Ponderings from the Perch

Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio

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.

  1. Using Customer Insights for Better Customer Experience

    5D AGO

    Using Customer Insights for Better Customer Experience

    *This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by Rival Technologies. Ranked among the world's most innovative insights suppliers in Greenbook’s 2025 GRIT Report, Rival Technologies uses AI-powered video analysis to unlock deeper meaning from unstructured data.* Most companies don't have a product problem but an operational problem that's quietly destroying their customer experience. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, host and Little Bird Marketing CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with Lasandra Barksdale, Founder and Principal at Kompass Customer Solutions about using customer insights to improve customer experience (CX). They examine how service-driven businesses often excel at marketing and sales but fail at the handoffs, workflows, and internal processes that determine whether customers stay or leave. Barksdale talks about her work helping companies transform support tickets, online reviews, and frontline feedback into actionable customer insights to create a clear roadmap for removing friction from the customer journey. And that is the crux of great CX! Specifics they discuss include how friction typically occurs at the handoff between departments, where no one truly owns the customer experience. While marketing drives interest and sets expectations, sales closes the deal, but breakdowns happen during delivery. This is when slow onboarding, internal efficiency policies, and disconnected tech systems create customer frustration. Barksdale emphasizes that the real challenge is recognizing that customers evaluate the entire experience as one seamless interaction, not as separate departmental functions. "I think we have to remember that customers really don't separate your marketing from your operations. It's, and we should either, right," Barksdale explains. "It's all one experience." The conversation also addresses how companies can identify friction by examining support tickets, online reviews, customer surveys, and feedback from frontline teams. Barksdale explains that call reduction itself is not a customer experience strategy because the real goal should be eliminating the need for customers to call at all. She shares practical examples, including how Amazon proactively refunded her for a subpar movie rental before she even thought to complain, demonstrating how companies can address friction before customers experience it as a problem. 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 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!

    24 min
  2. The Interview Glow-Up: A Winning Content Marketing Strategy

    JAN 2

    The Interview Glow-Up: A Winning Content Marketing Strategy

    Your best LinkedIn content already exists in conversations you're having every day. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney reveals how strategic interviews transform the content creation problem from manufactured brilliance into curated snippets of conversations. She walks through a content marketing strategy that turns industry leaders, colleagues, and conference contacts into sources of compelling material while building genuine professional relationships.  Before any tips are handed out a strong warning is given that the approach requires understanding your audience first through persona development. With that settled, asking questions that are relevant to your ideal audience becomes easy!  But how do you get the best answers from experts you’re already talking to? By asking better questions! She explains that most professionals fail at interview content because they ask questions that trigger autopilot responses. Generic queries about leadership style or company background produce forgettable answers because the subject isn't actually thinking. Better questions dig into specific decisions, failures, trade-offs, and frameworks that force people to explore their reasoning rather than repeat rehearsed talking points. This distinction separates content that stops the scroll from content that gets ignored. "When someone has to actually think about an answer to your question, the answer starts becoming interesting," McKinney explains. "In those stories they might even share a framework, or if they start talking about how they frame something up, say whoa whoa whoa whoa tell me about the framework!” Encouraging others to reveal their thinking process creates really interesting content that stops the scrolling on LinkedIn." Interviews solve multiple problems simultaneously. When you interview someone thoughtfully, you're not just extracting content; you're giving them visibility, building a genuine relationship, and positioning yourself as someone who curates valuable insights for your network. A three-minute recorded conversation at a conference becomes weeks of LinkedIn posts. A colleague's solved problem becomes a framework your audience can apply. The interview itself becomes the relationship builder, not just the content source. This approach works because it removes the pressure to be brilliant and replaces it with genuine curiosity about what smart people know. Mischief managed.  Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Is your concept testing budget disappearing without driving better decisions? Most insights teams waste 30 to 40 percent of their research spend on preventable leaks. Socratic Technologies has created a free audit to help you identify what leak is costing you the most—and exactly how to fix it.  Click here to download the audit today and start making concept testing that drives growth. 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!

    27 min
  3. Swag that Slaps: The ROI of Good Promotional Giveaways

    12/19/2025

    Swag that Slaps: The ROI of Good Promotional Giveaways

    Most B2B companies throw away thousands of dollars on conference swag nobody wants, keeps, or remembers. Priscilla McKinney, host of Ponderings from the Perch and CEO of Little Bird Marketing, challenges the bulk mindset destroying promotional budgets across every industry. She introduces what she calls the "stress ball epidemic"—the reality that 90% of conference swag ends up in the trash before attendees even leave the hotel. This episode reveals the psychology behind why people keep certain items while others create nothing but waste, and how strategic promotional giveaways can transform marketing expenses into measurable lead generation strategies. She explains that companies order 3,000 cheap items instead of 300 quality items, believing the math makes sense until they realize 3,000 items thrown away immediately have zero value. The solution lies in what McKinney calls the "three life strategy": the event experience itself, social media amplification through user-generated content, and evergreen brand love created by items people actually use. Strategic giveaway campaigns capture email addresses and generate qualified leads for B2B lead generation rather than simply distributing forgettable stress balls and keychains that end up in landfills. "If you spent $3,000 on a giveaway campaign and it generated 500 qualified leads, that's $6 per lead," McKinney explains. "If you spent $3,000 on traditional swag that you can't point to a single lead from, that's infinite cost per lead." She shares real-world examples of successful campaigns, from Louis Vuitton purses tied to merger messaging to Kindle giveaways that sparked conversations about global connection. These weren't random prizes—each aligned with brand values and created stories worth sharing on social media. McKinney emphasizes that quality items photograph well and generate organic social sharing that amplifies reach without additional cost. Winners naturally post about premium gifts on LinkedIn, creating user-generated content that extends brand visibility across entire networks while following social media marketing strategy principles of organic engagement. And if you're heading to a conference and you realize you need help thinking through the strategy, then this is exactly kind of work we do at Little Bird Marketing. Our peeps would love to talk about conference strategy because that service includes helping clients think through promotional strategies that actually generate leads instead of just generating trash. We bring strategic, organized, accountable, and repeatable approach to everything we do and we like to extend that to how you show up at events so that your brand can SOAR. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Is your concept testing budget disappearing without driving better decisions? Most insights teams waste 30 to 40 percent of their research spend on preventable leaks. Socratic Technologies has created a free audit to help you identify what leak is costing you the most—and exactly how to fix it.  Click here to download the audit today and start making concept testing that drives 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.

    26 min

  4. 12/12/2025

    When Market Research Drives Thought Leadership and PR

    *This episode of Ponderings from the Perch is brought to you by Rival Technologies. Ranked among the world's most innovative insights suppliers in Greenbook’s 2025 GRIT Report, Rival Technologies uses AI-powered video analysis to unlock deeper meaning from unstructured data.* Can market research actually drive your thought leadership strategy? On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with guest and Senior Vice President of Marketing Research at Method Communications, Svetlana Gershman, about how market research and PR must work together to create authentic thought leadership. They explore why these disciplines historically operated in silos and how the rise of large language models (LLMs) is forcing communication teams to unify around consistent narratives that build expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. McKinney and Gershman discuss how thought leadership research differs fundamentally from internal business research. While both require methodological rigor and straightforward storytelling, thought leadership research must find the intersection between what's measurable and what's newsworthy. "Your research has to be timely with what's going on," Gershman explains. "Timely facts, cultural facts, taking advantage of that and understanding what that means for your industry, for your context, for an employer, is important. It's fun, it's timely, it will make the news, but it's also valuable." Gershman explains the "dream headlines" approach her team uses, where they draft potential headlines before designing the survey to ensure the research can generate media pickup while maintaining data integrity. Their conversation reveals how LLMs are reshaping the relationship between customer insights and b2b content marketing. Search engines now act as gatekeepers in B2B decision-making, which means brands must maintain narrative consistency across all channels. Gershman shares how her team at Method Communications bridges the gap between research and PR by ensuring that customer insights inform thought leadership strategy while meeting the standards journalists expect from authoritative sources. 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 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.

    27 min
  5. Workflow Automation to Create High-Quality LinkedIn Posts

    12/05/2025

    Workflow Automation to Create High-Quality LinkedIn Posts

    What if your best LinkedIn content is hiding in conversations you're already having? On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney discusses a systematic approach to creating high-quality LinkedIn content without adding another full-time job to your plate. She reveals how to capture moments of unconscious competence—when you're speaking from deep expertise during client pitches, presentations, or team meetings—and transform those insights into a consistent content library. She explains that the most powerful content doesn't come from staring at a blank page at 7 a.m. with coffee in hand. It comes from recording those golden moments when you're in flow, solving real problems, and articulating your unique value naturally. "Workflows [only] work when they fit YOUR workflow," McKinney explains. "Do not try to do something that is so foreign to you that you will not do it. Get inspired to understand how you can get disparate systems to work together and shorten your path to success." By building an automated workflow using tools like Zapier, ChatGPT, and Claude, you can capture transcripts, filter for viral-worthy topics, and create polished posts that actually sound like you. The episode walks through a six-step automation process: capturing transcripts from recordings, using Zapier to connect tools, filtering topics with ChatGPT, crafting spicy takes with Claude, creating project management cards, and scheduling polished posts. Priscilla emphasizes that perfection isn't the goal—adaptation is. Your tech stack and team structure will differ, but the principle remains: multiply the value of work you're already doing by being kind to your future self. 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 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
  6. Why You Need a Tone-of-Voice Bible For Your Content Marketing Strategy

    11/28/2025

    Why You Need a Tone-of-Voice Bible For Your Content Marketing Strategy

    How do you transform abstract brand values into a consistent voice that cuts through the noise? On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney discusses the three pillars of developing an authentic brand tone of voice. She breaks down how personality, perspective, and language work together to create communications that sound distinctly like your brand across every touchpoint, from formal proposals to casual social media interactions. McKinney explains that tone of voice begins with understanding your core values and how they translate into daily behavior. She walks through Little Bird Marketing's four core values (care deeply, finish strong, stay gold, and be true) and demonstrates how each value shapes not only what the company says but also how they show up in client relationships. The key is defining both what each value means and what it explicitly does not mean, creating clear guardrails for authentic communication. These values become the foundation for personality, the first pillar of tone of voice, which determines how you say things rather than just what you say. "Your tone should be flexible in different contexts," McKinney explains. "I can go into a formal meeting, and I can go to a fun, happy hour. I'm still Priscilla, right? But it shouldn't be so unrecognizable that there's no flow." The second pillar, perspective, requires brands to take clear stands on industry issues and articulate their beliefs, even if it's unpopular. McKinney shares how Little Bird Marketing built their business around the conviction that every brand deserves a clear and effective marketing plan with tangible deliverables, a direct challenge to the industry norm of vague creative promises. The third pillar, language, involves making concrete decisions about vocabulary, sentence structure, and level of formality. McKinney provides a practical exercise that helps brands identify five non-negotiable tone descriptors. As with many elements of marketing, Priscilla emphasizes that the real challenge isn't creating the document, but implementing it consistently across every communication touchpoint. Music written and performed by Leighton Cordell. Sponsors: Is your concept testing budget disappearing without driving better decisions? Most insights teams waste 30 to 40 percent of their research spend on preventable leaks. Socratic Technologies has created a free audit to help you identify what leak is costing you the most—and exactly how to fix it.  Click here to download the audit today and start making concept testing that drives growth. 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.

    28 min
  7. Can a Podcast Create B2B Lead Generation for a Healthcare Market Researcher?

    11/21/2025

    Can a Podcast Create B2B Lead Generation for a Healthcare Market Researcher?

    Years of experience in healthcare insights is worth its weight in gold. On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney talks with guest and President of the Research & Planning Group, Sean Jordan, about the critical challenges facing marketing research today and the specific experience of working mostly in healthcare. They explore how healthcare organizations lag behind other industries in adopting marketing best practices, why emergency departments create paradoxical brand experiences, and how data quality issues threaten the reliability of modern research methodologies. Jordan also shares about his new podcast, ⁠The Marketing Gateway⁠. Together, they have a few thoughts on the growing crisis in research data quality, particularly the overuse of research panelists who may not provide authentic responses. They discuss the rise of VPNs, spoofing technologies, and how generative AI has created an arms race between researchers trying to verify respondent authenticity and fraudsters finding new ways to game the system. "We're at the point where 30 to 40% of panel respondents can be fraudulent. And that's not a statistic that I made up," Jordan explains. "That's what the people who sell these panels will tell you." But after discussing the insights industry at large, they go deeper, where Jordan explains his work with organ procurement organizations, where the research stakes couldn't be higher. With hundreds of thousands of people waiting for transplantable organs, these federally designated nonprofits face complex challenges around donor family consent, ethical practices, and maintaining public trust. He highlights another interesting conundrum in healthcare with the revelation that healthcare systems often subcontract their emergency departments to physician groups, creating a disconnect in which patients report terrible emergency experiences but excellent hospital care once admitted. This paradox undermines hospital brand equity and underscores why organizations need to reclaim control of their front-door experience.These two issues alone show why it is important to have deep experience in the healthcare vertical in order to come alongside companies and help them make better decisions - based on great data.  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 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!

    29 min

  8. 11/14/2025

    What kind of thought leader are you?

    What if the reason you struggle with thought leadership isn't a lack of ideas, but writing in a voice that isn't yours? On this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing podcast, host and CEO Priscilla McKinney discusses the four distinct types of thought leaders and how identifying your natural style can unlock your content creation potential. She breaks down the visionary, revolutionary, radical, and inspirational approaches to thought leadership, explaining how each adds unique value to your audience and brand positioning. She explains that most people mistakenly believe thought leadership requires predicting industry trends or being visionaries like Richard Branson and Elon Musk. "When I hear these kinds of comments from people saying, ‘I know I have something to say and they can say it well,’” McKinney explains. “I get the sneaking suspicion that they're not writing in their natural style and that's what's causing blocks and problems." This misconception causes talented professionals to feel blocked when creating content because they're forcing themselves into an unnatural writing style. Understanding whether you naturally inspire like Mother Teresa, revolutionize like Malcolm Gladwell, radicalize like Brené Brown, or envision like Branson allows you to write authentically and consistently.  Once you understand your natural thought-leadership style, McKinney provides a roadmap to amplify that voice across multiple channels. She tackles the common mistake of one-and-done content promotion, explaining why quality thought leadership deserves strategic resharing with different hooks and angles throughout the year. From her Rule of 15 for balancing social media self-promotion with value-driven content, to understanding how topic clusters now outperform keyword stuffing for SEO, McKinney connects authentic voice with tactical execution that gets your expertise heard above the noise. 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! 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.

    28 min
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5
out of 5
72 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Little Bird Marketing & C-Suite Radio
  • Years Active
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodes
    434
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    ℗ & © 2018 Ponderings from the Perch
  • Show Website
    Ponderings from the Perch