Revolutionizing Recall - How Marketers can Deliver the Right Value at Exactly the Right Moment with a Brain Bump

Eric Eden:
0:59

Welcome to today's episode. Our guest today is Mark Hirschberg. Mark has been a veteran technology executive as a CTO and we've invited him here today to talk to us about some of the best marketing things he's done. He's done some great things. He's going to share with us. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Herschberg,:
1:19

Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure to be here, so let's start it off.

Eric Eden:
1:25

Tell us a little bit about what you do and who you are. Like I mentioned, we know that your background is in technology, but you've also done some really great marketing things. So let's, just before you jump into your story, get a little bit of context about who you are and some of the things you've done.

Mark Herschberg,:
1:42

My background is what led me here across. What you'll hear are multiple different brands. I am a CTO and I started my career as a software engineer. When I realized I wanted to become a CTO, I recognized there were a bunch of skills no one taught me Leadership, networking, negotiating, team building all those things we need to be successful that they don't really have classes on in college. So I set out to build those skills in myself, quickly realized I wanted to build the skills in my team and as I was doing so, mit had gotten similar feedback saying companies want these skills and people. They hire our students, but other schools and non-engineers experience people and they keep saying they can't find it. So we put together a program to teach these skills and I got pulled into that unexpectedly. I've been teaching that in parallel to being a CTO and, by the way, as a CTO I've done B2B lead gen, b2c lead gen, so I have a lot of marketing experience. But in parallel to that I've been teaching at MIT for over 20 years.

Mark Herschberg,:
2:47

I wrote the book, the Career Toolkit Essential Skills for Success that no One Taught you, inspired by that class to get these skills into more people, not just students, not just engineers. But when I wrote the book, I recognized there were shortcomings there as well, because where you read information isn't where you need information. How often do we read a book business book, self-help book say okay, wow, this is great, and then two weeks later you forget most of it? If you think about all these great podcasts, all your prior episodes where there's a lot of valuable information, do you remember what you learned in that podcast a month ago? You probably forgot most of it. It's a really good idea, you were excited at the time, but then you got busy with work and it fell away. When we go to a webinar or talk, the same thing happens. We read a blog post and so we forget information.

Mark Herschberg,:
3:42

If you look at social media in a parallel problem, social media is organized chronologically. We see the latest tweets, we get the latest email, and that's not always optimal for the recipient. So you might put out a marketing tip this afternoon to your email list or this particular episode, and someone says that's a great idea, but that's not my problem. Today I have a different challenge, maybe a different marketing challenge. Or I got to raise money, then I'll market. Once I have money, then I can market something, raise money and build it. So I want to think of that, but later. But we don't have any way to save off. I need to come back to this in six months. So the problem is our existing channels social media and email because they're chronologically oriented, don't help the brand and they don't help the audience. We need a new way to interact with information and I saw this problem. I recognize there's a problem for my educational background, meaning teaching, a problem for my lead gen background, for my technology background, and this is what inspired BrainBump. Now I'm going to talk about BrainBump, but this is one example of what I think are going to be a coming set of tools for many different people to solve this problem to take content and allow it to be accessed when it's geotemporally relevant, not when it's delivered chronologically by the order in which the creator puts it out.

Mark Herschberg,:
5:16

So here's how BrainBump works. We take the key ideas in books, blogs, podcasts, classes, talks, really any source. The key idea is what you might highlight in a book, a quote from a show like this one, and we put that into the app. Think of the Q&A, a flashcard kind of app, but without the Q, just the A's, just the answers. They are tagged by topic, think half-tags. They're all organized in the app and they are all in your pocket. Now, in theory, if you highlight through a Kindle book, the highlights are on your Kindle and your Kindle is accessible by your phone. But it's a real pain to have to go access that. You have to open your phone, you have to open the Kindle app, you have to find the right book, you have to find your notes, you have to search through your notes. We're talking 20 or 30 seconds and that's a high cost.

Mark Herschberg,:
6:09

The key design of BrainBump is that the information retrieval is fast. You can get whatever you need in just a few seconds. So let's explore how you can do this. There's two main access modes for the BrainBump app. So we've got all these tips from different books, blogs, podcasts, different sources. You can get either just in time.

Mark Herschberg,:
6:32

For example, I've got a whole chapter on networking in my book. Where do you read it? Sitting at home? Where do you need it Two months later, at the conference? So what if, as you're about to walk onto that conference floor, you open the app, you tap networking as the topic and there's all the networking tips and you just flip right through them and they're there top of mind, exactly when you need it. You can do that in less than seven seconds, so that's a just in time access.

Mark Herschberg,:
7:01

But then there's things that you don't know exactly when you'll need it. You want to remember it, and so you can set up what's like a daily affirmation. You've got all these apps that do the daily affirmation or daily Bible verse. We do the same concept, but with the information that you're trying to remember. So you take that leadership book because you're a newly mentored leader at work and you set up, so you get a leadership tip every day at 9 am as you walk into the office, and maybe your marriage is on the rocks. So you also want to get a tip every day at 6 pm how to be present in your marriage, how to make your spouse feel appreciated. The key is that the leadership tip at 6 pm or the marriage tip at 9 am isn't helpful. It's the wrong information, or rather the right information at the wrong time, and so your brain just says not now, I'm busy, focused elsewhere. So by delivering the right information at the right time, you're delivering value to the audience.

Mark Herschberg,:
8:02

Now, from the brand perspective, there's a whole bunch of benefits. One is that you stay sticky, you stay top of mind. If you want word of mouth marketing for your book, your blog, your podcast, your talk, it doesn't work if people forget what you said. So this helps them remember all of those tip cards. Or when it just pops up on the phone, the app doesn't have to be open when they get that 9 am reminder or whatever time they set it for. It comes with your brand as well. So not only do they remember the information, they keep remembering your brand and they see that your brand is delivering the right value at the right time, and that creates brand trust.

Mark Herschberg,:
8:45

And then, finally, everything is hyperlinked. So if we take quotes from a blog post or a podcast, we'll have a link back to the source. So it says oh, what a great idea. Let me click through, let me just hear the episode, let me read the article. Now that article could be two days old or two years old. It's not organized cryologically, it's organized by topic. So you're driving traffic to your back catalog, you're taking your evergreen content and breathing new life into it, and every time someone shows up they say I need something. Now I'm going to look across your whole catalog, not just I'm on your mailing list. What did you send to me this week? So it is a win for your audience and a win for the brands. It's also completely free for everyone. Brainvump is totally free and this is just one way I think we're going to see how people are going to take microcontent and deliver it when and where it's relevant to the audience.

Eric Eden:
9:44

So very interesting. I think for marketers like myself, timing is everything and hitting things at the right time is actually very hard. Because I think about what you shared, that we all experience social media and lives in the moment chronologically, and when we're ready for a piece of information is not usually when it's served to us. I think that is very common, a super majority of the time, and I also think about the dynamics of running marketing campaigns. So people will sign up for my email list and I look at these sorts of analytics and I'll notice, when someone became a customer, that they had been on the email list for 22 months before they signed up to be a customer. And I'm like, wow, I emailed this person twice a month for 21 months before I got the timing right, and so that's why I think about timing a lot.

Eric Eden:
10:47

I also think about ads and impressions and remarketing, and you try to bring people back to your website because maybe the first time they were there, they were interested, but it just wasn't the right time. So much of marketing is just about hitting that right timing in the moment. So do I have it right that Brainvump is really about helping marketers get in front of people at the right time?

Mark Herschberg,:
11:13

It's about two things. That's half of it. The other half will come back to that moment. The other half is just we know you need multiple touch points. Even if someone gets on your list and you hit them at the right time, they don't suddenly jump from. Let me check out this guy's email list to I'm going to write a five figure check for his product or service. You have to build that brand trust and we know that takes multiple touch points, which is why we get them on the email list, which is why we show over and over, we deliver value, and so the app does that. But then you're right, it's about timing, because even when they're on your email list, you're guessing what they need. You're blasting out to pick a number 10,000 people on your email list saying I know this is going to work for some of them. I just don't know who, I don't know when, and you take your best guess. So I'll give you an example.

Mark Herschberg,:
12:06

I used to send out hundreds of millions of emails a year. We had this giant email list, millions of people on it. It was for travel deals and we blast and you never know when someone was interested in a particular deal. Now we could assume certain things. Coming up to the Christmas season, we knew there'd be more holiday travel. We started to get smarter. If we could discover, for example, that it's a rainy, cold day in Chicago, maybe we should target ads for sunny Caribbean. We get a little smarter, but we can't know what any individual is thinking. And yet, when you look at how Brain Bump works, the individual is driving this is what I need at this time. They're telling you what they need and the system is designed not for you to guess. The system says I've got it all here and I will hand you what you're asking for when you need it under this brand, and the brand gives a credit.

Eric Eden:
13:07

I agree 100%. You need the multiple touches and you need the right timing. Both of those things are very important. Have you seen from people using this app proof that this works? Has there been a big impact from it so far?

Mark Herschberg,:
13:25

We have anecdotes, one challenge for this. I'm going to call it a business, but again, I give away for free. This is just a tool I built because I want to help people learn and remember. I can help brands as well because I know what it's like being an author and speaker myself. The challenge is I don't always get the end loop data. We know, for example, with our speakers. We've got a really cool feature where every piece of content so every book or every talk or the podcast has a unique QR code. We tell people you can share the link or QR code wherever you want Speakers myself included. The final slide of my talk, the one that says thank you. Here's my contact info.

Mark Herschberg,:
14:09

People used to say sign up for my email list, but they get very low conversions because people are skeptical of the email list. You're going to spam me and my inbox is going to get cluttered. We say snap this QR code At the end of my talk. You snap that QR code. You're going to install the app for free and get the tips for free and set up that daily reminder.

Mark Herschberg,:
14:32

Now I've seen myself and data from others. We get a very high conversion rate, a large over the audience members. They just spent an hour with you, or they just finished reading your book or starting your book because I put in the start of mine, or they just heard the podcast episode. We know they're in market for that content, so we get very high conversion there. Now how much that helps, leading to getting close to sale. This is where you get to the click attribution problem in marketing. Whose click was it? It really wasn't just the last click, we know it was a whole bunch of things along the way. It's hard to do the attribution Same thing. No one says Mark, I just sold a $20,000 service and I can attribute it right to your app. We played a part of it, but it's hard to know how much.

Eric Eden:
15:21

Right. I think that attribution is always a challenge, but it seems much better than the traditional thing that most marketers have been doing for the last 20 years, which is if you just get people onto an email list. To use your example, if you think every email you send a 1% response rate would be considered great. It's usually a fraction of a percent, so that means 99% of the time you're sending someone an email. It's not the right time, like 99% of the time, to put some context on it, and it could be some people like they change jobs and the emails I've had anymore, but I would just say a super majority of the time. It's just not the right time for people, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're not interested and so this is a much better way to do it.

Eric Eden:
16:14

And I also agree about people opting into an email list. I think even things that I'm very interested in if I've bought something and I'm a customer just because of how people have managed their email lists like I'll sign up with some retailers and I'll buy something there and I'm like, yeah, sure, put me on their list, and then they send me an email like every single day and I'm just like that's crazy, what are you doing? And so I think people are very gun shy about opting into emails for this reason, where, if they sign up to get reminders, and their brands can be more thoughtful about how they're serving up these tips to people, like you were saying. I think that would be much better. And, on the app.

Mark Herschberg,:
16:55

We give them the control. First. They decide what time, then they can decide the frequency. Do they want it every day? Maybe just weekdays, because this is only relevant for days you're in the office. Maybe they want it once a week. They have a once a week, let's say, strategy meeting. So five minutes before the meeting they want to get a strategy tip. So they control when they want it. They can turn it off if it bothers them. We'd rather have them get your content and brand to pull up on the just in time even if they don't get reminders, than just say oh, I'm tired of the reminders and turn it off. So we give them full control. And to your earlier question while we can't say we know we caused this lift, we guarantee there's a positive ROI because the cost is zero. So it's only a positive curve. There's no cost to doing that.

Eric Eden:
17:46

Of course. So a broader question I love the Brain Bump app. A broader question as a CTO, someone who's taught at MIT for 20 years, what advice would you give to marketers in today's market? You have your career toolkit book. If the marketers are listening, it's a very interesting time we live in today and while you've been a technologist you definitely have done some really great marketing things. So what advice would you give marketers today?

Mark Herschberg,:
18:22

Deliver value. Too often the emails I get marketing emails, sales emails, the mountain of spam I get and spam some. I technically opted into a list. Many are cold outreach or someone signed me up to their list even though they're not supposed to do that. They begin with here's how awesome we are. I don't care, I wasn't looking for you. It doesn't matter if you really are awesome. That's not what's relevant to me.

Mark Herschberg,:
18:55

If you can start with, mark, I believe you have this problem by the nature of your role, your industry. Here's a way I can help in a non-self-serving way, and this is key, because most people say oh, we can help by selling you our product. We can help if you give us money. Start with here's a way to help. So, for example, reach out and say here's some information about the industry. Here's a trend, here's some data. When I was doing my last B2B marketing company, whenever we put out an infographic that just went through the charts on social media, on our email list, people said, oh, here's information that's helpful to me. You're not asking me to buy something. I don't have to jump through a hoop to get. You're sharing something of value to me. You're not saying give me money, so start by providing one-sided value to your audience 100% agree.

Eric Eden:
19:59

Give value, be helpful. 99% of the marketing emails and ads I get don't do either of those things today. It's like people aren't even trying. It's like they're not even trying to do good marketing. So that's great advice. So, mark, if people want to get the Brain Bump app, how do they get that?

Mark Herschberg,:
20:22

The Brain Bump app, which is completely free in both stores Android and Apple but you can go to brainbumpappcom. If you go to that website, brainbumpappcom you can follow links to the stores. There's information about how it works. There's a 90-second video showing you how the app works and if you are a brand with evergreen content and you have value for your audience and want to get your content on there completely free, it's free for the app users, free for the content creators. At the bottom of that page is a form Takes 30 seconds. Just tell us who you are, your website, give us your email so we can get in touch with you we don't even have an email list and then we'll be in touch about how you can get your content on the app and use it to stay sticky with your audience. All of that is at brainbumpappcom.

Eric Eden:
21:14

Sounds like a great solution for marketers, authors, speakers, podcasts. It sounds like it could be useful for a lot of marketers across all those different things. Thanks so much for sharing all this with us today, mark. I encourage everyone to share this episode with your friends. People should know about these great things that Mark shared and, mark, we really appreciate it. Thanks for being with us today.

Mark Herschberg,:
21:41

Thanks again for having me.