Networking is an important part of marketing, so let’s talk about it!
We have a real treat of a guest today! We are talking to Priscilla McKinney!
About Priscilla:
Priscilla McKinney is the CEO and Momma Bird at Little Bird Marketing, home of SOAR™ and Revenue Sprints, proprietary content processes designed to create sustainable revenue generation for busy leaders so they can have confidence in the growth of their company without losing focus on their other responsibilities. She is a serial entrepreneur, host of two podcasts and author of “Collaboration is the New Competition”. She is a popular speaker and podcast guest, recipient of many design, entrepreneurship and industry awards including the Insights Association’s Laureate designation. Priscilla personifies creativity, entrepreneurship and authentic leadership – inspiring others to carve out their own path of success in her uniquely funny, no-nonsense and slightly irreverent way. Don’t give her caffeine. She doesn’t need it.
Contact Priscilla: https://www.linkedin.com/in/priscillamckinney/
Priscilla’s Book: https://a.co/d/0ckHKdO0
Priscilla’s Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3qbqV6GLDZ0UGWbYp3HiH3?si=6dc14834d54c496a
Priscilla’s Plug: https://insightsmarketingday.com/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:08)
Hi, welcome to the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis, and it’s a pleasure to have you back joining us to hear yet another incredible guest. And I know, I know, you’re thinking, Sean, every single time you introduce a guest, you talk about them being incredible and how you learn so much from them. And it’s true, because on the Marketing Gateway, we only know how to have awesome guests. But today’s guest is a little bit different because she is, like myself, someone who does a podcast. And her podcast has been going for a lot longer.
And she’s done way more episodes than we’ve done here at the Marketing Gateway. She’s done close to 450 episodes at Ponderings from the Perch. And she is the CEO and the mama bird at Little Bird Marketing, which is based in Joplin, Missouri. And her name is Priscilla McKinney. And Priscilla is somebody who I met her, we both were speaking at a conference back in, I think it was November of last year for Question Pro. ⁓ I was speaking on a panel, she was speaking on a panel, we connected.
And I was immediately impressed by her because she really, really understands how to get to know people quickly and how to listen to them and talk in a substantive way. And I mentioned to her that I was getting ready to start a podcast. invited me to be on hers. that episode’s in the show notes. And of course, you know, I asked her if she’d come and be on mine as well. And I learned a lot from the experience of going on her show. And in fact, some of the things that we do on the show, I learned from watching the way she was doing it. So.
She’s great. And one of the things that I also want you to know is that she’s got a lot of interesting ideas to share about networking and collaboration and utilizing research in ways that are actually useful. even, you know, a lot of her clients are research agencies, research agencies like mine. We’re really bad at marketing. I mean, I’ll be honest. When you look at our industry trade magazine, marketing is not something that we do very well. We don’t know how to market to one another very well. ⁓ It’s tough because we are good at
research and we’re not good at strategy a lot of times or speaking to people that are outside of our organizations and she helps marketing research agencies with that task as well as other clients and brands and organizations. So there’s a lot in this half hour. You’re going to love it. Here’s Priscilla. Enjoy.
Sean Jordan (02:19)
Hey, welcome back to the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis, and I’ve got with me today Priscilla McKinney. And I actually have been a guest on her podcast. And so I’m privileged to have her come and be a guest on mine. So welcome, Priscilla.
Priscilla McKinney (02:33)
Hi, thanks for having me. ⁓ before we get started, if you love Sean’s show, can you go give him a good rating? I’m just telling you, I know what it is as a podcaster to need a little bit of encouragement. These are labor of love. That’s for sure. That’s what a podcast is. So if you’re listening and please go give him some kind of a five-star review. Anyway, okay, let’s move on.
Sean Jordan (02:53)
Thanks
Priscilla, because my kids are really tired of me asking them to do it. Well, Priscilla, tell me, I always like to begin at the beginning of our show to ask our guests to tell me something surprising. So tell me something surprising, anything at all that you would like to share.
Priscilla McKinney (02:58)
That’s good. That’s good.
Okay, well, I’m the fifth of five girls. grew up in a traveling singing family and that’s not even that surprising. A lot of people who know me know that about me. ⁓ But this also involved a lot of puppet shows. And I don’t think you’ve probably had a guest on who has done so many puppet shows in their life. And if that’s not surprising enough to someone, ⁓ I do recall a summer traveling through the south of Spain ⁓ and around Gibraltar and that area.
where I was ⁓ kind of received the brunt end of the five sister dynamic and my sisters created the coalition called SAP, Sisters Against Priscilla. So there’s the surprising fact about me.
Sean Jordan (03:52)
Does that make sense?
Was that because you were like the Michael Jackson of the group where you were the clearly more talented one?
Priscilla McKinney (04:00)
No,
not even close. I’m telling you, three of my sisters are just like, just insane. Two of us sit on the sideline and go, interesting, interesting. But you, I didn’t even know you could quit the band. Like one of my sisters tears as she’s like, yeah, I quit. And I’m like, I didn’t even know we could do that. So yes, I had very interesting childhood.
Sean Jordan (04:21)
That’s fun. I’ll tell you something surprising about myself. A lot of people don’t know is I used to go around, especially when I was in college as a mime, just for fun. I would put on the makeup and the shirt and stay on it.
Priscilla McKinney (04:32)
Okay,
I’ve never been able to use my favorite Billy Crystal line from Spinal Tap when he’s like, mime is money. Great quote.
Sean Jordan (04:38)
I always like
the, I think it’s in the deleted scenes, but he talked about how he named his company shut up and eat because they’re all mimes and they’re serving. So shut up and eat.
Priscilla McKinney (04:50)
That’s good. That’s a deep track there, Sean. Good job.
Sean Jordan (04:54)
What can I say? It’s my humor. So, well, in this series on the Marketing Gateway, we are focused on the St. Louis area and you actually don’t live in the St. Louis area. You’re on the other side of the state over in Joplin. So tell me a little bit about your impressions of the St. Louis area being on the other side of Missouri.
Priscilla McKinney (05:06)
Mm-hmm.
Well, I always meet family in St. Louis. They live about halfway the other way because you guys have the best blues. I mean, come on. I mean, we always meet up. We’ll stay the little weekend and, you know, get to hear some amazing music, eat some great food, and then we just go back our merry way. I will say, though, I do really like your town. However, I went on the river cruise thing that was not that impressive.
I have to say it just didn’t really go by anything that yes, we are on the river, but you know, there was a bar, so it’s okay.
Sean Jordan (05:48)
Right, yeah, when
I was a kid there was a McDonald’s riverboat that was way more impressive to us kids than any of those river cruises.
Priscilla McKinney (05:53)
⁓ there you act.
would have. Yeah, I would have gone for that. Except for now, you know, the funny, you know, the now the McArch video going around on LinkedIn right now. Maybe McDonald’s isn’t quite in favor, but I am a big fan. First job I had actually. So. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Sean Jordan (06:00)
Mm-hmm.
really? Fantastic. My first
job was working at McDonald’s and I actually dropped out of college to manage at McDonald’s, but. ⁓
Priscilla McKinney (06:17)
Oh
my goodness, I can’t believe that we have in common. Yeah, I moved back to the States when I was 16 and I was like, I mean, I wanted a job. was like, know, teens in America work and can get jobs. And I was like, oh my gosh, what is the most American thing I can think of? like, I’m to work for McDonald’s. I thought that was the best idea ever.
Sean Jordan (06:37)
You know what, I often credit it as it gave me insights into customer service I never would have gotten from any other job I ever had. Just working in the counter or the drive-thru or prepping food for people. I learned so much and I have a lot of respect for people that work at McDonald’s as it happens. Well, is there anything about the St. Louis area you wish other people knew? And I love that you mentioned, when you mentioned the blues, you mentioned the music and not the hockey team that were very…
Priscilla McKinney (06:51)
Yeah, for sure.
Sean Jordan (07:03)
of our hockey team in St. Louis, but the music is also part of what drives us.
Priscilla McKinney (07:07)
Yeah,
it is. You know, to me, it’s the little hole in the wall places. You got to stay up late to get like the really great, you know, headliners and I’m all for that. The other thing is, maybe other people don’t know, I really like your bookstores. You know, you guys do still have local bookstores and that’s kind of how I spend the other part of my day when I’m in St. Louis.
Sean Jordan (07:30)
Yeah, two that we really like, Left Bank Books, which is over in the central west end, and then Dunway Books, which is on South Grand. And Dunway has this basement with just crazy used books.
Priscilla McKinney (07:37)
yeah, that’s ⁓ yeah, yeah, I’m telling you, I love it. I love it.
They’re like you I can spend so much time in there. It also you know, I do love the Strand in New York. But if you can’t get to New York, then get to St. Louis.
Sean Jordan (07:48)
Mm-hmm.
I
have been to this strand, that was the one where they had, you could buy books by color there, just in large, yeah, large lines of color.
Priscilla McKinney (07:56)
Yeah, yeah, and it literally
is a mile of books. It’s a whole city block. So yeah, it’s impressive.
Sean Jordan (08:03)
It’s worth going to if you’re in New York. Well, great. you part of the reason that you know about all these places is because you like to get out and network with people, right? And so I thought one of the things we talked about, because this is a topic that a lot of people struggle with is networking. You’re really good at it. You’re way better at it than I am in fact. So I’m going to learn something too, but let’s talk a little bit about networking. So you go to conferences, you speak, you hold podcasts, you’re a host podcast, excuse me. You do all kinds of awesome things.
Priscilla McKinney (08:11)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (08:30)
to get out there to meet people. And actually you and I met at a conference. We met at the Question Pro conference back in the fall. So this is something a lot of people struggle to get started doing and it’s important. So let’s talk a little bit about why it’s so important and how it’s really helped you in your career.
Priscilla McKinney (08:45)
Yeah, well I think with networking people tend to think of it like I’m gonna go to this event and I’m gonna network no You are going to network your whole live long life Okay And going to an event is one small piece of the networking and that’s the mistake a lot of people make because they think there has to be kind of a Setup to mark to networking. No, it is going on all the time. It’s how you end a phone call that you’re doing. It’s how
you invite a guest on a show. It’s about how you prepare to go to a conference. It’s not the conference itself or the meeting itself or the happy hour itself, right? And so because they make that wrong assumption about it, they go into that and think, if I’m present in that, I am networking. No, here you and I are, you know, we met in the fall. Now we’re, you know, nearing on end of winter here into the spring and we’re
We are using it, right? We didn’t end it at the conference. Our networking wasn’t in the conference. You came on my show, now I’m on your show. And we’ve been talking about who else do we know? How can we introduce each other to people? And so those moments are not the networking. It’s the how you live is networking. So to me, that’s the first error that people make. And I’d say the other thing that I think might be counterintuitive is that I hear people all the time say,
Be authentic, be yourself. And I think, oh, good God, don’t do that. I’ve been married 32 years. The last thing I am is myself. I mean, this is how you keep things together. You be your best self, or you be the self that makes sense in that moment. And I know a lot of people are going to roll their eyes at me and say, oh, that’s disingenuous, Priscilla. I’m like, listen, I did not wake up like this. I put lipstick on. I did my hair.
I became presentable for you. thought about this moment. I care about this moment. And I’m going to show up in the best way that I can in this moment. Is that my real self? So I know that might be just maybe parsing words, but I do think it’s important to clarify for people, stop trying to make it like this big hurrah. You need to think about what does Sean need in this moment?
That might not authentically be what I want to talk about right now. So I’m not going to be my authentic self. I’m going to take a step back, get curious, and I’m going to focus on being interested in someone else. Right? That does not come naturally to me. And that’s the other thing I’d say is that, you know, a lot of people say, I’m an introvert, so I can’t network. Some of the best networkers I know are introverts. It’s not about personality. And you’ve got to break that.
You know, yes, I’m outgoing, but that also can hurt me in networking because I like to talk about myself and I like to get going. Right. And so I have to not be myself. I have to listen more. I have to talk less and I need to be present with people. So those are a couple of mindset shifts, I think, that really help people stop doing the wrong thing in networking. Right.
Sean Jordan (11:59)
And I think what you’re saying is so true that being the best version of yourself is authentic in its own way, because people don’t know you. They don’t know what to make of you. unless they’ve really gotten to know you over time, ⁓ you have to present yourself in a way that they want to get to know you. And this is good advice for any kind of social encounter that you have, of course. especially when you’re meeting professional colleagues who, they’re nervous.
Priscilla McKinney (12:07)
Yes.
Exactly.
you
Sean Jordan (12:24)
They don’t want to be there a lot of times just as much as anyone else. And so you have to find a way to make them feel welcome. And know, one tip I was given one time was if somebody walks in a room and they’re uncomfortable, walk up and act as if you’re the host. And you can tell them I’m not in charge of the event, but just act as if you’re the host, introduce them to people, show them around, and it makes them more comfortable. And I’ve done that. It really does work.
Priscilla McKinney (12:28)
Right.
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. As my good friend and coach, Brett Baker says, he says, like, if you feel it, say it, right? So if you walk in and you’re like, oh my gosh, this is so awkward. What I’m gonna say is, oh my gosh, this is so awkward. What do you wanna talk about? Like networking, am I right? You know, and just.
Be, you know, be present in it in that and you don’t have to put on a persona. And I’m not saying, I’m not saying be fake as opposed to be authentic. I’m just saying sometimes just being in the moment and calling a, you know, a spade, a spade is really disarming to people. And you can immediately get that amazing connection.
Sean Jordan (13:28)
You know, I think another thing that people really struggle with and you know, marketing, we tend to be a little more outgoing sometimes, depends on the role we have, because I’ve met a lot of people that are in digital marketing or, you know, or in ad buying, media buying, things like that. They’re not as outgoing as some of the people that are more on the creative side. So we can’t always presume that people are in marketing or outgoing, but a lot of people don’t even know where to get started. And, we here in St. Louis, we have the American Marketing Association. It’s pretty popular and a lot of people go to that or we have 314 digital. ⁓
Priscilla McKinney (13:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (13:55)
You can go to those and you can sit there and not talk to anybody and leave and you know, you didn’t really accomplish anything. I’ve done that. Yeah.
Priscilla McKinney (13:59)
Yeah, what a waste. What a waste. Yeah,
I don’t understand that, but it happens all the time.
Sean Jordan (14:08)
So are those a good place to get started for networking, or is there someplace better that you can go to really begin to get comfortable with the idea?
Priscilla McKinney (14:15)
No, I think those are the most easy props to make it happen. What is harder is learning how to do it in your own life. You and I both have a podcast, which is another prop, right? You and I both know that our podcasts are initially and foremost the way that we really get introduced and get to really connect with people of high value, right? People that we think could also connect us to others. People who have something genuinely
to say and other people want to hear them. So it’s like, I don’t know, is it a little dirty little secret? I try and have amazing people on my podcast because people aren’t gonna always come and tune in for me. They’re gonna come tune in for this amazing guest, right? And so it’s a prop, but yes, the first prop that’s the easiest is go to an event that someone puts on and then just ladder it up from there. Just know that it doesn’t end there.
You have to send some messages that you’ve thought about from the conversation, right? It can’t be generic of follow-ups and things like that. You have to remember a small little detail about somebody and you cannot underestimate how powerful it is when you talk with someone maybe two or three months after an event and you bring up a detail that they talked about and they are touched that you remembered. And it’s about like, you know, having that mindset.
that you know you’re going to follow up. You know you are going to try and figure out what is next in this relationship. Now, I’m not saying that’s with every single person you meet, but you need to have that radar on so that you can find those people. And I guess another prop that could help is if you don’t know how to get started doing that, latch yourself onto somebody you see doing it, who is a connector, and you will pick up and learn things from them.
Sean Jordan (16:02)
That’s very true. In fact, that’s one thing that I have learned is if I’m not feeling my most outgoing or if I’m a little nervous in a room with a group of people that I don’t know, I try to find somebody that does know people and then I introduce myself to them and let them introduce me to other people. It makes it so much easier because they’ve already figured out the way to do that. I don’t have to do all the heavy lifting.
Priscilla McKinney (16:13)
Yes. Right.
Yeah
Yeah, you know what’s interesting is people love to rescue people if you seriously go up and tell someone my god I know no one here. Can you help me? They might say my god. I don’t know anybody else either. let’s make a plan You know that could be it but they could say ⁓ I know what who do you who do you want to know? And i’ll just go introduce them around you can find those people but if you’re not honest and you don’t say these things that are more disarming and speaking the truth, you’re never gonna get
There you’ll be like the last two minutes of the night and you just met one person that finally you connected with you know What a waste and you know, this goes ladders all the way up. This isn’t just about individuals I see whole companies doing this and this is what my business is built around they spend, you know 70 100 120 thousand dollars, know going to this show and gosh some of them are more and They get there, but there’s no networking plan. You know, there’s no before networking. There’s no
really solid networking at the event. Maybe they do network a little bit at the event, but there’s no follow-up to the network going on. So this happens in our individual lives and it happens to us as companies.
Sean Jordan (17:28)
Totally. mean, they collect a lot of business cards. They maybe have a few meetings with people they already know, and they just stand around their booths and hand out ⁓ swag, but they don’t meet anybody. I’ve been that person because I’ve been in trade shows where I’ve had to do that because I was uncomfortable. And I’ve also experienced that as an attendee where they don’t really have a ⁓ knowledge on how to get to know me as a person. They’re just there to work at that booth.
Priscilla McKinney (17:32)
Yes.
So,
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a skill. It’s a skill.
And you’re always learning. And I, it’s never too early to start networking. I, my, my 18-year-old was like doing an amazing job on LinkedIn before he left for college. And, you know, networking him, he’s, you know, heading to be an orthopedic surgeon. And you think, ⁓ what does he need with networking? Everybody needs to network, you know? And he got good at it. He was willing to sit down on LinkedIn and really begin to understand.
what needed to happen. You you’re going to need to phone a friend or a friend of your mom’s at some point, you know. So network up, network down, you know, and it’s about starting young. And then I would say it’s also never too late to start networking. If you haven’t done it, it’s amazing how quickly it can compound.
Sean Jordan (18:37)
And this is such great advice. And one of the reasons that I wanted to kind of open with this is because you have done so many things as a marketer. And I want to talk about some of that. But I think part of what shapes you and makes you so effective at what you do is that you understand how to talk to people. And in your role, you’re wearing all these hats right now. I I went and looked on your website at Little Bird Marketing, where you work. And you’re the CEO and the mama bird there, as it says on the site.
Priscilla McKinney (18:44)
you
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (19:04)
you have this podcast, actually you had two podcasts, don’t you? And, you know, you go to all these conferences, you speak, you wrote a book. ⁓ Do you teach? mean, I teach as you know, but there you go.
Priscilla McKinney (19:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, I teach a LinkedIn course on networking, actually.
It’s a 12-week course, and I joke around and call it, it’s from Couch Potato to 5K, but for LinkedIn. And that’s where people get it wrong. They think, oh, I’m on LinkedIn. Oh my gosh. Like 95 % of people on LinkedIn are not using it correctly. And it has to do with fundamental networking mindset shifts. They think that it’s about
you know, tips and tricks and algorithms and hacks and, you know, you know, ⁓ video and a great post and puppies and whatever. I don’t know what they think it is, but it’s not any of those things. And so what I really teach is please stop doing everything. Please stop. Let’s just regroup. Forget everything you think you know, and let’s reassess really what needs to happen. And I think it starts with being selfish.
What do you want for your career? What do you want things to look like? And then your journey can look different from anybody else’s because you have your goals in mind. And too often we get in that happy hour at that conference on LinkedIn, wherever it is, like the environment, and we start doing whatever they want us to do. We’re not doing our goals, right? And I liken it to asking people, hey, do you like Lyft or do you like Uber?
As you and I are always in market research groups a good survey goes away goes away’s right? So I had I asked the group, you know, which one and they have their own preference, right? So I could ask you happy hour or linkedin conference or you know or you know global conference, right? Which one’s your somebody if you have a preference? But when did you get in that uber last time and tell the driver take me anywhere you want? You don’t that’s ridiculous
You have a destination in mind and you’re the driver, but we get in that happy hour. We get at that conference, we get in LinkedIn, and we just let it take us anywhere we want. And that is absolutely a waste of time.
Sean Jordan (21:08)
Hmm. LinkedIn is one of those areas I probably need to take your course because I think a lot of us struggle or frustrated because you go on there and you see all this content that’s getting promoted and it’s not the kind of content you’re interested in or the kind of things that you’re there to write or to produce and yet you feel like you have to copy that in order to be successful. So.
Priscilla McKinney (21:14)
You
Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah. And also that tells me you haven’t trained your feed because if you spend a little time, you can get your feed to be amazing and you get rid of all the junk.
Sean Jordan (21:31)
Ha ha.
I’ve definitely learned that lesson over the last year as I’ve worked to do that. ⁓
Priscilla McKinney (21:42)
Right, right. It’s amazing.
When people tell me it’s like, the feed in LinkedIn is horrible. I’m like, yeah, yeah, you just haven’t you’re just taking whatever anybody gives you. You’ve got to actually train the feed to what you want to see and train your feed for excellence.
Sean Jordan (21:56)
very true. That’s very true. Well, you mentioned that, you know, you do research as well as strategy and you’re one of those people that can walk that fine line between those two things. Now me, I’m a marketing researcher. I, a lot of times I’m asked to give some maybe recommendations, but they don’t really want me being a part of the strategic planning. That’s I’m an input to that. I’m not a person that’s providing that. If I’m doing a study on branding or concept testing, I’m providing the input to how people felt about it, but they’re not actually asking me to go and be involved in the creative side of things. But
Priscilla McKinney (22:03)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (22:25)
you are able to straddle that line somehow. tell me a little bit how you’ve done that, I think it’s amazing, first of all, and I think there’s something for all of us to learn, whichever side we’re on of that line, how to be able to do that.
Priscilla McKinney (22:28)
Yeah.
Right.
Well, we actually do very little research. might commission research or we might do some surveys, for example, for our podcasts or things like that. But we do research on personas, research specifically for marketing. ⁓ But what the reality is, why I’m so associated with market research is that about 65, 70 percent of my clients are in the market research industry. They’re researchers.
Sean Jordan (22:40)
Mm-hmm.
Priscilla McKinney (23:02)
But I understand them because my degree is in cultural anthropology. And my first job out of college was doing IDIs in the LA basin in Spanish with Latin women. So for Johnson & Johnson. So I know what that moderation or that intercept, that IDI, that one-on-one conversation sounds like. I understand what they’re trying to do. That’s not my role anymore. I’m a marketer. But I.
Value mark research and so when we need research we’ll commission it But the the most common one is around persona work because I would say don’t do any marketing anything at all Unless you are crystal clear about your most ideal client buyer, right? Who is that persona? Who’s that avatar? don’t care what you want to call it, but you need to understand your audience so well And I mean that like by their pain
What is keeping them up on a Sunday night? What is getting them up on a Monday morning? You know, these things that are really the more the psychographics, the dynamics that are the motions behind that they use to make decisions. You need to really be in touch with that. And so we can gather that. get a lot of the right people in the room do some interesting moderating in order to get that out of the team, especially the frontline team who’s talking with the most successful clients. But then sometimes we have to go.
test it. Sometimes we do need to do additional research for it. But the whole point here is to say, I’m not really researcher, don’t come to me for research, but people come to me for marketing, but I do already understand the market research industry. that I understand what my clients are trying to sell.
Sean Jordan (24:38)
Yeah.
And I think that really explains how you can walk that line is that you have enough knowledge and enough ability to be able to interface with that function where you don’t necessarily have to be the person that’s doing it, but you can be the person that’s commissioning it or managing it or helping a client to understand how to use it. And for a lot of researchers, like we like to bury our heads in the data. We like to be the people that are producing the data, but we don’t really like to go and talk about the practical use of it and look at it from a higher point of view. And I think that’s part of what keeps us out of those discussions.
Priscilla McKinney (24:44)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. Every year I write hundreds. I know that seems crazy, but I write hundreds of pieces for market research. Now, I’m not saying I’m the genius behind that thought leadership. I’ll interview a client and I’ll get their thought leadership on paper. But I author tons of things from downloadables to case studies to lead magnets to blogs, presentations. I write that for our clients because they have the genius trapped inside their head.
But we need to get that out into content marketing and into really effective distribution channels. And so that’s what we’re really good at is asking the piercing questions where, you know, a great CEO of, you know, say a sample company can explain to me what they really think is going on on a higher level. Well, I don’t necessarily have that that view.
but they can give it to me over 15 minutes and I can translate it into an effective article for them to share. They just don’t have the time to get that done. But you can’t just give that to a freelance writer. mean, if you don’t understand the nuance of market research and panel and cross-cultural translation of surveys or the global ⁓ realities of field work, if you don’t understand those things on a base level, then you can’t write for this industry.
Sean Jordan (26:28)
It’s completely true. so often ⁓ there’s this tension, especially on the creative side of marketing. They don’t always like research. They find it threatening because a lot of times it tells them that what they came up with wasn’t as brilliant as they thought it was. Didn’t land as well.
Priscilla McKinney (26:38)
you
Okay, well, wait, wait,
hold on, Sean, you know who else doesn’t like research? Market research firms, because when I suggest to them, hey, this is really good, but we’re gonna need to do some research. no, we don’t want to do research on that. And I’m like, wait a minute, your whole business is predicated on doing research to verify this data. And let me get this straight. I’m done being surprised about it, right? I’m over it. But it was very surprising to me when I first came into this industry in 2016. And I’m like, wait a minute, they don’t want to do research? So.
Sean Jordan (26:53)
you
Yeah.
We, know,
at RPG, we’re small enough agency that we can take our medicine and ⁓ we did it a few times with our clients and it was actually frustrating and I’m not saying this is a brag, it was frustrating because they liked us and they didn’t have a lot to tell us about how we could be better. And so we had to figure out how to reframe the questions in a way that gave them permission to tell us how we could be better. And a lot of it really was substantial when we got to that point, but you have to really be willing to take the medicine, but then you also have to be willing to make sure you’re getting the right kind of dosage.
Priscilla McKinney (27:16)
you
Mm. Mm.
I can see that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And usually that can only happen from third party. And that’s also why people call you because they can’t do their own research. They need someone who has that outsider view and can say, you know, your baby’s ugly.
Sean Jordan (27:54)
It’s, again, it’s never fun to hear it, but it’s better to hear it than to find out on the other end. And I’ve worked with many ⁓ different suppliers and vendors of all stripes, Market Research or otherwise, that would benefit from just asking me every now and then, well, how did it really go? Because I’m willing to tell them. And one of the vendors we have in common is QuestionPro, because that’s conference where we met with QuestionPro. I had a problem with QuestionPro.
Priscilla McKinney (27:59)
Right.
Right. Yeah.
Sean Jordan (28:19)
not long after signing up for them. it was a serious problem. mean, it was actually causing me some actual harm with one of my projects. And I had to give them feedback afterwards and had to say, listen, this can’t happen again because I went with you guys thinking that I wouldn’t have this problem. And I was amazed at their humility and willingness to actually hear that feedback. But I was also amazed at their willingness to actually act on it, which is another thing that.
Priscilla McKinney (28:26)
Mm-hmm.
my goodness. I could not underscore that more about that team.
It is about constant learning with them, and they are so gracious with the way that they even try and get in and understand even more, what is it you need? Well, tell me more. And so they are trying to be proactive to keep those kinds of problems from happening, and they are trying to find white space where they could serve better. But I would totally agree with you. If something’s wrong, that team is like, whoa!
Wait, wait, wait, tell us more. How are we going to fix it? You know, and I think that’s so, so valuable and so missing in so many sectors at this point.
Sean Jordan (29:22)
And if there’s anything that folks can take away from our discussion, it’s the value of listening, whether you’re networking, whether you are in a marketing research type relationship, whether you’re working with clients who are doing strategy, listening really is the key to informing that kind of collaborative discussion that you want to have. And that actually brings me to the next question I want to ask you about, because you just wrote a book about collaboration. And by the way, it’s one of my favorite words. I use it all the time in my consulting.
Priscilla McKinney (29:27)
Mm.
Sean Jordan (29:48)
I think there is not nearly enough collaboration in many different aspects of the corporate world. I do a lot of work in healthcare and you’d think healthcare is really collaborative, it is not. There’s lot of fiefdoms and silos and things like that that have to be regarded. So you made the argument that we have to get out of that kind of thinking of silos and we have to really look at collaboration as kind of our best tool for dealing with some of these problems. So tell me a little bit more about what you have to say in the book and I mean.
Priscilla McKinney (29:59)
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (30:15)
It sounds really good, but it’s hard to do in practice. So how do you really make it happen?
Priscilla McKinney (30:18)
It is it is
So you’re a fan of collaboration. I’m a fan of collaboration. Let’s just say right now though You don’t always need to collaborate. It is not the highest order of things It’s a great way to get a bigger win instead of a win-win If you collaborate often you can get a win-win-win-win-win and this is why I think it is so amazing, right? But just because I wrote the book on it doesn’t mean I’m a proponent use it all the time. No, no, no, no, no actually what I’m saying is
Use it carefully use it judiciously and know when not to collaborate And so if you have this framework that I provide and i’m just going to give it you real quick. It’s three points If you have this framework, you will not end up in a horrible collaboration that actually is not a collaboration And is really maybe stealing your trade secrets, right? So like we need to be very clear about what? when it is, ⁓ appropriate
And so I have three key things that you could just crib for me right now. You don’t even have to read the book, although I’d love for you to, and it’s also on Kindle. And I also read it on Audible myself. So if you’re like, yeah, but I don’t like to read, well, there you go. Find it on Audible. ⁓ But there’s three things. Number one, only collaborate with people when everybody in the collaboration has something to win and something to lose, right? They’ve got to have skin in the game.
this, I’ll collaborate with Sean and I’ll go do him all these favors and everything and never ask anything in return. That is not a collaboration that is doing a friend a favor. So just call a spade a spade. I’m not saying don’t go to do a favor for a friend. Go do it. Just don’t call it collaboration. OK, so everybody has to have something to win and something to lose. And if you are interested in that, I’m telling you in the book, I really get into that. And it is a mindset shift because people think like even, for example,
having a young person on a local arts board. Well, they don’t have something to win and something to lose. Yes, they do. Think about it for a minute. You need to find the person who does fit that bill, right? ⁓ Because they might be after very different things. Often we get stuck in like, what is it I want to win? It’s not the same as what someone else wants to win. And so if we start like really looking at the world that way and asking people better question, like, what could you get out of this?
very upfront, what do you stand to gain? Then we can find some really cool ways to collaborate. Okay, so there’s more on that. But the second thing is you need to find people who are willing to show their cards. So they can’t lie to you about what it is they’re trying to get, right? So I wanna have you on my podcast because I just selfishly know that you’re known in the industry where I work. And I want to have more people like Sean Jordan.
You know, come to me and say, well, if Sean Jordan respects her, then I should respect her. And so I am trying to get something out of it. So I ask you for your time. But what you’re getting out of it is I’m giving you amplification of your company to my entire carefully curated audience. And I’m almost at 450 episodes. So I’ve really worked hard at it. So you’re getting something. But we should both get something out of it. Right. And we have something to lose. I also.
have paid sponsorship. So I’m giving up a free spot when I ask you to come on my show. So I have something to lose. You have something to lose. You’ve got all this time. What if I’m a horrible host, you know, and you spend an hour and I’m sorry, but an hour is worth a lot these days. So there’s other ways to think about when lose, but the showing their cards is where you and I can have that conversation and really be honest about what you want out of this hour. And then the last thing is that you have to collaborate with people who have a will to win.
call it Moxie, PEP, Energy, Verve, I don’t care what you call it, but they need to have a will to win for themselves and for you. They have to have enough to go around. They’ve got to be in it to win it. use those three really quick ⁓ ideas as a framework, whether or not you should collaborate. And if all three are not met, do not collaborate. Figure out some other way to do some business together. Just don’t call it collaboration.
Sean Jordan (34:31)
I love it. That’s a great framework and some sage advice. And, you know, I think a lot of times when people hear the word collaboration, they think compromise. They think, we’re going to get a committee together and we’re all going to agree. And I’ve been in enough focus groups as a moderator that that’s the last thing I want out of a focus group. I want people to disagree because they often come to sharper conclusions than when they all agree with each other. I’ve been in enough meetings with committees where when everybody just follows the lead of one person, that one person’s agenda becomes really important, but you’re not really collaborating.
Priscilla McKinney (34:38)
Right.
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (35:00)
you’re just following that person’s lead. so I think collaboration really does have to involve sometimes a little bit of conflict or a little bit of asserting different points of view in order to get to something that everybody is working towards the same goal.
Priscilla McKinney (35:01)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely, absolutely. I totally agree.
Sean Jordan (35:16)
Well, you know, one other thing that I wanted to ask you about, ⁓ and this is just something I’ve been talking about with lot of different guests that have come on, is there’s this difficult ⁓ barrier sometimes between creativity and strategy in the marketing world today. ⁓ A lot of marketing is becoming really metrics driven, and that’s not a bad thing because marketing does need to be measured in some way, but it becomes so metric driven sometimes that it gets in the way of any creative ideas or any creative risks.
Priscilla McKinney (35:29)
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (35:43)
I’ve
Priscilla McKinney (35:43)
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (35:43)
certainly seen companies take great creative risks and fail, but I’ve also seen them have great success. I’ve seen a lot of them play it too safe and they put a lot of money and time into a campaign and nothing happens. Predictably, because they didn’t really put anything on the line to have anything happen. So how do we find a balance between creativity and strategy?
Priscilla McKinney (35:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, well, that’s absolutely the world that I straddle every day. I manage an entire team of creatives. And, ⁓ and here’s the surprising thing that people think is counterintuitive. And that is that creativity works the best in strategy and in organization. It does not need chaos. People think about creatives like, you know, crazy people, wrangling cats, you know,
you know, getting up at, you know, 2 a.m. to madly, you know, paint something. I don’t find that to be true. I find that the creatives that really ⁓ produce something genuinely new and genuinely moving are people who accept structure in their life. There are standard operating procedures. There are things that we ask ourselves at the beginning. We might ask ourselves,
Question at the beginning and say hey isn’t this true? No, it’s not okay throw it out Whatever but the point is we asked ourselves and so long story short is that I think the antidote to really unbridled creativity is first and foremost really good strategy and structure because if I know Priscilla is gonna have asked this question. Who’s the audience? You know, where are we gonna distribute who are the leads?
How are we gonna know if we success? If somebody’s already asked all those questions before we even got started playing around and being creative, now my brain is not divided. I’m not thinking, yeah, but how’s that gonna work? Or who’s gonna do that? Or what day is this due? If all of that is settled, now my brain is completely a slave to that creativity monster. And it can be a wonderful, wonderful thing. So I feel like I release my creative team.
by them knowing that there is a massive strategy and structure underneath. And then one little thing about KPIs, and you mentioned this about, we’ve got to have measurements, we’ve got to have metrics. believe me, I’m ⁓ the head of a ⁓ content marketing pipeline generating company, right? Of course there are metrics. But you know what the best metric is? Do you feel like you are printing money in your back room?
That’s the only metric we’re going for. So we can talk about vanity metrics all that we want. Now, some of them are very helpful as benchmarks to know, are we creating a predictable pipeline? Like if we’ve learned a cookbook that works, we want to be able to repeat it. So it is important to have them. But we can’t just get tangled up in them.
The point is revenue generation and far too often, whether it’s a marketing director or someone over, you know, is someone over creative or over operations, over the strategy or the CEO, whatever. Sometimes we get lost in like every different role that everybody has and think, what are we here for? We’re here to make money.
That’s the ultimate metric. So we did this thing and did we make money from it? Now we may not make money day one, which is why you have to have those metrics in. Oftentimes, you know, my clients, they’re not selling $20 widgets. We’re selling at the very base, $10,000 projects and very commonly $250,000 projects, right? That’s very common in our industry. I don’t know how to sell $20 widgets. So don’t come to me if you have a $20 proposition, right? I just can’t even do it.
But what I’m saying in that is that we need the creativity to flow, but we need to have all of the structure around it so those creatives really can blossom.
Sean Jordan (39:35)
Totally agree. I often tell people that you need restrictions and boundaries to really turn on the creative part of your brain. Because if you can just do anything, it’s like having a blank sheet of paper in front of you. You won’t do much with that blank sheet of paper. But if that blank sheet of paper ⁓ you can only draw within a square on that blank sheet of paper, you will start to do more with that square than you ever would have with the whole sheet.
Priscilla McKinney (39:42)
Yes.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. And I think there’s at the beginning, you need to think about like, what are the channels? It could be any channel. Okay, but then once we pick the channels where we’re going to distribute, now we have to really start thinking specifically within that square. And I think that’s a very good mindset. That’s a very good way to think about ⁓ our work.
Sean Jordan (40:16)
Well, it comes naturally to me. worked in the comic book world where you had to think in terms of panels. So, I was kept restricted. ⁓
Priscilla McKinney (40:21)
Wow, wow.
See, there’s a surprising fact we should have kicked off with that one, Sean.
Sean Jordan (40:28)
Well, it has been so great talking with you Priscilla. And ⁓ as always, I always feel like I learned so much whenever I talk to you or hear from you. And I really want to encourage folks to check out all the things we’re going to put in the show notes, but your book, which I’m going to check out Little Bird Marketing. I want them to check out your podcast. Go watch the episode I was in because we talked about some of the topics that are important to me in that top, you know, absolutely. We’ll put that in there. But
Priscilla McKinney (40:46)
Yes, yes, put that in the show notes, John.
Sean Jordan (40:52)
One thing I do ask every guest to do before we leave is to plug something. We’re all marketers. We’re all plugging something. So what would you like to plug today?
Priscilla McKinney (40:59)
Well, we do an annual Insights Marketing Day. Many years ago, that’s how I came into the industry. Once upon a time, Green Book had an Insights Marketing Day for everybody in Insights to pause for a minute and think about, how are we going to market our company? And they used to do it on the tail end of their their conferences. And I was a speaker and I just kept being asked to come back and speak and speak. And that’s how I actually came into this industry. And I looked around, I’m like, ⁓ my gosh, first of all, I
No, you know, as a cultural anthropologist, I was like, oh, I get these nerds. But then I realized they’re horrible at marketing themselves. And I thought, oh my gosh, I’m going to be gainfully employed my whole life. This is so great. So over time, they decided not to continue hosting it. They just didn’t have the bandwidth. But they gave it to me and said, hey, would you like to maintain Insights Marketing Day? And so we’ve been doing that. We’re going to have one coming up late this year, September 18 in Chicago.
Sean Jordan (41:35)
It’s true.
Priscilla McKinney (41:56)
We’ll be hosting that in a beautiful ⁓ international design ⁓ and architect studio in right off of Wacker. So beautiful, beautiful facility, but it’s a day to pause and think about marketing. We’re going to have someone speaking about SEO and AEO and what that means really for marketing your ⁓ insights business. We have someone talking about, ⁓ you know, pipeline generation. We have someone talking about what it, you know, what it takes in, in biz dev as a CRO. And of course we have
very practical advice about AI and how to use that to ⁓ bring your marketing engine where it needs to be. And those are really, you know, it’s an industry just like everybody else’s right now being very, very disrupted, but it’s very important that you disrupt it properly, right? So we’re going to give you some really great speakers to help understand how to keep your marketing ⁓ engine going. And we need that, you know, sales pipeline building. Where is the revenue? Do we feel like we are like Scrooge McDuck?
you know, back stroking in a, you know, in a room full of gold coins. That’s what we’re looking for, right? So there’s my meme for the day. But yeah, Insights Marketing Day, you can hear a little bit more about it. The new one hasn’t quite come out. We’re getting all of our sponsors in a row. We do have the speakers already, but it’s insightsmarketingday.com. So sign up to hear more about it so that when it comes up, it is a small, nice
conference, we limit it to 75 people so that you can know everybody within the day. It’s a really lovely day.
Sean Jordan (43:26)
And it’s in Chicago proper, it’s not in Rosemont, so I like that too.
Priscilla McKinney (43:28)
Right.
See, that’s just marketing when they say that. But yes, we are in proper Chicago.
Sean Jordan (43:35)
Fantastic. again, thank you so much for being on. It’s been a privilege to hear from you.
Priscilla McKinney (43:40)
thanks so much, Sean.
Sean Jordan (43:42)
All right, listeners, so a great interview as always, but I want to challenge you to do something. And I want to challenge you to do what I have had to myself start doing, which is I want you to find a way to go out and to get to know more people who are doing what you do. If you’re in digital marketing, if you’re in ⁓ creative agency work, if you are in research like I am, ⁓ if you’re in accounts-based marketing or if you’re teaching or whatever else you’re doing.
I want you to think about one way you can go out and try to meet other people who do what you do and just have an authentic ⁓ interaction with them. Something where you can be your best self, as Priscilla talked about, and you can really find a way to connect with them and not just be friends, but to really work together, to collaborate on something. Whether that is collaborating to help each other find work, whether that’s collaborating to help each other just be less comfortable in that networking situation, whether that is
building a meaningful relationship that could become a partnership over time. And I’m going to tell you honestly, last year was a rotten year for research agencies. It was a rotten year for creative agencies too, and for many other marketing agencies, but it was really rotten for research agencies. A lot of folks went out of business. A lot of folks really struggled. One of the things I had to do ⁓ after some many, many challenges that we faced was I had to start looking at the people that I knew who were here in St. Louis who
are doing a lot of what I do and to say, how can we build some meaningful partnerships together where maybe we are not working together as the same agency, but we are working together to benefit each other and to help each other. One of my ⁓ now good friends ⁓ came out of that kind of thinking. And another ⁓ person who has become, who used to be someone that I would go to when I needed ⁓ help is now I would consider a good friend as well. And we’re all working together on projects to try to find ways to enhance and help each other.
We’re all independent, we’re all doing our own thing, we all have our own work, and yet we meet regularly and we help each other. And that’s so cool. You can’t do that in a space where you’re not willing to go out and meet people and to try to figure out what you can do for one another. So I wanna encourage you, if you take away anything from this interview today, think about that. Think about how can I meet these people, work with them, network with them, collaborate with them. And by the way, read Priscilla’s book, I’m gonna read it as well. I read part of it and it was great, I just need to finish it.
So it’s there in the show notes and I want you to check it out. But in the meantime, we have more awesome interviews coming up. We have more great shows from me where I’m going to talk about marketing issues and we’re always looking for new guests. So if you would like to be on the show or if you know anybody that would like to be on the show, please visit marketinggateway.com, click the sign up to be a guest button and let us know. We’d love to have you. In the meantime, I’m Sean in St. Louis. This has been the Marketing Gateway. We’ll see you next time.
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