Ponderings from the Perch

Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio

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Conversations with Priscilla McKinney, founder and President of Little Bird Marketing, an award-winning agency specializing in content marketing, lead generation, branding and design. As a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Priscilla's topics range from marketing best practices, the "stunning discomfort" of entrepreneurship, market research, her love of the autoharp, and other marketing oddities.

29 May

The Power of Conversational Research for Customer Insights

The research fraud crisis is louder than the industry wants to admit, and the companies still shopping from the same compromised sources are not solving it. They are funding it. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Jennifer Reid, Co-CEO and Chief Methodologist at Rival Group, to pull back the curtain on what it actually takes to build research panels from the ground up, and why that decision is more consequential than most brands realize. The assumption that mobile-first methodology is a workaround for younger audiences is flatly wrong, and Reid has the data to prove it. The pandemic quietly leveled the playing field in ways the research industry has yet to fully reckon with. Market segmentation built on outdated demographic assumptions about who uses what technology is quietly distorting the customer insights brands think they have. "The beauty of the mobile device is it's your mobile device. Psychologically, it is a very personal, private device," Reid explains. "Our relationship with our phones is different from our relationship with our computers." The decision to own your audience source rather than rent it is not just an operational one. It is a stance on the value of research quality. Reid has built panels three times across her career, and the conditions that finally made it possible to do it right say something uncomfortable about what the industry has been willing to settle for. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today! Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance.

24 min
22 May

How In-market Testing Delivers Richer Consumer Insights

Consumers are not liars. They are simply unreliable narrators of their own lives, and the entire consumer research industry is built on the gap between those two things. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Rachel Buss, Vice President of Strategic Insights at Curion. With more than 15 years in consumer research, Buss works at the intersection of controlled testing and real-world product performance, helping restaurant and foodservice brands close what the industry calls the say-do gap. Her work connects customer insights to the kinds of decisions brands must make when a product leaves the lab and lands in the hands of a distracted, hungry, or completely unpredictable consumer. There is a specific kind of organizational pain that arrives when data confirms what leadership did not want to hear. Trend analysis points in one direction, the C-suite points in another, and the person holding the research sits in the middle, trying to explain why consumer behavior did not cooperate with the strategy. The tension between what a product does in a controlled setting and what it does in the real world is not a research problem. It is a product lifecycle problem that most brands address far too late, if at all. "People still are looking for faster, cheaper, not necessarily better," Buss explains. "Just faster and cheaper." The promise of synthetic data and AI-assisted research adds a new, complicated layer to an already complex problem. Data-driven marketing decisions depend on the integrity of the data itself, and as the line between human response and generated response blurs, the demand for proof of human experience does not shrink. It grows. For anyone who has ever relied on focus groups, ethnographies, or in-context research to make a call on what comes next, this episode asks a question that does not yet have a clean answer. If you want to go deeper into Buss's in-market approach, Curion’s on-demand webinar, Moments that Matter, and their whitepaper on consumer product research are worth your time. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth. Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started.

27 min
15 May

Why Most B2B Content Fails - and It's Not What You Think

Most B2B content fails not because of bad writing, but because of a misdiagnosis. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, Priscilla McKinney takes on one of the most persistent problems in B2B content marketing: the gap between what companies think is going wrong and what is actually going wrong. McKinney draws on years of auditing B2B content strategies to make the case that the real culprits are structural, not stylistic, and that most companies are solving for the wrong thing entirely. Hiring a good writer and hiring someone who understands your audience are not the same hire. Assigning a subject matter expert to a blog and getting content that converts are not the same outcome. The assumption that content quality is a writing problem is exactly the kind of thinking that keeps B2B brands producing work that is technically correct and commercially invisible. A content marketing strategy without a system underneath it is just scheduled output. The calendar fills up, the posts go live, and the revenue needle does not move. "Before you write a single word," McKinney explains, "you need to know who the audience is, what that audience is trying to accomplish, why they're frustrated, why they haven't been able to accomplish their goals yet." Search rankings and brand voice are framed as competing priorities in most content operations, and that framing is the problem. When a company sands off its personality in pursuit of discoverability, it does not win on either front. The content that search engines ultimately reward is the content that humans actually engage with, and beige content does not earn that engagement no matter how well it is optimized. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information.

28 min
8 May

IIEX Conference Flyover Day 2

Faster is not better if no one has asked what the speed is for. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinneyreturns to the floor of Greenbook's IIEX North America for Day 2 with seven more conversations with researchers, founders, and industry veterans on what it looks like when AI-driven efficiency meets the parts of research that have never been about efficiency at all. The promise of Day 2 at IIEX is the same as Day 1, and so is the tension underneath it. The industry is not short on tools that do things faster. It is short on clarity about what faster is supposed to produce. When the workflow compresses, something has to give. The question no one on the conference floor has fully answered yet is what that something is, and whether anyone will notice when it is gone. "We are literally saving people from all the monotonous and tedious work so that you guys can be real researchers," Dean Macko explains. "Really kind of soak yourself into the insights, and then again, soak on activation." The closed-loop AI argument, the brand growth conversation, the reminder that the research flow has not meaningfully changed in decades. None of it lands the same way once you have heard what is actually being said on the floor. There are seven voices in this episode, and every one of them is sitting with a different version of the same unresolved question about what the industry is actually building toward. Connect with the professionals featured in this episode and if you do, let them know Little Bird Marketing sent you their way: Meredith Falvo at Gazelle Global, Dean Macko at Scalify, Marc Macellaio at NIT, Heather McKinney at TalkShop, Max Rodriguez at Quantilope, Geena Shaw at The Logic Group and Matt Worden at Finch Brands. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information. Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth.

29 min
1 May

IIEX DC Conference Flyover Day 1

Innovation is only as good as the methodology underneath it. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney gives you a Day 1 overview of Greenbook's IIEX North America conference in Washington DC. She moves through the event to have open conversations with eight industry leaders. They discuss how AI, market research, and data quality connect, and what it means to design tools for an industry where thoroughness is essential. The innovation conversation at IIEX is loud and it is moving fast. What it is not always doing is asking who is actually doing the building. The platforms are multiplying and the promises are getting bigger, but a tool is only as good as the understanding behind it. Knowing what a research project needs and knowing how to build software are not the same thing, and the gap between those two things has consequences that do not show up in a demo. "I can tell whoever built this has actually run a project before," Jeremy Antoniuk explains. "And that's a really big thing because there are a lot of companies out there that sound like they have great tech and they have wonderful marketing, but at the end of the day, it's built by people who have never actually run a project." The data quality debate, the multicultural research argument, and the case for keeping the human ear in the loop. None of it lands the same way once you have heard what is actually being said on the floor at IIEX North America. There are eight voices in this episode, and every one of them is operating at that fault line between what the industry can do faster and what it still cannot afford to get wrong. Connect with the professionals featured in this episode and if you do, let them know Little Bird Marketing sent you their way: Reggie Alston at Ebony Marketing Systems, Jeremy Antoniuk at Scalafai, Rich Berenson at my-take, Belinda Brown at Gazelle Global, Daryl Collins and Derry Moore, PhD at Decodis, Char-lynn Griffiths at Faire, Carlos Hevia at Multilingual Connections, Bonnie Janzen at Decision Analysts and Heather McKinney at Talk Shoppe. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Priscilla McKinney is not just a CEO; she is also a LinkedIn Influencer. The reality is that very few people are using LinkedIn efficiently or effectively, and if you’re not careful, social media can become a black hole. When you emerge, you find you wound up in a place you never intended to go and you’re wondering where all the time went. Time is precious, and trying to be everything to everyone means becoming nothing to no one. That's why she's developed a transformative 12-week course that goes beyond basic tips and tricks – teaching you how to build a strategic network and create stellar content that cuts through the LinkedIn noise. Click here to learn more, and sign up for a spot in her social influence course today!

34 min
24 Apr

Building Influence with a B2B Content Marketing Agency Expert

Most leaders mistake visibility for volume, and that confusion is costing them. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney sits down with Heather Kernahan, global CEO, founder, investor, and author of Unstuckable, to take on what strategic visibility actually demands from leaders who want to grow a business, not just a following. Kernahan brings 25 years of scaling businesses through transformation, as well as mergers and acquisitions. She currently leads The Content Bureau, a B2B content marketing agency whose clients include Google, Workday, and PayPal. Focusing on what your target audience actually needs is more critical than maintaining a full content calendar. Posting consistently, staying active, and keeping volume high means very little if the content is built around internal assumptions instead of real audience demand. The idea of moving away from generic and toward what’s actually true for people isn’t just a marketing principle. It’s a human one. "If you are out there talking generically to everyone," Kernahan explains. “Then you're not reaching anyone." Women in business are turning down stages, sitting on books, and waiting for the right moment that never quite arrives, and Kernahan is not interested in accepting that as a cultural constant. She has spent years working one-on-one to find the specific thought that stops each person and dismantle it, which means the hesitation is rarely about readiness and almost always about something else entirely. What that something is, and what it takes to move past it, is exactly what makes this worth listening to. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors:Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Priscilla McKinney here! I am very excited to tell you about my book: Collaboration is the New Competition: Why the Future of Work Rewards A Cross Pollinating Hive Mind and How Not to Get Left Behind The book's chapters are designed to be time-efficient, ensuring busy professionals can easily integrate these transformative ideas into their workflow. From discussing the state of affairs in business to providing fundamental strategies and seven practical anchors for staying on course, this book offers a fresh perspective and a competitive advantage in today's complex business landscape. Visit priscillamckinney.com for more information.

30 min
17 Apr

Quirks Chicago Flyover

The conference floor doesn't lie. Neither does the gap between what brands think they know about their consumers and what's actually happening. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney hits the floor at Quirks Chicago to do what she does best: getting the real conversations going. This flyover captures the ideas, tensions, and candid moments that don't always make it into the keynotes, from the AI measurement gap hiding inside the consumer path to purchase, to what it actually means to do research with kids, to a major industry merger that changes the terrain for data quality and platform integration. One fault line keeps surfacing across every booth and every exchange. The industry has never had more tools to study human behavior. Yet somehow, the most important signals – emotional, linguistic, behavioral – keep slipping through. Brands confidently measure clicks and conversions while an entirely invisible layer of consumer decision-making unfolds inside the black box of AI interfaces. Language is research design, not a logistics detail, and the audiences that get left out of studies entirely (children, senior B2B decision-makers, multilingual consumers) represent a category of insight that standard methods simply cannot reach. The brands that get this right start with language. The ones that don't are making a persona development mistake with compounding consequences. "Language is left for an afterthought," Jill Kushner Bishop explains. "And when you do that, you run the risk of missing out on so many essential insights." The merger news, the platform demos, the GLP-1 shopper data, the agentic commerce conversation, none of it lands the same way once you've heard what's actually being said on the ground at Quirks Chicago. There are 11 voices in this episode, and every one of them is pointing at a version of the same problem from a different angle. Connect with the professionals featured in this episode and if you do, let them know Little Bird Marketing sent you their way: Hannibal Brooks at Olson Zaltman, Andrew Seinfeld at Bolt Insight, Jill Kushner Bishop of Multilingual Connections, Malina Simanowski at Brainsuite.ai, Genevieve Becker at Strella, Clemens Johnson at Dynata, Pete Maginnat Beano Brain, Tim Lawton at SightX, Bobbi Barkley at Listen Labs, Margie Strickland at Luth Research, and Anna O'Brien at Curion. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Tired of generic marketing firms that don't get market research? Say hello to Little Bird Marketing, the revenue generation company of choice for the market research industry. Our "peeps" understand market research inside and out. We know your buyers, craft meaningful messages that move them to buy, understand the competitive landscape and where you fit in the market. We get the industry - from qual/quant to emerging technologies. Why settle for getting the job done when you can soar with marketing that drives real revenue? Click here to get started. Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth.

45 min
10 Apr

The Leased Land Problem: Expert Advice on Audience Ownership

Every social media platform you are building on is someone else's property. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney makes the case that most B2B brands have built their audience strategy on land they do not own, cannot control, and will never get back if the landlord decides to change the locks. With long sales cycles and real revenue on the line, the stakes of that misalignment are not theoretical. They are already showing up in the pipeline. Follower count feels like progress. It produces real dopamine, real momentum, and occasionally real numbers. But the platform collecting that audience has its own business model, and it has never once been aligned with yours. A brand can go viral, hit a million views, and walk away with nothing to show for it. The companies that weather algorithm shifts are not the ones who mastered the carousel or cracked the reel. They are the ones who got clear on what the right metric actually was. "Social engagement is not a business outcome," McKinney explains. "Conversions [and] revenue generation are." Borrowed attention and owned audience are not interchangeable, and the difference between them shows up exactly when it matters most. McKinney points to content distribution as the strategic through-line that most brands skip on their way to the next post. The reader who feels the gap between those two things already knows what to do next. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Ever feel like your marketing plan is just... meh? You've got the pieces, but are they really working together? We often find that even when companies are doing the right things, they may not be doing them in the right order. The results are, well, no results. Curious how you can effectively evaluate your marketing efforts? Want clarity on your next best strategic move? Take our Marketing Assessment Quiz and in just minutes, discover exactly where you stand – and where you could be going. Click here and take the quiz today and don’t leave success to chance. Ever feel like your company is sitting on a goldmine of opportunities, but they keep slipping away? Most companies already have their next big win hiding in their database. Little Bird Marketing's Revenue Sprint is a proven system that works backward from your revenue goals to create a focused plan for building a sales pipeline and predictable growth. No massive budget required—just strategic execution that delivers measurable results. Ready to turn missed opportunities into new wins? Click here and build a predictable pipeline for sustainable growth.

19 min

Conversations with Priscilla McKinney, founder and President of Little Bird Marketing, an award-winning agency specializing in content marketing, lead generation, branding and design. As a CEO and serial entrepreneur, Priscilla's topics range from marketing best practices, the "stunning discomfort" of entrepreneurship, market research, her love of the autoharp, and other marketing oddities.

Creator

Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio
Years Active

2014 - 2026
Episodes

451
Rating

Clean
Copyright

℗ & © 2018 Ponderings from the Perch
Show Website

Ponderings from the Perch