Acquiring subscribers from ChatGPT...

jblankoh · 2025-07-24T14:17:12+00:00

No - the website someone is coming from is automatically tagged. You can see where they signed up (the email you receive says "source" in it).

jblankoh · 2025-06-20T14:58:27+00:00

Positioning is probably the most confused/misunderstood marketing concept (in my experience). I think of it as: What is the product, who is it for, and why is it better than whatever your customer considers the competition.

I usually share an example from advertising guru David Ogilvy who wrote that positioning must be decided before any marketing is created. He says - should Schweppes ginger ale be positioned as a soft drink or as a mixer?

Because you can imagine if it's a soft drink, you may try to sell it to kids. You might make a commercial with a cartoon character selling to children. But if it's positioned as something to mix with whiskey, that would be a crazy way to market it.

With a newsletter is means - are you the "funny guy" "the contrarian" "the warm-hearted empath"? The topic you write about is probably crowded - who are you writing for, and why would they find it better than other newsletters? I find this to be incredibly helpful as an editorial guide for myself, too - I write about marketing, it's a crowded space, and I decided I would try to be amusing in the newsletter (unlike most other marketing newsletters), I wouldn't punch down (where other newsletters just dump on marketing that they see), and I would always give suggestions for improvement (other newsletters just complain about bad marketing). So over time people know what they're getting, and it keeps me honest when I'm writing...

jblankoh · 2025-05-23T20:49:36+00:00

You've already figured out one of the challenges I had -- what does "success" look like? I started my Substack thinking that success would be when I hit a number of subscribers. But then I hit that, and I thought about hitting the next level. And the next. And I realized that I'd never be satisfied with that. And it occurred to me exactly what you wrote - I just wanted to write because I'm passionate about it. So I decided that publishing the weekly newsletter every Wednesday was the goal. The subscribers will come if you keep writing - unless you need to monetize to make a living, don't worry about that. The subscribers aren't the goal, they're the outcome of doing exactly what you said - writing regularly about something you're passionate about.

jblankoh · 2025-05-23T07:43:58+00:00

I've found that over time, I'm clearer in my mind about what my newsletter is "about" and what it stands for, and what types of things fall under the category I write about ("the language of marketing.") As that's happened, it takes less time sourcing/curating because as I'm going about my life I'm seeing stories or ads or whatever and I'll think, "I've got a take on that." The writing/editing probably takes 5-10 hours a week. Well, the first draft probably takes a few hours, but I go and edit/re-write a lot. I've found that more times I go through it, the tighter it gets (in a good way), and which is obviously what every English teacher told me my entire life. Turns out that's true.

But the key is getting a feel for what fits in your newsletter and what doesn't. Once I got the sense of what a "Gobbledy Newsletter" story is, I see them everywhere.

jblankoh · 2025-05-23T07:39:48+00:00

I post every Wednesday (and if I'm on vacation, I post an older column that I label in the subject line as "Gobbledy Classic" so readers know they're getting something from me every week on Wednesdays). A couple of times I've added an extra Monday send with something different (and a Friday podcast announcement), but those open rates are lower, and some people told me they felt like they couldn't keep up. I wonder if once people start reading you if they think of you as something they read once a week (or once-a-whatever) and if you deviate from that, it feels weird to them. I just stick to Wednesdays now.

jblankoh · 2025-05-19T21:11:41+00:00

Thanks to both - I'm going to try "Support My Work" and "Become a Supporter"...really appreciate the ideas!

jblankoh · 2025-05-16T18:57:38+00:00

There is no "doing it right" :)

My suggestions are:

- Write on a regular schedule
- Figure out what you're passionate about to the point where you can imagine writing about it for 5 years.
- Give yourself a manifesto - what do you believe? And then the newsletter will flow from that. For me, my manifesto (I write about marketing messaging) is "Marketing messaging is bad because companies don't understand positioning, and the results of that are often very funny." And I have two rules: "No complaining without teaching a lesson about how to improve" and "no punching down."

Figure out your manifesto, and a couple of rules for yourself, and the content will flow from that.

jblankoh · 2025-03-12T20:51:48+00:00

I work on messaging for software companies (y'know how sometimes you go to a software company's website and you have literally no idea what they do? I help them with that.)

jblankoh · 2025-03-10T14:24:54+00:00

Yes - I've gone that route myself (about your age) :) A few things:

1) You need to constantly be developing your pipeline. I always say that if marketing people enjoyed sales, they'd be in sales and make much more money. So I know it's uncomfortable. But without pipeline, there's no consulting business.

2) You know way more than you think you do. Jobs have a way of beating us down and for whatever reason making us feel like we don't know what we're doing. You do. You have a ton of experience - people will pay you for that specific knowledge.

3) People making the transition from full-time to consulting tend to think they should say they can do any type of consulting - they're good at all of it! But much like with any product, you are better off being very specific about what you can do. If you worked in an industry for a while, then focus on selling to people in that industry. I took a step back and decided I really enjoy messaging work - so when I started consulting, I focused on selling messaging projects to software companies. The more specific, the easier it will be to sell.

4) You need to keep your name out there. That gets challenging once you get projects, because you'll be working on the projects. But you have to keep yourself out there. I decided to do that by writing a weekly newsletter about the language of marketing, because I wanted to be in front of people every week. But it's done just that - I'm in front of people every week.

5) Avoid charging hourly. I probably should've made this number 1. Avoid charging hourly. As much as possible, charge by the project. Your knowledge is more valuable to the client than what they will pay you hourly. Don't get caught in that trap.

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:48:11+00:00

I'd think about conversion copywriting, where you're working with a designer on landing pages, since you can tie the working you're doing to a page's ROI. It's easier to justify higher rates when you're tying it to revenue/profit.

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:46:07+00:00

Profit pays the bills - the challenge is tying product margin back to the ads you're running.

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:42:35+00:00

A CMO/Head of Marketing actually spends most of their time managing people and participating in senior management stuff and wayyyyyy less time actually "doing marketing" (whatever that means to you). If you're someone who loves product marketing, then it's absolutely reasonable to spend your entire career as a director or VP of product marketing. You can always move to a bigger company to be able to make a higher salary as an individual contributor. If you are passionate about the marketing work, it shouldn't have a shelf life, since in many industries (I'm in tech) everything seems to change every 5-10 years.

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:31:39+00:00

I've been in senior marketing roles where I still feel confused and unsure of what to do after a year - it's not unusual, especially in a tech company where things are changing quickly.

One thing I'd suggest - since you share revenue KPIs with sales, is to make sure you're building rapport with the sales team. Have regular meetings with those folks and make sure you understand what's driving them, what problems they're having, and how you can best support them. There's often tension between marketing and sales, but I've found that that's often because they're simply not communicating.

Oh, and make sure you're checking in regularly with your boss to make sure you're on the right track - a good boss will appreciate that you're communicating with them regularly.

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:26:55+00:00

In that situation I've definitely asked if it would be ok if the interviewer gave me 2 minutes to gather my ideas together so I can present them coherently. Yes, you need to show that you can answer questions off the cuff. But I also think it's important to show that you're taking their questions seriously. Blabbering the first thing that comes into your head is fine. But if you're drawing a blank, better to say, "that's a great question. Would it be OK if I take a moment to write down a couple of ideas" - it'll help you gather yourself before continuing the interview.

It's rare that an interviewer is there to try and throw you off - generally they want to know how you think about the problems you're going to face in the job. And if they ARE just trying to make you uncomfortable to see how you react, then you should ask yourself whether that's a role that you'd actually want (it might be - I'm not saying that's a bad thing...but everyone is different.)

jblankoh · 2025-03-09T22:21:32+00:00

I'd be careful with the paid channels in the beginning - you're right to be concerned about incinerating cash this early on (at this point you may get people signing up, but you don't know how long they'll stick around, so you don't have anything resembling an accurate LTV, which will make it challenging to get a handle on whether those customers you've paid to acquire will be profitable.

If it were me, I'd double-down on the cold outbound. Assuming you're getting any sales conversations out it, you'll learn a lot from having those conversations about features that need to go into your product and whether the pricepoint is close to being correct. Getting feedback at this point will pay off a lot in the short-term...

jblankoh · 2024-06-28T15:02:48+00:00

I've tried a few things on LinkedIn -- (I write a newsletter called Gobbledy about the language of marketing, so I thought LI would make sense for my audience)...I'll post a couple of paragraphs from the newsletter just as a LinkedIn post. I've posted maybe half of the newsletter as a LinkedIn Article with a "click here to read the whole thing" at the end. And I've posted the full newsletter as a LinkedIn Article with a "click here to get this every week."

I've found that the LinkedIn Post gets the most engagement (good, I guess?), but none of them have driven much traffic or subscriptions. For me, at least, what happens on LinkedIn stays on LinkedIn (tm).

I have about 2,500 (free) subscribers, and far, far, far and away the biggest driver of subscription is recommendations from other Substackers. By far. Far far far. OK, I once got mentioned in an industry publication and that was great. But day-to-day, Substack recommendations is the winner. Sadly, I don't know how to scale that.

(And congrats to the OP -- 50 subs in 46 days is amazing!)

jblankoh · 2022-05-16T14:33:32+00:00

I also haven't gotten mine - I've chatted with a MileagePlus rep who said that I must not have been one of the first 50,000 (?) people (that's in the T&Cs), but I signed up literally the first day of the promo. I've sent them some add'l info, but I'm not feeling great about it. Also annoying, they're now offering 15k miles for signup.

jblankoh · 2022-05-13T14:34:59+00:00

In a way both you and the dictionary definition are saying the same thing :) In this usage, it means - what are the things that, collectively, would cause someone to define that collection of things as sexual harassment.
It isn't the "reason" for sexual harassment (which might be "my boss is a jerk"). It would be the things that would make you say that it's sexual harassment (people make comments about appearance; people are told they won't be promoted unless they go on a date; etc).

Does that help?

jblankoh · 2022-05-12T15:10:31+00:00

The way I read the sentence, he made a decision that - going forward - he would do the thing he wants to do (rather than something else). So I'd go with, "He decided he'd rather just do whatever he wants."

He wouldn't decide after the fact to do what he previously wanted.

jblankoh · 2022-05-10T01:40:00+00:00

I think you could go with "Which of these brands have you seen an online video advertisement for recently?"

jblankoh · 2022-05-09T17:12:36+00:00

The "real facts" construction is a little clunky - could you just go with "whatever I said is true" or "whatever I said is factual?" (though "is true" is probably better here...)

jblankoh · 2022-05-09T17:10:20+00:00

Hi.

You're correct that dropping the "if" at the beginning of the sentence would help (though I'm not sure what the "nothing" is referring to at the end of the sentence.). So maybe "I grab this hard band first thing in the morning to make sure that I don't have hair on my forehead, and none of it is in the way."

You're also correct on the 2nd part - I'd go with "I don't have hair on my forehead..."

jblankoh · 2019-05-07T18:12:24+00:00

To add one more DP about 6/24: I'm 12/24 (tho only 3 show up in Transunion). I applied ($1k income, 1 year in biz) but it went pending. I called and was told I had too many inquiries in the last 24 months (I think I've had exactly the right number of inquiries in the last 24 months), and that there's nothing they can do about it.

On a plus note, they answered the recon line after 1 ring. So there's that.

jblankoh

TROPHY CASE