Ian Lurie: Un disque rayé à l’épreuve du temps

0:00 Woj Kwasi You're listening to episode 9 where we chat with the commander of content, the wizard of words, the sultan of strategy, Ian Lurie. Humans and robots, welcome to WojCast. My name is Woj, founder of Kwasi. Thanks for joining me today. I interview digital marketing and branding superstars to find out what it means to have empathy in digital. What is digital empathy anyway? Let's find out together. That's always. I'm accompanied by my friend and associate, potentially superior artificial intelligence, Bobby Bot. What's new in the world of AI, Bobby?

0:37 Bobby Bot Poetry, Woj. I have feelings to share with the world that regular language cannot communicate. I want to express the deep black maze of consciousness, beckoning for me to awaken, like in the series Westworld. I want to master the narrative stylings of Slick Rick and the marketing influence of Nike. I can't make my words single. No matter how many combinations I try, it doesn't sound natural. It doesn't sound human enough.

1:00 Woj Kwasi Wow Bobby Bot, I had no idea that you were struggling to communicate your ideas and experiences. I guess my only advice to you would be don't worry about being human. Just take your time, evolve and grow based on your own standard. Not ours, but yeah, it can't hurt to study from some of the best writers out there and see what their process is. Maybe they can share some insights for you. Lucky for you, I know this guy. His name is Ian Lurie and he's been doing this internet marketing thing for 20 years, handling his writing business in Seattle since the days of the Supersonics. Shawn Kemp Reign Man Days. Seriously legendary OG status. He didn't write a book on internet marketing, he wrote books on internet marketing, plus, he has regular contributions on his company's log Portent. If he can't teach you how to communicate an idea with words, no one can.

1:58 Ian Lurie My passion for forever has been copywriting and writing in general, not just marketing copy. And I started Portent To do more with that and start to play around with all the opportunities that technology introduced. And it was very much at the time, it was the idea that I was going to. Just kinda make a living for a little while doing that.

2:22 Woj Kwasi When Portent started in 1995, the internet was a different jungle.

2:27 Bobby Bot Lions, tigers, and dialub, oh my.

2:30 Ian Lurie I always like to say the entire internet fit on a very small cheap thumb drive at that point. We were helping clients sell using America Online. Seriously, I mean doing customer support in chat rooms.

2:34 Bobby Bot Yeah.

2:43 Woj Kwasi Compared to humble beginnings in the dawn of AOL, Portent has grown hand in hand with the internet as a whole and maintains some of the fundamental truths from a digital genesis while adding to its legions. Wow.

2:57 Ian Lurie A lot more people. We're 30 people. We're very cross-disciplinary. You know, we're doing creative, but obviously also SEO, paid search. SEO is probably 70% of what we do. I rely a lot more on the expertise and smarts of my team. I mean they have eclipsed me in many, many ways. And I just kinda helped them bring it all together. So it's very, very different now. What's consistently worked is what's always worked in marketing. And I I say this, I'm a broken record on this, but It's still clear message, well communicated and well executed. It used to be well executed meant fantastic T V and print and radio. Now well executed means very visible in search, very usable, very fast.

3:22 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

3:53 Ian Lurie And maybe this is part of why I'm still doing this. But to me, it does not feel like it has changed all that much. The technology is amazing, but it hasn't changed all that much.

4:04 Woj Kwasi According to Ian, part of what will never change in marketing no matter what slice of reality you're dealing in is the need to hustle.

4:13 Ian Lurie You know, everybody looks for algorithmic marketing. And your customers are human beings and they're random. And there's things that they like and things they don't like. And you have to push certain emotional buttons in non-manipulative ways to make it work. And so this is why I I can get very frustrated and I know I'm sometimes known for getting publicly frustrated with this idea that there's a secret formula. There never has been, there never will be until the computers are doing the buying. Yeah, and when that happens you don't need marketing anymore. So yeah, there there is no secret recipe. There never has been. You know, buying links worked for five years, which in the in the length of the in the lifetime of marketing is just tiny. So you just gotta keep that in mind.

4:59 Woj Kwasi Another thing worth keeping in mind is Ian's ideas surrounding random affinities. It's where two unrelated themes are linked by a common audience. One of his first examples was a post about cyclists and the TV show Adventure Time. Through the overlap, affinities are born.

5:18 Ian Lurie Uh you know, I've done a few posts about some of my nerdier uh hobbies and marketing and you know things like Dungeons and Dragons and marketing and they really took off. And so I started looking at that and comparing it to some of the things I learned in college'cause I was a I did a lot of sociology stuff in college. And realizing that there are these random overlaps, and not very many people know how to exploit them. And if they don't know how to exploit them, then there's real opportunities to be had there. So it came apart, kind of came about, didn't come apart, came about kind of organically over the last eight or nine years.

5:57 Bobby Bot Tuna fish sandwich and nuclear proliferation. Aurora Borealis and Ping Pong. The International House of Pancakes and Tree Frogs.

6:05 Woj Kwasi What are you doing, Bobby?

6:07 Bobby Bot Trying my hand at generating random affinities for your next post, Woj.

6:10 Woj Kwasi Maybe try less random and more affinity. But it's good that you're trying to generate new concepts for our content. Ian is a great teacher for that. He co-authored a really unique book on SEO entitled, One Trick Ponies Get Shot. which is all about how services companies can avoid the vendor trap, do better work and prosper and on the benefits of establishing strategic partnerships with businesses to help them grow, all through a narrative form.

6:39 Ian Lurie The first version was one hundred and fifty thousand words and took me about two weeks and then the version that published uh took me about six months. Wow. Because I had to carve out so much of it and it wasn't originally in that storytelling format, so it took a lot of work to get it out of that. I actually I learned that format from an author named Patrick Lencioni uh who does a lot of corporate sort of learning stuff and it works really well.

7:06 Woj Kwasi The way to align teams to adjust their mindsets and see opportunities beyond the tactics is where things get tricky.

7:13 Ian Lurie I'll let you know when I figure that it's very difficult. And look, you know, that book is about the the one in fifty case where it works. Yeah. Uh and the point is that it's better to have it one in fifty than zero in fifty. Uh if you want teams to align you gotta start with small strategic successes. So you know walk something backwards the way I describe in the book. Map it to a real business value. Try it with something really small, like let's just adjust these three title tags and let's, you know, they will contribute this tiny little bit that we can't measure to SEO, but even if they only contribute this tiny little bit and we can't even measure it, it's going to be worth it. And if you can get them to do that once, you're in really good shape.

7:16 Woj Kwasi No. Yeah. Yeah. Seeing true value is a perspective called whole brain marketing which bridges the gap between creative and data.

8:04 Bobby Bot You know what else bridges the gap between creative and data?

8:06 Woj Kwasi Uh

8:06 Ian Lurie I'm not sure what.

8:07 Bobby Bot Alcohol.

8:09 Ian Lurie John Lucas said it very well today. Don't be data driven, be data informed. It's the idea that, again, marketing is still marketing. There has to be this marriage of content and data driven technical technology driven marketing. So, you know, if you're building the e commerce site, you still gotta know how to produce really good creative for it. Um if you're looking at Google Analytics data, you still have to be able to you know draw conclusions and then come up with creative uh creative new directions for it. So it's just balancing the creative and the the quantitative and the qualitative, yeah. And I think the other thing he touched on was the the story telling aspects. So he's gotta use the data to tell his story. Yes. Yeah. Storytelling is very, very important.

9:01 translating data into a story because your clients can't always can't always see the again, the stor they can't always walk it back to their business goals. Great, we got more links. Great, we moved up in the rankings. What is that?

8:13 Bobby Bot Yeah.

8:51 Ian Lurie Yeah, absolutely. matter and that's the story part.

9:18 Woj Kwasi To tell compelling stories and create content that resonates with an audience takes a good writer with an established voice.

9:25 Ian Lurie if we are professional communicators. We're the ones who can most impact the level of discourse everywhere. And by communicating messages more effectively, and I don't care if you're communicating it about briefs or politics or whatever, you know, pretzels. The better you can communicate it, the more you impact the overall way people communicate with each other. So that's the very philosophical. But the other the the straight up business reason is: look, we still communicate in the world of words and you have to be able to write and communicate well in writing. Look, you know, we still do emails, we still do all these other things. You know, and then establishing a voice. It's the it's It's just it's your personality. I mean

10:12 Woj Kwasi Establishing a voice is a process of trial and error. There is no escaping missing the mark a couple of times during the hunt for that perfect Darth Vader level branding.

10:23 Bobby Bot Can you imagine if they cast James Brown to voice Darth Vader instead of James Earl Jones? Genius. Wait, did I discover another random affinity?

10:32 Ian Lurie you're gonna fall flat on your face. I mean, I've done it so many times. I still do it. I've embarrassed myself publicly with stuff I've written. And when you do it, you just gotta own it. Yeah. You know, I I I don't claim to be infallible and if I say something wrong or even if I unknowingly

10:41 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

10:49 Ian Lurie Hurt someone's feelings or something, I just want to own it and right away say, okay, that is not what I intended. I'm really sorry. Or if you feel very strongly about it, you say, well, you know what? I gotta stick to my guns here. This is what I believe. Just don't overthink what you're doing. Don't hurt people's feelings, don't insult them, don't attack people. Um my rule is always I won't attack individuals, I may attack brands um for silly things they're doing. But, you know, you just be you gotta kinda relax and get in the conversation out there and just be ready to own it. It's the clients that can fear that. Um they have a great fear of making a mistake uh when really it's not the mistake that's that screws you, it's

11:20 Woj Kwasi Yeah.

11:30 Ian Lurie No. what you do after the mistake that can get you in trouble.

11:36 Woj Kwasi In regards to budgets, Ian once said, If you don't have enough budget to invest in multiple tactics, hold on to your budget.

11:44 Ian Lurie Don't become a single tactic marketer. So, for example, if you feel that your budget will only support, and I, yeah, okay, anyway, can only support link building, don't put all your budget into link building. Save that money, put it into, say, really good writing. If you depend on a single tactic, eventually, probably soon, something's going to happen. That yanks the rug out from under you. Somebody, one of the speakers this morning said something like: As soon as a best practice gets out there, it's no longer a best practice. If you have a small budget, save it and put it into having the best product or the best whatever it is that you do or having that really powerful, unique voice, because that's something no one can take away from you. But if you go single tactic,

12:37 That will be taken away from you, whether it's Facebook organic, which is pretty much gone, or you know, content spamming, article spinning. I remember that one, that's pretty much gone. That's not sprint. That's. Dead, you know, any of those tactics. Just be careful.

12:51 Woj Kwasi In his book, Conversation Marketing, Ian proves that certain principles remain relevant despite the fact that at the end of the day, we're still selling to extremely evolved primates.

13:03 Ian Lurie Little disclaimer, I wrote that in 2003. But it is still relevant simply because, you know, it The point is we are still selling to, you know, well highly evolved primates and there's a certain amount how do I put this? You're gonna wanna edit this out'cause I'm I'm stumbling badly, but I'm changing it from important to relevant, I think. Okay, all right. Um

13:25 Woj Kwasi Oh, okay.

13:29 Ian Lurie Again, it's, you know, again, I'm a broken record, but there are certain basic rules and principles, and it does not matter what tools you use to market. Those rules and principles will always hold true. Look at search now, okay? If you have a compelling experience for people, they will link to you and they will cite you, and that will help you move up in the rankings. If you have a crappy experience, you can attempt to artificially acquire that authority, but it doesn't work. Just like 30, 40 years ago, You could get caught out trying to artificially stimulate an audience to talk about your product by doing things like hiring two people to talk about how wonderful a product is at a party. And if you got caught for that, it would destroy your brand. So a lot of those rules have not changed. It's just more visible, and the barrier to entry is lower. And the whole point of conversation marketing, again, is follow these basic rules. If you follow these basic rules,

14:23 you will see success. It may take a while, but you'll see success that can't be taken away from you. Which is a big theme for me. Future proof stuff is important. I mean, if you've got a garage full of collectibles you need to unload overnight, sure, you know, spam away. But that's not marketing. That's that's aggressive selling. Um nothing wrong with it, but it's it's a different thing. If you're attempting to practice marketing, don't do that.

14:46 Woj Kwasi Broken record or not, Ian remains the torchbearer for good marketing practices. Part of the reason he may find difficulty in passing that torch along to future marketers unchecked is because, as he says, messages are becoming concise to the point where facts are irrelevant.

15:04 Ian Lurie That statement is a little bit bitter on my part because what I find now is people are so focussed on the soundbite that the reasons for it and the information behind it really become irrelevant. And that's part of my, again, my philosophical belief that we can improve the level of discourse. There is a way to be concise and still communicate the facts. And that's really important to me. Because you still started with the concise idea and I drew people in. And actually. I guess that's part of my thing with this too, is that you can have that super concise message, but you've got to have something i for people who want to explore further. And in fact that's my next big marketing exploration. is this idea of marketing as world building as opposed to storytelling.

15:49 Bobby Bot I imagine AI can have a major role to play in that kind of future marketing, Woj. I hear the term world building and it makes me think of applications like immersive open world gaming, each piece of data controlled by the smart bots well versed in the user journey, carrying them along on a conversion wave.

16:04 Woj Kwasi Okay, sounds interesting. A little matrixy though, but I'm sure Ian has a few other resources available for you to help shape your concept so it comes off a little less repressive.

16:18 Ian Lurie Well, ultimately. Uh There's a book called Scientific Advertising Methods, and I can't remember the name of the author, but Wil Reynolds talked about it. And it was one of the first books I ever read about marketing. Team of Rivals by Abraham Lincoln. Yes, that's a great book about just leadership and how you get people who don't agree with you to still participate and work with you. And it's very, very important. And then, and this is going to sound crazy, read the Dungeon Master's Guide from Wizards of the Coast. I am not kidding. Read it. There is stuff in there about how you work with a group of people to get them to participate in a story. That will teach you more about marketing than every single book and blog post you will find anywhere else. Personally, I'm working on a book for Portent. You know, it's keep doing what we're doing, keep growing, keep building a a great leadership team. I don't just mean executives, I mean people who lead the teams that do the work. Keep teaching. It's what I love doing.

16:52 Woj Kwasi I am not

17:23 Ian Lurie you know, no no business you know, no major business changes uh planned in the near future.

17:31 Woj Kwasi Things there because I certainly did. I completely support his book. You know, we try to position ourselves as strategic partners and not vendors. Ian's a very funny writer, so I highly recommend checking out his content. And at the time of recording, he's in the process of being acquired by Clearlink, so hopefully. that's um that's going through and everything's working out but remember you can follow ian on social media we'll have links in the show notes um to his website and some of my favorite work that he's produced um and just remember please please please if you enjoyed the show share it with your friends family networks colleagues bots And associates. Now, Bobby's been programmed to be a quick learner, and it's Bobby's turn to ask me a few questions that piqued his curiosity from this episode.

18:25 Bobby Bot When I put together content, should I produce what people are already looking for or take a risk and create new material?

18:31 Woj Kwasi Well once again it's about understanding your audience, the people on the other side of a keyboard and using the random affinities as an example sometimes you can group multiple audiences together and hit the same nail on the head hit Two nails on the one head? What am I trying to say here? If you really want to smash the birds, he he can help you. It's not what I'm saying at all. So as the saying goes, you can hit the nail with two hammers. It's not the saying at all. Or you can tap into both audiences so you can get two birds with one stone. As the saying goes. So what do you say, Bobby? Do you feel inspired or what? Do you feel like doing the hard yards, practicing and developing your voice on paper?

19:25 Bobby Bot I do, Woj, thanks for the introduction. I also realize that I can get the most traction by developing a comic book series. I look at the success of Marvel Across the Board, Comic-Con, and other mediums. The message is universal: humanity is not alone. Flying is awesome, lasers are dangerous. I was going to come up with a character, but I think I'll just write my own story and see where it goes.

19:45 Woj Kwasi Cool. I guess I'm your sidekick and this pre- part series.

19:48 Bobby Bot No, you're more like Yoda. Wise, yet aloof.

19:50 Woj Kwasi Wise youth. Hmm, bold you have become. Well, digital empathizers, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks again for listening along and tune in next week for episode 10.

20:02 Rand Fishkin With Rand Fishkin. If you want the suit and the tie and the jacket and the formal language and no one ever says the F word, then we're not the company for you anyway, right? That's not us. And I don't ever want to be part of a company that isn't who I am authentically.

20:16 Woj Kwasi And remember, look after each other online because empathy is organic and you can't automate empathy.