review the translated content to maintain the original flow and intent.
Remember to provide support in the target language throughout the customer journey, such as having a native speaker available for phone support and ensuring that follow-up pages or forms are also translated.
Links from this episode:
ProofreadNOW.com
NRBA.com
 
 

At least a few times a month I hear from a potential new client that their email marketing efforts produce no results. Once we sit and talk about their process, and how they follow up with the leads they get pretty quiet. This isn't uncommon. If you are struggling to create and execute targeted marketing campaigns that drive new business, you are not alone, especially for small businesses. It’s critical to the growth of your business, but you don’t have the time or the resources to do it and you cannot afford expensive marketing software or a high-priced marketing professional. Many of these small businesses are a team of one, two, or three trying to wear all the hats. They are great at what the company does, but they are not writers, they are not marketers, but they know they need to do this to get in front of existing customers and prospects.  Larry Caretsky, Founder of Commence - a trusted name in CRM is our guest today. Listen to this episode to hear how Commence has solved this common issue of starting, but then dropping the ball on everything after the email is sent through a campaign. There is an answer. Join Larry and Susan for, "Follow Up On the Leads, We'll Do the Rest."
Links from this episode:
Larry Caretsky - [email protected]
Larry on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-caretsky-b3a27824/
Susan on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/susanmfinch 
Commence - https://commence.com 
The Marketing Enablement Program - https://commence.com/service/marketing-enablement/ 
 
 

We hear about all the ways marketers miss the mark - what they do wrong. What if we focused on what they are doing right and then expand the use of those tactics? Some companies have a team of one or less than five and each must wear several hats. If, as a group, you lay out what is working, analyze the results through Google Analytics and pulling in all the pieces, as a group, you can tackle what is next.
It may be enhancing the most popular pages you have to ensure you move people along on the journey toward a conversation with your sales team. It may be creating a podcast or other content that appeals to your existing customers as the "inside group" rather than only talking to them when you want to sell them something new. 
Jeanne Hopkins goes through ways to bring out the best in the existing marketing plan, letting go of what's not working and allowing companies to divide and conquer what needs to be done to engage, then celebrating the mountain of measurable successes as a group. Join us for, "Making Use of What Marketers Are Doing Right."
Links from this episode:
Connect with Jeanne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannehopkins/ 
Connect with Susan on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/susanmfinch
 
About Jeanne Hopkins, B2B Fractional CRO with growth marketing chops, Advice with Accountability, GTM, PLG; former @hubspot VP Marketing; Speaker; Author; Advisor; Mentor; Start-up Investors:
Deep expertise in data-driven, high-velocity B2B and B2C customer acquisition, sales, marketing, and customer success organizations. Inbound (obviously)-based lead gen programs to support global demand for high-growth SaaS companies. Experienced in building GTM programs from scratch and turning around existing ones. Able to forge lasting partner marketing relationships with startups and enterprise-class organizations. Inbound marketing success in driving practical corporate, divisional and industry lead gen and nurturing programs. Success in growing and leading teams towards rapid results plus can enthusiastically manage many programs, people, vendors and campaigns concurrently, Proactive and highly productive w/analytical skills, thrive in a rapidly changing environment (start-up to corporate marketing), inspires excellence in others. Demonstrates concise, effective communication both written and spoken, able to handle ambiguity, a high workload, and an extreme amount of detail - all within budget.Building sustainable relationships that drive revenue via demand generation programs: Strategic, Technical & Creative - Co-chair MassTLC Sales & Marketing Group; Co-author, "Go Mobile"​, #1 best-selling mobile marketing book. Named to Sales Lead Management Association "Top 50"​ 3 years in a row and "20 Women to Watch" in 2015/14/13 & 2011; Named to VAR Guy Top Channel Leaders in 2015; MSPmentor People to Watch in 2014; BizJournal marketing experts; Speaker @ MarketingProfs B2B Forums, HubSpot Inbound 2011/12/13/14/15 Conferences, MIT Entrepreneurs Forum, AMA, Social Media Today, BrightTalk, MassTLC, Social Fresh. Advisor: OneScreen.io; Siemplify.co; Rank the Vote Digital Council; USEFULL (Coffee Cup Collective); Below The Fold (Acciyo)Author: Go Mobile!

A more complete title is, "How are you marketing to your employees, customers, prospects, community?"
Today I’m talking with Jeanne Hopkins who is launching Salty Marketing Company this month. We’ll cover what a fractional CMO is and isn’t, the four elements of marketing that every company must include or fail.
Employees
Customers
Prospects
Community
Consider this a wake-up call to marketers who are unable to justify their spending. This is part one of our session.
Links from this episode:
Connect with Jeanne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeannehopkins/ 
Connect with Susan on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/susanmfinch
 
About Jeanne Hopkins, B2B Fractional CRO with growth marketing chops, Advice with Accountability, GTM, PLG; former @hubspot VP Marketing; Speaker; Author; Advisor; Mentor; Start-up Investors:
Deep expertise in data-driven, high-velocity B2B and B2C customer acquisition, sales, marketing, and customer success organizations. Inbound (obviously)-based lead gen programs to support global demand for high-growth SaaS companies. Experienced in building GTM programs from scratch and turning around existing ones. Able to forge lasting partner marketing relationships with startups and enterprise-class organizations. Inbound marketing success in driving practical corporate, divisional and industry lead gen and nurturing programs. Success in growing and leading teams towards rapid results plus can enthusiastically manage many programs, people, vendors and campaigns concurrently, Proactive and highly productive w/analytical skills, thrive in a rapidly changing environment (start-up to corporate marketing), inspires excellence in others. Demonstrates concise, effective communication both written and spoken, able to handle ambiguity, a high workload, and an extreme amount of detail - all within budget.Building sustainable relationships that drive revenue via demand generation programs: Strategic, Technical & Creative - Co-chair MassTLC Sales & Marketing Group; Co-author, "Go Mobile"​, #1 best-selling mobile marketing book. Named to Sales Lead Management Association "Top 50"​ 3 years in a row and "20 Women to Watch" in 2015/14/13 & 2011; Named to VAR Guy Top Channel Leaders in 2015; MSPmentor People to Watch in 2014; BizJournal marketing experts; Speaker @ MarketingProfs B2B Forums, HubSpot Inbound 2011/12/13/14/15 Conferences, MIT Entrepreneurs Forum, AMA, Social Media Today, BrightTalk, MassTLC, Social Fresh. Advisor: OneScreen.io; Siemplify.co; Rank the Vote Digital Council; USEFULL (Coffee Cup Collective); Below The Fold (Acciyo)Author: Go Mobile!

Holly Jean Jackson is a speaker, author, and holistic coach. This means she gives you three in one - a health coach, life coach, and a business coach. In this episode we are focusing on the value of relaunching your book. You put so much blood, sweat, tears, and hair-pulling into publishing a book. But what happens a few years later? Your publisher did their part, you did the signings, the promotions, and then crickets? Let's hope not. You may even be working on your next book, but you still really love your earlier works. There may be a few places that could use an update or a new version done as an audiobook. Have you done all that? Doing an audio version gives you the opportunity for updates. What about the kindle version? Can you update that? What a great way to reopen conversations with fans, clients, and prospects. Holly and Susan talk about the need for an actual marketing plan to relaunch what you did so well the first time. There is always a new way to do it better, and some elements that should be updated.  Listen to this episode of Rooted in Revenue, "You Wrote a Book, Is It Time to Relaunch It?"

Christopher Lochhead wrote a book called Play Bigger. He was the CMO of Mercury Interactive and a couple of other real high-flying Silicon Valley startups and just an awesome guy. But he has a saying. He likes to say, "Thinking about thinking is the most important thinking you do. A lot of what we're talking about is stepping back because it's so easy to default to, Hey, I just raised my Series A; I'm in MarTech, let's go get somebody out of drift or let's go get a sale.
Let's go find someone in Salesforce marketing. Let's go get a director from Salesforce to run our marketing. Oh, they'll crush it for us. And it's a natural default, right? And then a person comes in and because they weren't clear... And usually that person, they don't know how to vet. So, they're told this and they're super excited. Oh, wow. This is my chance. Put a stamp on it, but they forget that I'm not going to be in Salesforce anymore. Meaning, I'm not going to have, first of all, the Salesforce brand and just all the power of that. I'm not going to have all the resources.

Mark Donnigan from Growth Stage Marketing says, "It's important that a professional team work together and all the executives should be rowing in the same direction and all these kind of truisms, which are all true but there are some very profound implications to how we market and how we sell, which gets wrapped up in go to market as a result of the fragmented buyer's journey that we are in today." He also reminds us, "think about how you talk about yourself, how you talk about what you do. And even as a full-time employee, in fact, I could argue that as a full-time employee, it matters as much or even more because it's so amazing when you hear one person who just describes themselves in kind of the HR job description. What do you do?" Listen to the first half of this interview to walk away walking a little bit taller, and able to go into interviews with more confidence.