Gini Dietrich is a seasoned PR professional who started her career in a traditional PR firm but quickly realized that it wasn't the best way to grow a business. This PR maven is the mastermind behind the PESO Model and has been shaking up the industry for over 17 years. From social media to content creation and paid media, Gini will be sharing her insider tips and tricks for combining paid, earned, shared, and owned media to achieve marketing goals.
Whether you're looking to level up your PR strategy or simply want to stay ahead of the curve, this is one episode you won't want to miss! So grab your headphones and let's get ready to learn from the best!
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Tune in to this episode to learn how to shift from sales enablement to storytelling and align with your target audience's values and culture. Steve and Gini explore the benefits of a customer-centric approach and how to create content that addresses their pain points and needs. Join them for an informative and entertaining journey toward a more impactful marketing strategy!
Connect with Gini Dietrich on LinkedIn.
With 25+ years of marketing experience, Steve Goldhaber is a former head of global digital marketing for two Fortune 500 companies and the current CEO of 26 Characters, a content marketing agency in Chicago.
Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
Steve Goldhaber: Hello everybody. Welcome back to Studio 26. Good to have you back. And today I'm really excited because we've got a cool guest here. Welcome to the show, Gini Dietrich.
Gini Dietrich: Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here. Steve.
Steve Goldhaber: I know you've been waiting forever.
Gini Dietrich: I have, I have.
Steve Goldhaber: Maybe I should go to a sponsored model where everyone gets to sponsor their own message and buy their way into the show. That would go over really well.
Gini Dietrich: I'm sure it would. Yeah. Everyone really likes that.
Steve Goldhaber: Somewhere, I'm sure that idea has been pitched in a conference room. So anyway, give us just a super quick 60-second intro about your background and then we'll jump right into some of the marketing stories you're gonna share with us.
Gini Dietrich: Sure. I started in a very traditional PR firm 17 years ago. Quickly learned that traditional PR was not the way to grow a business, and so we started adding on social and content and paid media as well. Launched the PESO Model, which is paid, earned, shared, and owned media in 2013 and I also run a blog called Spin Sucks that's also a book in a podcast and a community and all sorts of fun things.
Steve Goldhaber: Awesome. All right. Thanks for the background. All right, so let's jump into the first story, and what you're gonna share with us is related to a SaaS company you had worked with and it's all about building lead gen. So take it away, tell us your story.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. This company hired us a couple of years ago and they believed that the best SaaS companies were also media companies, and of course they came to us because that's something that we've done for our own business through Spin Sucks and wanted to know if we could help them build a media company. And what we discovered is that because of their audience, they had access to sports, celebrities, Olympians, athletes in general, both at the little league level, all the way through to the professional level. And so it actually was, I mean, I hate to say this out loud, but pretty easy to create a media company for them because we had such great content just from the work that they do and as we were doing the work, the big vision was to create this media company. But the CEO is very data-driven, and we had to figure out how to realize this vision of creating a media company while also driving sales and it was really challenging at first because their data was all over the place and just like, we've all experienced with many companies, you go in and you realize, oh my gosh. I mean we went in there and one of the things that didn't sit right with me was that they're very B2B and they had like 2 million visitors a week to their website. And I was like, how is this possible when your audience is not a consumer audience. And what we discovered is that their analytics had been set up incorrectly and it was actually tracking like quadruple what it should have been. So here you have this big vision of a COO and this data-driven CEO and we're trying to combine those two things and the just the bare basics of the analytics were broken. So we had to actually go in and it's kind of funny cause I'm not a data person, I'm a content person. For me to figure that out. I was like, oh no, what else is broken? So we actually helped them build a data scientist team and a marketing analytics team. And then they started to create the kinds of things that we needed to be able to show that we were driving results and it took a really long time to get there, so about six months ago, about a year and a half, we started to show that we were actually responsible for about 36% of their new leads. At first we were just doing first-touch attribution, now we're looking at multi-touch attribution. So it's taking a long time to get there, but it's working and it's all content driven.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it had to be tricky because I'm sure with the metrics, the numbers being inflated that was they were probably very proud and I'm sure they shared that in all their decks of just kind of like, this is what we can do, and then along comes their dose of reality. That was fun to get through. What was like the business problem that they were trying to do and so they had a clear vision of let's be a media company. What are they? Is it purely like, Hey, we're trying to attract 10 to 15 new customers a year or tell me about the problem that we're trying to solve.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. It was really twofold. One is they wanted to attract the professional leagues and all of them, you know, NBA, NFL, NHL. And because of that they wanted to come across really sophisticated, but their bread and butter is little league and the sports where you actually pay for your kids to play. But that was their bread and butters and some of those guys are parent volunteers who have other jobs. Some of them are sophisticated. So you run the gamut of really just no sophistication to super sophisticated. And we had to kind of fix or fill in that gap between the two.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I can relate to that because I have been a coach for Little League Baseball. That was my business. My big sponsorship play, which is kind of funny cuz I came from a world where you might spend hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsor something. I pony up $600 for the local little league team . That's true. Which was cool because now I got to choose the colors of the uniform and the logo for 26 characters was on the uniform…
Gini Dietrich: That's super cool.
Steve Goldhaber: And then my kid, my younger one, Charlie, he played on the team, so I was like, What a sponsorship. But you know the funny thing about that random story, cuz it's such a sponsorship that doesn't make sense beyond just, hey, let people in the community know that you're here is when they sounded all the communication, like I did see like a hundred, 200 people go to the website. I've never heard this name. What is it? So it was kind of funny, the power of just people being interested. But back to your story. This isn't about my story. So how far in did you get to a point where you could kind of really get into like, all right, we haven't just had some good anecdotal stories. Here's the lead gen that's coming in and we know that they were sourced. I'm assuming as an online lead as opposed to someone who built a relationship and then happened to read a blog post. When did you start to kind of see that traction?
Gini Dietrich: It probably wasn't very long. Six months, five months. It wasn't long at all. The data was broken, so we knew that had to be fixed, but you could tell they're doing certain things like webinars because somebody who's running a club team, that's the word I was not coming up with. Someone who's running a club team wants to learn from a professional team. You know how to recruit volunteers and what your coaches need to know and those kinds of things. So we would have webinars focused on those kinds of things and people came in droves. And it was funny because most of them would do it from their phone, with their phone in the cup holder in their car because they were driving in between games or they were actually on the field and they were listening to the webinar. We got such great engagement from that and then we would follow up with white papers or eBooks or best practices or buyer's guides or things that would help them. And those were the kinds of things that we found the most valuable, which I wouldn't have expected from somebody who's sitting on the field. Right. I was like, I don't know and they said, let's test it. So we did and sure enough.
Steve Goldhaber: That's interesting. So what about the balance? You've thrown a couple content types out. Sometimes people aren't ready to go for the deep dive into a webinar. They need to kind of be nudged into it. Do you go big right away and ask for the webinar sign up? Or do you kind of sprinkle in some smaller things to build trust and then they'll say, no, I think these guys do good content. I'll spend 10, 15 minutes on a webinar.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. The blog was the first place we started and We were very lucky in that they had an internal team of writers that knows the audience and they all pretty much hire all former collegiate athletes and so they know the sports really well. So we were lucky in that we had that team of writers to be able to craft the content. But we found that most of them wanted to hear or watch because they were in their cars or they were on the field. So the written content wasn't as effective. It was great from a search perspective, if somebody's sitting at their desk and saying, okay, I need to do this, this, and this, but the things that actually brought them in were the audio or video types of content.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Looking back, what are some things you would've done differently on this one besides, have a giant question mark of who's messing this data up, what would you have done differently?
Gini Dietrich: I think we would have gotten a hold of the data more quickly and from my perspective, I would've been on a better job of educating the CEO because there was such a big dramatic shift in the data and it was so screwed up, he didn't believe it. So even though when we were driving 30%- 36% of new leads, he didn't believe that data was true so I should have done a better job and in retrospect, I would've done a better job of constantly talking to and here's why it's accurate now and I didn't do that. We did a lot of things like reporting through PowerPoint and things like that because that's what he asked for. But I think he really needed, in retrospect, for somebody to sit down with him and say, this is the data, but let me tell you the story behind it because he wasn't getting that.
Steve Goldhaber: I think that's so important. I feel like we fall victim so much, we put all the time into creating the report. You never present a report just to one person. So what happens is it's four to seven people in a room. Everyone has their guard up and because of that, you can't have that conversation. So I always love those one-to-one conversations where you can just get to those real things where it's like, Do you believe these numbers or what can we do to fix some of the data issues? And, but that won't come out in a big meeting. So I think that's a good lesson learned is to have those one-to-ones.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah And I think telling that story like, okay here are the numbers, but what do they mean? And it took us a long time to fix the data. So here's where we are in the process and here's why we haven't gotten there yet. And these are the things, these are the steps we need to take to get there, okay? In the next week we've taken this step and now we have eight more, and so on and so on.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. All right, cool. Let's do this. Let's jump into story number two. It's another tech company cuz you just like to play that way. You were in the tech world.
Gini Dietrich: I do.
Steve Goldhaber: It's a fun world. I do love tech myself. This one is also about lead gen, so let's jump into the second story.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah. So this one, I hope it's okay to say that this is one we shared, a client we shared that we were really focused on kind of the same idea of building a media company, but doing it through really thoughtful, strategic and sophisticated smart content. So big white papers, big eBooks, really heady content, really smart thought leaders, and using a blog and certainly all of the longer form content as well to drive that, but to a really sophisticated audience, business audience. And I think that there were, first of all, we did great work. You and your team are great to work with and I think we did some really smart work together, but leadership didn't believe in it in general marketing. And so there were a lot of hurdles that we had to jump over to help them understand that you can't really scale a business as quickly as they wanted to without doing some marketing. So there was a lot of education and teaching and those kinds of conversations about why we do things and these are the results that you're going to see.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah, it's interesting. I do feel, I was just talking to someone about this the other day. They were having a good conversation and they asked me, Hey, what are some good examples of marketing? What are some brands that you really like, and I gave an example of a design oriented brand and a narrative oriented brand, and I think so many clients, like the one you're referring to, are used to design driven brands that think in these cycles where it's like, Hey look, let's just have the design team for the next month, figure out who we are. We'll have an ownable look and you can kind of get away with that if you do a really great rebrand and you've got a palette and design elements, the challenge is the narrative side of that. And I think that there's some people who get it, like the people who came up in the content marketing world. They totally understand it. Leaders who come from design driven brands don't appreciate that it's more of a thing, right? Like if you are trying to build more media, whether that's owned or earned. It takes a while. And I think in this example, the other thing too was there are some clients who are very on point with, we know our messaging to the T and then we're gonna use the tactics to bring it to life so that the act of writing a white paper, an ebook or a blog, is just purely executional, right? This is an example of the client had to get their feet wet in execution to help refine the strategic side of who they were. It's always an interesting dynamic when that happens because it's like you're playing with stuff with your hands and you're kind of experimenting, oh, this doesn't feel right let's not say it this way. So it happens a lot and I think it's challenging for the people who both own the planning side of it and the execution side of it. How often do you work with companies who are in that kind of call, like the sandbox approach, where they've got to do it to figure out kind of what they're doing?
Gini Dietrich: I would say all of them should probably be there. I think the big challenge that we find is that many executives come up through the sales path and so they look at marketing more as enablement for them. So they look at it as, I need sales collateral, I need PowerPoint ducts, I need my logo and my messaging and my tagline and my vision and my mission, and that's how they focus on it. And so getting them to play in the sandbox of narrative is one of the biggest challenges because it's great. You need all those kinds of things. I would argue that's not marketing, it's sales enablement but maybe sales enablement falls under marketing. But I would not say that that's marketing in today's world. Having them take that leap from marketing as sales enablement to, we actually have to tell a story that people care about and in today's world, we have to tell a story that people care about and support the values that we live and the culture that we live, and the things that we're doing for our community because those are the kinds of things that people look for when they're buying now. 10 years ago that wasn't the case, but today that's what they wanna know. They wanna know what your values are, they wanna know how you're. what you're providing back to the community. They wanna know what your culture is like. They want that to align with their own before they'll buy from you.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. Another thing about this one client was interesting. There's kind of two worlds I look at as far as what the messaging should be when you're creating content. There is one world, which is that this is who we are, these are our services, our capabilities. And then the other world is the customer centric version, which is what I call a pain world, right? Here's our pain, here are the issues we struggle with and then your content strategy essentially solves all those problems, which essentially builds trust and all clients are on the spectrum of, we love to talk about ourselves, we should talk about the customer's problems, but it's really more interesting to talk about what we do and it's such a hard place to be in because they'll agree with you many times. Like, you're right, this should be customer driven. Like this is a piece for the audience, but I feel so many times clients just use the act of creating content as a way to articulate who they are because it's an official process that's documented and it's also since you're working with professional writers, it's documented very well. So it's kind of like, this feels good, it feels official. So this was something that we kind of experienced. Trying to stretch them more into what's on your audience's mind? What other pain points. I think the world of marketing is a pendulum, you can slowly get it to go one way, but it'll sometimes come back.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, for sure. I agree with you.
Steve Goldhaber: It's a big challenge, maybe that I'm gonna coin that as a pendulum something, we'll put a trademark on it.
Gini Dietrich: I love it. I love it.
Steve Goldhaber: And I'll contact the 26 characters design team to rebrand in a month, and we'll be good to go. And then the writers will go, what is this nonsense? What are you doing?
Gini Dietrich: Just listen to our podcast episode. You’ll get it.
Steve Goldhaber: That's right. No. Just describe how the pendulum swings a certain way. Alright, cool. What other things in this story were interesting to you? Like what are some things that were unique or really fulfilling.
Gini Dietrich: I really loved working on that client because we really did such good work. Like the content that we created was so heady and interesting, and part of that may have been because I am their target audience, I'm that client's target audience just generally. So it was really interesting content for me in general. But you know, the way that you and your team approach, interviewing subject matter experts and thought leaders and then taking the strategic oversight that me and my team did with the content development and theme and topic development. I think we just did really good work, and that's always really fulfilling too, because when you can do really good work, that also helps the business grow. That's the golden ticket from my perspective.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. Yeah. I think my favorite piece that we had done for the client was so specific and I can't obviously say the client or the brands they were trying to work with, but it was one company that we were targeting and we created a six to eight page eBook just for that company. It was a sales pitch to probably three people at that company. But the background information that the writer pulled and the story around identifying with this company was like, it was so detailed. And it did help secure a meeting. So it was very cool. I think the most fun I've had with content are really obscure things where this is the audience. There is no doubt who we're talking to. And you can get very specific with references that they'll appreciate and I think,
Gini Dietrich: And it is really specific only to them.
Steve Goldhaber: I remember writing headlines for that thing, and I'm like, I can't look at a covering eBook that is this specific with a call to action to a brand and not wanna read it. So it was fun to get a couple of those opportunities. All right. Awesome. Well, we're done with the storytelling phase. Now we get into the fun phase. This is like the The Barbara Walters chair where we get to interview and find out about all your journeys in the world of marketing. So tell us about what got you started in the world you mentioned PR as part of a foundation, but what was like the first thing that you did that was in that world of marketing, PR, and comms?
Gini Dietrich: So, I graduated from college with an English degree. And my idea was that I was going to go to law school because I wanted to do contract negotiations for professional athletes, and my mom got sick and I needed to take a year off because I was taking care of her, I also had to have a job, and I hadn't thought about a job because I was going to go right to law school, and a girlfriend of mine interviewed for Fleischman Hillard, and she was like, that's not a job I want. I didn't know anything about PR firms. I'd never heard of Fleischman Hillard. And I was like, okay, I just need a job. And so I went in and interviewed and the rest is history. But my very first job, and this will make you laugh, and this is definitely ages me, but my very first job was to stand at the copier and make copies of all the stories that the account team had placed for clients. But they had to be color copies. And back then the color copier would be Red ,Yellow, Blue. It took forever to get a colored copy. And so I would read these stories because I didn't have anything else to do while I'm standing there at the copier and I was in a meeting. They allowed me to go to a meeting and they told me not to say anything. So I'm sitting in the back and I'm just taking notes and I'm in this meeting with the account team and the client and the general manager of our office . It's a big meeting, and the client asked a question and nobody had the answer. And I know the answer. And so, Gary Kissner, who was our GM at the time said, okay, Gini, you can speak. And I gave them the answer and he said, how did you know that ? Like, I'd been reading all these articles . So it turned out that I knew all of this, like information that no one else knew because I'd been reading all these articles. And so they promoted me and then the rest has become history.
Steve Goldhaber: That's a pretty cool story. I do remember those days of the three scans for the color copies. I started doing an internship at an agency called Campbell and so much of what I did was like traffic related things. So like, oh yeah, as an intern there, there were probably like six floors in the building they were in, so it was. How do we get the tape that the editing studio did up to the account floor, Six floors. You really are, as a junior person like that, you do get such great exposure to the whole beast of like, really do how an agency works. Yeah. It's a good spot to be.
Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I agree. And kids today, they just wanna go right to the CEO spot and you're like, no, you have to have the experience of being at the bottom.
Steve Goldhaber: It is true I do feel like going forward there's very little of a ladder. Like clearly there's hierarchies of like things, but when you started out in advertising or marketing, It was very clear that like you were on this rung of the ladder. And I think that's done today because I think you're right. The ability for everyone to build their own brand or start their own business, it's very much like a no, I can have a first job and do my own thing. So that's also great that it's like an open source approach to that where I remember reading, I went to school at Purdue and I remember a couple months before I graduated. I was sitting on the stairs of the library reading the world of advertising, and it was like such a map. It was like you start out doing some type of internship, then you're an assistant account executive, and one day you'll get promoted to an AE and then a senior. Like, it just was like the perfect blueprint if you had no idea what was going on and all that stuff doesn't even matter today. It's pretty funny. Looking back at your marketing career, give us a moment in time when you were just having an amazing time. Was it one of the big tech booms where everyone was just investing in marketing and content? When did you have the most fun?
Gini Dietrich: It actually was pretty early in my career because we were working with food companies and, I remember, there were two clients that we did really good work with. One was a Catfish organization and our job was to help people understand that if your catfish is raised in the US they're not bottom feeders, they're actually fed at the top of the pond. And, it was at a time that the Japanese were dumping catfish into the US and calling it the US Farm Race. So we had this whole thing like lobbying and regulatory plus brand awareness plus messaging programs and we hired celebrity chefs so this was probably before Food Network existed. epicurious.com had just launched. And so we had hired these celebrity chefs to help us raise awareness about catfish and actually get catfish on white tablecloth restaurant menus. And we were in the middle of Mississippi on a catfish farm. And we had young, up and coming professional chefs cooking catfish in a contest. Like it was just, it was cool, you can't do that stuff anymore. But I remember we were trying to make clarified butter for one chef and he's like, go buy some and we're like, no, we can actually make it. There's nowhere in Mississippi to buy clarified butter. I promise you. We can just make it. And so we were like making it and scooping it off. So that, I mean just like, cool, cool, cool. And then the other one was we worked with a fire ants killer because in the south they have fire ants and you can't go out on your lawn if you have fire ants. It's a big deal. And so this company had built, had launched a product that, once a year, you did the whole lawn and it was taken care of for the whole year. And so we created a fire ant funeral and we hired. That's pretty funny. We hired a pastor. We hired mourners. We had a big, huge, fire ant that was made out of modeling clay that was upside down, dead in a coffin. I mean, just fun stuff. It was so fun. This stuff you just don't do anymore. It just doesn't exist anymore. :It was super fun.
Steve Goldhaber Wow. Just that, the whole death of the fire ant, that's a rich conceptual area. I see. Like the funeral home, the cemetery, the perception.
Gini Dietrich: We did the whole thing. Yeah. It was great. It was super fun.
Steve Goldhaber: Now that we're having so much fun about the highlights, give us a moment in time where it was like, it was time to leave after I finished the stay cuz like, it just, it wasn't fun and I wouldn't go back to doing it again.
Gini Dietrich: I mean, honestly and truly, it was the great recession. It was such a horrible time for the country, but also for me as a business owner. And you know, now I am educated and informed and sophisticated enough to know that if we're talking about a recession, there are certain things that I should do right now. But back then my business was just a couple of years old. I had 30 employees. I had no idea. And people were talking about it, they were gonna have a recession and the economy was gonna tank. And I didn't know what that meant. And we were still crushing it from a business development standpoint, and clients were still coming on and all this was happening, And then between the holidays of 08 and 09, I got 90% of our clients sent certified letters saying We're really sorry. So everybody had jobs when they left for the holidays and when they came back I had to lay everybody off. And that like that at that moment was like, I'm not sure I wanna do this anymore. Because it was hard. And it took me a couple of years to recover and I started hiring again. It was rough.
Steve Goldhaber: Yeah it's crazy how something at that macro level really can just. It doesn't matter how good you're doing, it's just this tidal wave comes and suppresses it all. All right. We're gonna do one or two more questions here. We're gonna jump into pet peeves now, and I'll be more specific. So someone's pitching you, they're trying to sell you something. What are some pet peeves that you're like, as soon as I see this, no chance that I'm gonna engage?
Gini Dietrich: I would say two things for me. Number one is when you accept someone's connection on LinkedIn and they automatically send you a direct message pitching you, that one's for me is a non-starter. And the other one is because SPIN Sucks is such a big brand in the PR industry, we get so many pitches from so many PR people that are so bad that are not personalized and they'll see that we're in Chicago and be like, Hey, there's a Chicago restaurant opening. Do you wanna cover it? And you're like, no, that's not what we cover. That's not what we talk about. So that kind of stuff is a non-starter for me as well. It's less about sales and more about just the personalization and paying attention to the person that you're emailing.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I can relate to the LinkedIn DM thing. There's a couple strings I have in LinkedIn. This is how it goes, right? It's three or four people who every year wish me a happy birthday and I respond with thanks. And it's like a canned response from LinkedIn, and this has been going on for nine, 10 years now, and I just am amassing this all the, the entire relationship is happy birthday. Thanks. Happy birthday, thanks. Repeating over and over again, , and it's a contest for me personally. How long is this relationship gonna continue.
Gini Dietrich: Then? That's literally all it is.
Steve Goldhaber: That's all it is. Yeah. And I'm assuming it's someone’s assistant or someone offshore like it is just told, Hey, every day go into my account and wish everyone a happy birthday. Maybe I'll do an April Fool's response with like, This has been an amazing relationship and I am totally ready to award you with this contract if you're ready for just to see the person go, what This stuff works
Gini Dietrich: It takes 10 years, but it works.
Steve Goldhaber: That's right. Part of being in the selling side of my business, I have had some things that have shocked me sometimes where People just don't engage. You're like, I don't even know if this person knows that I'm alive. And then out of nowhere, they will engage so deep they'll be like, I've consumed all your content. I've been following you for years. And it's like, I'm like, huh? But you've never signaled whether it's like the metrics to capture that engagement. So things have blown my mind as it relates to that, that's for sure. Alright. Last question. Looking back now, let's say today's your day you're retiring. You look back on your career and you're like, oh, you know what, here's the advice I would give to myself. Day one, standing at the copier. Reading those articles, like what would you go back and tell yourself.
Gini Dietrich: Care less about what other people think.
Steve Goldhaber: Why is that important?
Gini Dietrich: I'm a people pleaser. I'm also a natural introvert, so I care very deeply about what other people think, and it hinders my ability to do things. And sometimes it creates a level of risk that isn't necessary that I've created out of nothing. Because I care so deeply about what other people think. So, that for me has to be a big one, which is nobody cares. Do your thing. Do your job, do what you're passionate about, and you'll be successful.
Steve Goldhaber: Yep. I like that. All right. Awesome. Gini, thank you for sharing your stories today. I had a good time connecting and if people want to connect with you, Where can people find you on the world of the internet?
Gini Dietrich: Thanks for having me. It's so easy spinsucks.com
Steve Goldhaber: All right. Cool. Well, thanks again, everyone for joining the show today, and have a wonderful day. Take care.