This post originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com - #Growing Your Business
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Marketing is all about innovation. Marketers must innately understand and adapt to the ever-changing world around them to meet incredible demands and aggressive goals. I strongly feel the best marketers often realize that innovation is crucial, and remaining stagnant is a financial death sentence. By changing the game through their unique perspectives and innovative tactics, entrepreneurs and organizations look to the world’s top marketers for guidance during these turbulent times. Notably, these 12 marketers, in no particular order of preference, are making waves and names for themselves as they pave the way for their clients to succeed.
Derek Moneyberg
Known for being a “tough love” mentor, Derek Moneyberg doesn’t mince words and expects his clients to win or he won’t take them on. “My clients know that they won’t be coddled,” says Moneyberg. “I give my clients real, actionable advice, even if it is not exactly what they want to hear.” Moneyberg stands out as an influencer who doesn’t offer up cheap soft, sugar-coated advice and has built an incredible business with his brass tacks approach. “I set my clients up for success,” he states. “They don’t walk away with ideas. They get results.”
Dr. Denise McDermott, M.D.
Ascension Media’s CEO, Dr. Denise McDermott, M.D., brings a valuable perspective to marketing by producing intentional content surrounding conscious products, influencer engagements, marketing, inspirational shows and mindful messaging. “I believe in paradigm progression thinking, which combines eastern and western philosophies encouraging people to embrace their neurostyle and unique talents,” states Dr. McDermott. “My success in media and marketing is multidimensional.
She has created a system inspired by self-love, allowing people to stabilize the energy within them and live up to their fullest potential. Unifying the individual and group mindset, Ascension Media has created a win-win outcome for all by integrating capitalism with altruism.
Related: 10 Women Entrepreneurs Who Are Shattering the Glass Ceiling
Brett Larkin
A world-renowned yogi and entrepreneur, Brett Larkin has revolutionized the world of online yoga with her platform and yoga-teacher training that she has wholly shifted online of late. “It’s a really weird time not just for yoga but for all businesses in general,” concedes Larkin. “What we’ve seen is an influx of people wanting to study yoga online, so we quickly optimized our digital channels to accommodate them.”
Brett’s YouTube channel views are up 127 percent, with a 102 percent increase in watch time. Brett has been perfecting the art of virtual teaching since 2015, and her business is a shining example that, with the right mindset, there is an audience for you in any virtual space.
Vance Fundora
Best-selling author and entrepreneur Vance Fundora aims to hand over his marketing expertise to every small business and help them keep up with the latest in digital marketing. “While massive organizations run multi-million-dollar tests and campaigns all the time, small businesses can’t afford to test and make mistakes, so they stay away from digital marketing altogether,” explains Vance.
Through his guide, Keeping Up, an Amazon best-seller, Vance helps emerging entrepreneurs and existing organizations transition into the digital space.
Michael Escobedo
Driven by curiosity and a passion for showing the world his perspective, Michael Escobedo uses photography to tell stories. “Using my artistic ability as a photographer, I craft stories through collaborations, as well as of my own travels and endeavors,” shares Escobedo. He’s worked with brands such as MVMT, Zanerobe, Movado, as well as global icons such as Ludacris, Nipsey Hussle and A Boogie wit da Hoodie, and reveals that “a finely honed skill of photography and deep familiarity with social media tools and trends helps me create highly successful content. The photography I produce delivers great value to brands and public figures, while still connecting with my viewers.”
Zhenya Globazh
After a 10-year career in marketing for some of the top tech and FMCG companies, Zhenya Globazh co-founded Shiba500, a New York-based agency that develops branding and marketing strategies for B2B tech companies looking to launch their products in the U.S. and Europe. Citing empathy and determination as her main strengths, Globazh makes it a point to surround herself with diverse, driven and talented people.
“Working with top brands and agencies such as WPP, Danone & Yandex has certainly diversified my experience and strengthened my expertise, but what drives me is people,” she says. “I enjoy working with passionate and dedicated individuals who share my desire to create amazing products and help people in changing the world for the better.”
Chris Diaz
As founder of his eponymous Chris Diaz Agency, Diaz has become a leading marketing consultant who always puts his clients first. One of his key strengths is strategic partnerships. “Our team has developed a near-perfect digital marketing strategy for entrepreneurs to consistently start, grow and scale their business online beyond six and seven figures,” he explains. “We deploy automated marketing campaigns that speed our clients’ sales cycle by connecting them with their desired customers.”
Diaz believes that though he and his team have decades of combined experience in the digital marketing space, they make decisions based on data, not opinions. “We have one goal,” he insists. “And that is to help business owners, brands and entrepreneurs generate more revenue online, immediately. We understand that a business survives off making money, so we use marketing techniques that speed up success for our clients and get them closer to our revenue goals.”
Colton Bollinger
Fueled by his resilience, Instagram marketer turned entrepreneur Colton Bollinger is at the helm of Jumper Media, a startup changing the way brands leverage Instagram marketing and growth. As he shares, “When algorithm updates toppled our IG business, I thought maybe we could replicate the same kind of Instagram growth and engagement for clients by hand with people doing it from phones.” The rest is history.
Bollinger not only managed to keep Jumper Media in business, but he also scaled a team of approximately 1,000 people in another country within six months. While Jumper started as a software company, it has emerged as the largest organic Instagram growth agency catering to more thsan 1,500 clients.
Farhan Munshi
As the head of MMYCOM, which owns multiple ecommerce brands, Farhan Munshi doubles down in the face of adversity. “The pandemic forced me to look at things from a resourceful perspective rather quickly,” he says. Faced with a massive production delay in China, Farhan only had what was in his North American warehouses.
“What we did was focus on what we could fulfill while limiting our ad spend until things got back on track,” he explains. “That proved more than worthwhile because now we’ve increased our revenue projections by 300 person.” Munshi believes in staying laser-focused during challenging times makes all the difference.
Ryan White
Ryan White scaled his company Social Revelation Marketing into a seven-figure business in a record 18 months. With his exceptional marketing and communication skills, he has built a network of more than four million professionals across the globe. Talking about marketing in the age of social media, he shares, “The best storytellers get the most attention and money follows those with the most attention.”
White is seen as a thought leader in not just marketing but networking too, stating, “My key strength lies in my ability to network well and communicate effectively. I have always seen myself through the lens of a leader to help encourage and serve others, and therefore, I work hard daily to consistently develop into the best version of myself so that I can do this at the highest level.”
Kendall Shaw
In his role as founder and Head of Growth for Maybach Media, Kendall Shaw combines direct-response marketing tactics with data-based media buying strategies to help brands grow exponentially. “The results you can get from digital marketing become much more powerful when you can understand why people buy your products and the core desires that they have,” he offers. “This methodology is what has allowed us to consistently have success for our clients as well as our own DTC brands.”
Shaw and his team help ecommerce stores to scale up by leveraging ROI-driven ad strategies, email marketing and copywriting. And to test and share the best learning outcomes with his clients, Shaw owns and runs several ecommerce stores of his own.
Related: 15 Entrepreneurs Under 30 to Watch Out For
Bozoma Saint John
With an exceptional career that spans more than 20 years, Bozoma Saint John, currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Netflix, has an incredible talent for bringing people together through stories. “Storytelling is critical to our global, societal well-being,” says Saint John. “I feel honored to contribute my experience to an already dynamic legacy and to continue driving engagement in the future.”
Saint John understands how stories drive engagement, and that engagement is critical to brand awareness. Her approach is all about adapting tried and true human storytelling elements, making them work in our modern digital landscape.
All these individuals serve as a reminder that business is all about having the confidence to branch out and put your faith in an idea. Change is inevitable, but what these marketers prove is that the best talent knows how to adapt, teaching us that strategy can set us apart.
