Inspirational and Motivational Q&A

Ross Simmonds is the founder of Foundation Marketing, a content marketing agency that combines data and creativity to develop and serve ambitious brands. Foundation Marketing provides content marketing services to organizations all over the world ranging from some of the fastest growing start-ups and consumer products to global Fortune 500 brands.

Ross and the team at Foundation have launched marketing initiatives that reach millions of people and generate millions of new business opportunities through SEO and social channels like Instagram, Slideshare, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more.

Q. What keeps YOU motivated to motivate other entrepreneurs and marketers?

A. When I think about marketers or entrepreneurs in their early career, I often think about what I wish I had when I was first getting started: resources, information, and insights on how to navigate the world of digital, the various trends and how I can use them to get closer to my goals and objectives faster.

I am constantly thinking about how I can help the 20- or 60-year-old versions of me in the sense that they have a mindset, goal, dream, and ambition that they want to accomplish but may not know exactly how to get there.

At the end of the day, I always look at life as being really and truly built on the back of relationships and the internet gives me the ability to create content that facilitates and connects with millions of people. If I can do that consistently to help motivate and inspire other entrepreneurs and marketers to do great work and ultimately achieve their dreams, then I will feel like my time on this planet was well worth it.

Q. Digital marketing is playing a bigger role than ever in the future of business. What are the top trends you are keeping an eye on?

A. I believe VIDEO MARKETING presents the strongest opportunity to connect with people. There’s also a reason why so many people watch TV in the mornings, evenings, and weekends and why movies and TV shows have continuously become a part of our culture as society in comparison to the lack of adoption to things like books and radio. As much as I would love to see more people reading long form content, I have to acknowledge the fact that people want video content because it’s easier and sometimes even more enjoyable to consume for those who enjoy visual content. As such I look at video content across multiple platforms ranging from TikTok to YouTube as a massive opportunity and something that’s going to continue to play a major role in business in the future.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is something that a lot of marketers aren’t thinking about but should have their eye on as it’s quickly becoming more and more real as something that could shake up the way we do business. I believe in the future, we’re going to get to the point where AI will be able to tackle a lot of the repeatable work we do on a regular basis. Projects we tackle that require a lot of creativity, high EQ, and emotional connection may not be replaced but a lot of repetitive things will ultimately have the ability to be replaced by AI and as such, I am feeling like more marketers need to be aware of this and recognize that simple things like optimizing a website to have the appropriate tags and meta description may in fact be replaced by an AI in the future.

DISTRIBUTION. There’s more content being created than ever before. If you ask a handful of high school students what they want to be when they grow up, a lot of them will say “an influencer”. What does that mean? It means that a lot of people are creating content naturally, not only to create content for their personal social media accounts, but at a young age they’re creating content with the hope of potentially taking that on as a career. In a world where more companies are being invented and more content is being created, what do brands have to do? Most gurus will tell you they need to create more content.

What I will tell you is that we need to place less emphasis on the importance of creating more content and more emphasis on the distribution of content we create.

Q. What’s the best content hack orDIY tip you can share?

A. The best content hack I’d share with anyone is the importance of remixing and reusing old content. Just because you created one piece of content that lives on a blog, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn doesn’t mean it has to live and die solely on that platform. I encourage you to embrace the idea of distributing elsewhere. “Create once, distribute forever.”

Q. If your past-self could give your current-self one piece of entrepreneurial advice, what would it be?

A. Don’t water down your perspective.